Opinion ID: 4541298
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dispatcher Whelan

Text: Dispatcher Whelan received the call that Silvis was on the bridge and ready to jump, was present when Silvis was brought into custody and assisted the officers when Silvis arrived at the station, heard Silvis say that he would jump tomorrow when he got out of jail, and could hear Silvis banging on his cell and yelling for medical help. These facts are sufficient to demonstrate that Dispatcher Whelan had actual knowledge that Silvis was suicidal and still wanted to kill himself. Therefore, Plaintiffs have “plead[ed] specific facts that . . . allow the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant” had subjective knowledge that Silvis was at a substantial risk of committing suicide. McLin v. Ard, 866 F.3d 682, 688 (5th Cir. 2017); Hyatt v. Thomas, 843 F.3d 172, 178-79 (5th Cir. 2016); Jacobs, 228 F.3d at 394; 3 see also Linicomn v. Hill, 902 F.3d 529, 533 (5th Cir. 2018) (explaining that when deciding a motion to dismiss, the court must “construe the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff”). Amendment—that is, to provide them “with basic human needs, including medical care and protection from harm, during their confinement.” Hare II, 74 F.3d at 639, 650. 3 We note that Hyatt v. Thomas and Jacobs v. West Feliciana Sheriff’s Department were decided at the summary judgment phase. We have criticized defendants for arguing that cases dismissed on summary judgment supported dismissal of their cases at the pleadings stage. See Littell v. Houston Indep. Sch. Dist., 894 F.3d 616, 629 n.8 (5th Cir. 2018); Drake v. City of Haltom City, 106 F. App’x 897, 900 (5th Cir. 2004). We employ the inverse principle here—we rely on cases that survived summary judgment to illustrate that this case passes the lower threshold at the pleading stage. Moreover, we rely on only the factual similarities in Hyatt and Jacobs to aid in considering Plaintiffs’ claims, which does not, of course, alter Plaintiffs’ burden at the pleading stage to simply allege “sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Ashcroft, 556 U.S. at 678 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570). 7 Case: 17-41234 Document: 00515450818 Page: 8 Date Filed: 06/12/2020 No. 17-41234 Dispatcher Whelan’s subjective awareness of the risk is, of course, not the end of our inquiry. We next evaluate whether Plaintiffs have sufficiently pleaded that Dispatcher Whelan deliberately disregarded this risk. As the Supreme Court explained in Farmer, “prison officials who actually knew of a substantial risk to inmate health or safety may be found free from liability if they responded reasonably to the risk, even if the harm ultimately was not averted.” 511 U.S. at 844. Dispatcher Whelan, as do all of the Defendants, argues that she escapes liability because she did not subjectively intend to harm Silvis or to allow Silvis to harm himself. All of the Defendants claim that they could not be deliberately indifferent because they did not want Silvis to die, evidenced by the fact that they rescued Silvis from jumping off of a bridge before bringing him to the jail. This misconstrues the deliberate indifference inquiry. Deliberate indifference requires that the officers knew of the substantial risk that Silvis would die or seriously injure himself—they did not have to know that Silvis actually would die, and certainly did not have to intend or want him to die. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 835; Hare II, 74 F.3d at 648. The Supreme Court has been explicit that deliberate indifference “is satisfied by something less than acts or omissions for the very purpose of causing harm or with knowledge that harm will result.” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 835; id. at 839-40 (“[S]ubjective recklessness as used in the criminal law is a familiar and workable standard . . . and we adopt it as the test for ‘deliberate indifference.’ ” ). Here, Plaintiffs have alleged that all four Defendants: (1) “were taught at the academy and field training not to give suicidal inmates blankets and to monitor suicidal inmates frequently”; (2) “were given written policies by the City of Kemah not to give suicidal inmates blankets and to monitor suicidal inmates frequently”; (3) “were aware of several media reports of inmates dying 8 Case: 17-41234 Document: 00515450818 Page: 9 Date Filed: 06/12/2020 No. 17-41234 of suicides using bedding in jails”; and (4) “were aware jail suicide was the leading cause of death in Texas jails and that bedding hanging was the most frequent method of suicide.” And though Dispatcher Whelan was not the one to give Silvis the blanket, Plaintiffs allege that Dispatcher Whelan observed Silvis in his cell with the blanket, knowing that the blanket could be a tool for committing suicide, yet did not remove the blanket from the cell or take actions to monitor Silvis. In a case closely analogous to this one, Jacobs, we held that an officer was not entitled to summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds, even though it was not the officer’s decision to provide the detainee with a blanket, because he observed the detainee lying on the bunk when she had the sheet, 4 knew that suicidal detainees should not be provided with loose bedding yet did not take the bedding away, and failed to check on the detainee as frequently as he was supposed to. 228 F.3d at 397-98. “Given [the officer’s] . . . disregard for precautions he knew should be taken,” we concluded that a reasonable jury could conclude that he was deliberately indifferent to the detainee’s risk of harm. Id. at 398. The only apparent difference between this case and Jacobs is that, in Jacobs, another detainee had previously committed suicide in that same cell under similar circumstances, yet officers continued to house suicidal inmates in that cell without removing the cell’s “tie off points” 5 and even though the cell had blind spots. Id. at 395. But this distinction speaks only to the degree, not 4 Though another officer had ordered that the detainee be given a blanket, unknown personnel supplied the detainee with a sheet, which she ultimately used to hang herself. Because any loose bedding—whether it be a sheet or a blanket—provides a means for suicidal detainees, this fact was immaterial to our analysis. See Jacobs, 228 F.3d at 391, 398. 5 As the name suggests, tie-off points are places to tie a ligature for the purpose of hanging. See CHRISTINE TARTARO, SUICIDE AND SELF-HARM IN PRISONS AND JAILS 58 (2d ed. 2019) (explaining how and why inmates most often commit suicide with loose bedding). 9 Case: 17-41234 Document: 00515450818 Page: 10 Date Filed: 06/12/2020 No. 17-41234 the occurrence, of unreasonable behavior. We have never held, and we will not now suggest, that multiple suicides must occur in the same cell before a jail official is required to take preventative measures. The proper inquiry, then, is whether the jail guards had the subjective knowledge that the bedding posed a substantial risk of suicide, not how the guards obtained that knowledge. See id. at 394. Here, Plaintiffs have alleged that: (1) Dispatcher Whelan had observed media reports concerning inmates who had committed suicide by hanging themselves with their blankets and had been trained not to give suicidal inmates loose bedding for this exact reason; and (2) the cell visibly contained a tie-off point on the top part of the bunk bed. Just as the officer in Jacobs, 6 Dispatcher Whelan knew that Silvis was at a substantial risk of committing suicide and had a means of doing so with the loose bedding she knew he should not have been given, yet she “fail[ed] to take reasonable measures to abate” the risk, demonstrating deliberate indifference. Hare II, 74 F.3d at 648.