Opinion ID: 76841
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Claims Against Sheriff Kight and Jail Administrator White in their Individual Capacities.

Text: 10 The district court denied summary judgment to Defendants Kight and White, in their individual capacities, rejecting their defense of qualified immunity to Purcell's § 1983 claims. 11 We have jurisdiction over this appeal because the Supreme Court and this Court long ago determined that a district court's denial of a claim of qualified immunity is an appealable interlocutory order. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2817, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985); Jones v. Cannon, 174 F.3d 1271, 1280 (11th Cir.1999). This court reviews de novo the denial of qualified immunity on summary judgment, construing the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiff. Jones, 174 F.3d at 1281. 12 Qualified immunity protects government officials performing discretionary functions from civil trials [ ] and from liability if their conduct violates no clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Lassiter v. Alabama A&M University, Board of Trustees, 28 F.3d 1146, 1149 (11th Cir.1994)(en banc) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). This immunity protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law. McCoy v. Webster, 47 F.3d 404, 407 (11th Cir.1995) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 1096, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986)). For the purposes of this appeal, we will decide two things: (1) whether the summary judgment evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to Purcell, shows a violation of a constitutional right; and, if so (2) whether that right was, on 21 February 1999, already clearly established in such a particularized way to make obvious the conclusion for all reasonable, similarly situated jail officials that what Defendants were doing violated Plaintiff's federal rights under the circumstances. Marsh v. Butler County, Ala., 268 F.3d 1014, 1024 n. 5 (11th Cir.2001)(en banc). Violation of a Constitutional Right 13 The Eighth Amendment, which the Supreme Court has extended to the States, prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments. U.S. Const. amend. VIII. We begin with the proposition that, while the Constitution does not require prisons to be comfortable, it also does not permit them to be inhumane, `and it is now settled that the ... conditions under which [a prisoner] is confined are subject to scrutiny under the Eighth Amendment.' Jordan v. Doe, 38 F.3d 1559, 1564 (11th Cir.1994) (citations omitted). `[P]rison officials have a duty ... to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners.' ... It is not, however, every injury suffered by one prisoner at the hands of another that translates into [a] constitutional liability.... Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 1976-77, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994) (citations omitted). 15 14 To show a violation of Morgan's Eighth Amendment rights, Plaintiff must produce sufficient evidence of (1) a substantial risk of serious harm; (2) the defendants' deliberate indifference to that risk; and (3) causation. Hale v. Tallapoosa County, 50 F.3d 1579, 1582 (11th Cir.1995). To be deliberately indifferent a prison official must know of and disregard an excessive risk to inmate health or safety; the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference. Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1979. We will not allow the advantage of hindsight to determine whether conditions of confinement amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. See Brown v. Hughes, 894 F.2d 1533, 1537 (11th Cir.1990). Whether a substantial risk of serious harm exists so that the Eighth Amendment might be violated involves a legal rule that takes form through its application to facts. For summary judgment purposes, we resolve all the truly disputed facts in accord with Plaintiff's view of the facts; but we, as judges, decide the legal consequences of the given facts, that is, whether the supposed facts amount to a violation of the Eighth Amendment. 15 Purcell draws our attention to the following conditions at the Toombs County Jail: inmates were allowed to keep money in their cells; inmates were allowed to play cards and gamble; 16 the physical layout of the Jail hindered guards from preventing inmate-on-inmate attacks; and a history of inmate-on-inmate fights. 17 16 We accept that an excessive risk of inmate-on-inmate violence at a jail creates a substantial risk of serious harm; occasional, isolated attacks by one prisoner on another may not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, [but] confinement in a prison where violence and terror reign is actionable. A prisoner has a right, secured by the eighth ... amendment[ ], to be reasonably protected from constant threat of violence and sexual assault by his fellow inmates[.] Woodhous v. Virginia, 487 F.2d 889, 890 (4th Cir.1973) (citation omitted). We, however, see insufficient evidence in the record to show that inmates in the Toombs County Jail were exposed to something even approaching the constant threat of violence. See id.; see also Zatler v. Wainwright, 802 F.2d 397, 400 (11th Cir.1986). On substantial risk of serious harm, [t]his objective standard `embodies broad and idealistic concepts of dignity, civilized standards, humanity, and decency...,' but must be balanced against competing penological goals. LaMarca v. Turner, 995 F.2d 1526, 1535 (11th Cir.1993) (citations omitted). And we stress that a prison custodian is not the guarantor of a prisoner's safety. Popham v. City of Talladega, 908 F.2d 1561, 1564 (11th Cir.1990) (jail suicide case). 17 Viewing the record evidence in the light most favorable to Purcell, we conclude, as a matter of law, the conditions at Toombs County Jail failed to pose the substantial risk of serious harm necessary for a violation of the federal Constitution. A brief survey of conditions said by this Court, under Farmer, to establish objectively an excessive risk of inmate-on-inmate violence supports this conclusion. 18 In Marsh, we said that the complaint had alleged facts that, if true, were sufficient to establish a substantial risk of inmate-on-inmate violence. The host of jail conditions underlying that determination was extensive: 19 1) there was no segregation of nonviolent inmates from violent inmates, pretrial detainees from convicted criminals, juveniles from adults, or inmates with mental disorders from those without mental disorders, 2) at times the Jail housed more prisoners than the cells could accommodate, 3) the Jail was routinely understaffed, 4) no head counts of prisoners were made to make sure they were all accounted for, 5) locks on cell doors were not functional, allowing inmates to roam freely at all hours of the day, 6) homemade weapons were readily available by fashioning weapons from material torn from the dilapidated structure of the Jail, 7) no lock down of prisoners in their cells occurred at any point during the day or night, 8) cells were not visually inspected, 9) no jailer was assigned to maintain prisoners' security on the second floor where most of the inmates were housed, 10) the Jail was not operated in accordance with written policies, 11) inmates were not screened for mental health, medical conditions or conflicts with other prisoners before entering the Jail, and 12) prisoners were not disciplined or segregated when they attempted to escape, threatened jailers, destroyed property or assaulted other inmates. 20 268 F.3d at 1029. In a similar way in Hale, we determined that a plaintiff survived summary judgment by submitting evidence that 21 1) prisoners were not segregated based on their proclivity for violence, 2) there was only one jailer on duty, 3) the jailer's quarters were out of earshot and eyesight of the prisoners' cell, and 4) fights occurred between inmates on a regular basis resulting in injuries requiring medical attention and hospitalization.... 22 Marsh, 268 F.3d at 1033 n. 12 (citing Hale, 50 F.3d at 1581-84). 23 In contrast, the evidence presented in this case paints a picture, while not ideal, that is less severe than what would be sufficient to rise to the level of demonstrating objectively a substantial risk of serious harm to inmates. Inmates at Toombs County Jail were segregated based on a number of particularized factors, including the kind of crime committed and an inmate's potential personal conflicts with others. Moreover, the Jail was not understaffed on the night of the attack: five officers were on duty, which is typical for Toombs County. 18 Jail officials had a history of punishing inmate violence, 19 rather than looking the other way to preserve the status quo. 20 And while inmate fighting does happen in Toombs County, the record is insufficient to show that serious inmate-on-inmate violence was the norm or something close to it. 21 Also, the fights that did occur were linked to no recurring specific cause: causes ran the gamut from disagreements over television channels, to retaliation for pre-incarceration street activity, to card games, to food. 24 Purcell has produced evidence, mainly from Daniel Morgan's testimony, that a few serious fights occurred (severe enough to result in a trip to the hospital) at the Jail before Matthew Morgan's attack. No record evidence, however, shows that those incidents related to money. The district court seemed to place critical importance on the Jail's policy of allowing inmates to have money while incarcerated. While such a policy may possibly not be the best practice, we are unprepared to say that it is a violation of the federal Constitution to allow inmates to have some cash inside a jail. 25 Nor does the Jail's physical plant itself (jails can almost always be better and more secure) present an objectively substantial risk of serious harm. 22 The record evidence, at worst, shows that the physical layout of the Jail presented the jailers with difficulty in seeing into certain inmate cells, during the night, from the control tower. Guards also testified that they could not hear as well from inside the tower as they could when standing outside it. But in practice, the guards left the tower and walked around the cellblock area to conduct periodic checks; nothing suggests difficulty in seeing into the cells or hearing cell activity when walking around. 23 26 The record does not support Purcell's contentions that the conditions — bearing everything in mind — rose to the level of a substantial or sufficiently serious risk as opposed to some lesser risk of harm. See Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1977. In the jail setting, a risk of harm to some degree always exists by the nature of its being a jail. See Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294, 111 S.Ct. 2321, 2324, 115 L.Ed.2d 271 (1991) (The Constitution, we said, does not mandate comfortable prisons, and only those deprivations denying the minimal civilized measure of life's necessities are sufficiently grave to form the basis of an Eighth Amendment violation. (internal citations and quotations omitted)). Thus we conclude that Purcell has failed to set out evidence on summary judgment that supports the conclusion that the Toombs County Jail conditions (one thing, taken with another) posed a substantial risk of serious harm to Morgan or other inmates and, thus, could bear out an Eighth Amendment violation. 27 We do not, by today's conclusion, establish either Marsh or Hale as the proverbial floor of liability for Eighth Amendment purposes. We only decide that the conditions evidenced by the record here were not sufficiently grave to violate the Constitution. We note also that Plaintiff has survived summary judgment on her state law claims sounding in negligence against the individual defendants and might succeed at trial on those claims. We do not decide today that Plaintiff is due no remedy. But we, as a matter of law, do conclude that no remedy against Kight and White, in their individual capacities, is supplied to her by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment: the Constitution does not supplant traditional tort law in laying down rules of conduct to regulate liability for injuries that attend living together in society. Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 106 S.Ct. 662, 665, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986). Reasonable care under tort law is not the same thing as reasonable safety within the meaning of the federal Constitution. 28 Our conclusion that Purcell has failed to establish that Defendants violated Matthew Morgan's constitutional rights under the Eighth Amendment removes the need to reach the remaining questions of deliberate indifference, 24 causation, or preexisting clearly established law. 25 29