Court Opinion

ID: 9480021
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:35:31.987816+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:25.908036
License: Public Domain

TANG, Circuit Judge,
Concurring in Part and Dissenting in Part:
The majority distinguishes well the standards for government tort and constitutional liability. I dissent, however, because I believe the majority usurps the jury’s proper function of determining whether the government’s conduct amounted to deliberate indifference in this case. In our review of the directed verdict in this case, we must view the evidence in a light most favorable to Redman and draw all inferences in his favor. See Peterson v. Kennedy, 771 F.2d 1244, 1256 (9th Cir.1985). Because substantial evidence would permit a jury reasonably to conclude that Redman’s jailers were deliberately indifferent to his personal security, I would reverse for trial. See id.
Redman’s evidence necessitates jury evaluation not only of his jailers’ acts, but also of his jailers’ motives under the deliberate indifference standard. The key factual issue in this case was what Redman’s jailers knew and how they responded to that knowledge when the guard called Red-man over to the guard station and asked if he was having any problems. At that point jail officials knew that Redman, a slightly-built eighteen-year-old with no prior convictions, was especially vulnerable to sexual assault. They knew this from the profile they conducted upon Redman’s entry which classified him for the “young and tender” jail module. They knew that Clark, Red-man’s “mainline tank” cellmate, was an aggressive homosexual who was transferred from the homosexual module into the “mainline tank” with Redman precisely because he was “coercing” sexual favors from other prisoners. Moreover, jail officials knew that Clark was incarcerated for violating parole from a conviction for a registrable felony sex offense.
Jail officials were also alerted from the girlfriend’s mother’s call that Redman had received threats of sexual assault, and was terrified of those threats. That call also informed jail officials that Redman was afraid to complain to them because of threats of reprisal against his girlfriend. The girlfriend’s mother specifically told jail officials that Redman took the reprisal threats seriously because those who threatened him knew the girlfriend’s address. Finally, the guard who questioned Redman must have known that an inmate who had threatened Redman could observe if not hear the guard’s exchange with Redman, conducted in full view of the jail module.
*370Having heard the cumulative weight of this evidence, a reasonable jury could have concluded that Redman’s jailers acted with deliberate indifference to his personal security. The jury could have inferred that the guard who questioned Redman deliberately exposed him, knowing Redman was too frightened to complain in full view of his assailants. Jail officials had thus performed an unwelcome duty of responding to a citizen’s concern, and yet had also asserted the attitude that inmates must fend for themselves. As the jail official who took the call stated, “Well, you know, we can’t watch [Redman] like this is a baby-sitting service or something.”
A reasonable jury could have found, then, that Redman’s jailers knew he was vulnerable to sexual assault, knew of Clark’s proclivity to assault others sexually, knew Redman had received threats, knew Redman feared reprisal if he complained, and knew that questioning Red-man in front of other inmates could serve only to increase Redman’s peril and compel him to keep silent. The jury could therefore have concluded that jail officials had much more than a “mere suspicion” Red-man would be raped. Indeed, the jury could have concluded that Redman’s jailers were deliberately indifferent to the imminent danger of Redman’s rape.
The majority, by analyzing the officials’ conduct only as isolated incidents, purports to reach the legal conclusion that jail officials did not act with deliberate indifference toward Redman’s plight. I might agree that, in isolation, “[tjransferring Redman into Clark’s cell may well have been an act of negligence, but it was not an act of deliberate indifference.” Supra at 368. I might also agree that upon notice of threats against Redman, “the investigation undertaken by jail officials was so ineffective and perfunctory as to demonstrate a lack of due care,” but that jail officials were not, in that instance alone, deliberately indifferent because they “did respond” to the threat. Supra at 368. The persuasiveness of Redman’s evidence, however, is in its cumulative effect. From the accumulated weight of the evidence, a reasonable jury could have inferred that jail officials acted with deliberate indifference to Redman’s personal security. A directed verdict in this case was error because, when viewed in a light most favorable to him, there is indeed “substantial evidence to support a verdict for” Redman. Peterson, 771 F.2d at 1256.
The majority relies on Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S. 344, 106 S.Ct. 668, 88 L.Ed.2d 677 (1986) to decide that Redman’s jailers merely lacked due care. In Davidson the plaintiff prisoner denied that his jailers were more than negligent. See id. at 347, 106 S.Ct. at 670. Instead, the prisoner agreed that prison officials merely inadvertently failed to respond to his note regarding a threat he received because they were attending other prison “emergencies.” Id. at 345, 348, 106 S.Ct. at 669, 670. Moreover, in Davidson, the prisoner “testified that he did not foresee an attack” when he wrote the note, and indeed prison officials did not themselves view the note “as urgent because on previous occasions when [the prisoner] had a serious problem he had contacted [prison officials] directly.” Id. at 345-46, 106 S.Ct. at 669-670. In Redman’s case, however, jail officials had credible reason to believe the threat of sexual assault was grave. Jail officials’ inadequate response to Redman’s peril may have been inadvertent, but it may also have been deliberately indifferent, increasing his peril. These questions of fact, dependent upon inferences from the evidence and evaluations of credibility, belong to jury determination.
Indeed, Redman’s case is similar to Wood v. Ostrander, 879 F.2d 583 (9th Cir.1989), wherein we held that key factual issues required jury determination. In Wood, we could not say as a matter of law that a state trooper had not acted with deliberate indifference when he refused the companion of an arrestee a ride home and thus exposed her to danger. Id. at 590. Instead, we said the jury must decide whether the trooper knew or should have known of the dangers the companion faced late at night in a high crime area. Id. Similarly, in Redman’s case, we should not say as a matter of law that jail officials did *371not act with deliberate indifference in questioning Redman in front of his attacker Clark. A jury should decide whether Red-man’s jailers knew or should have known of the dangers Redman faced from Clark. At last, a jury should decide whether jail officials’ knowledge of the dangers he faced and their handling of the call they received alerting them to Redman’s peril placed Redman in a position of heightened danger.
The majority’s decision in Redman thus conflicts with the Wood analysis. As in Wood, application of the deliberate indifference standard to Redman’s case requires not only determination of governmental acts, but also of the motives behind those acts. As an appellate court we cannot conclude from this record that Redman’s jailers were not deliberately indifferent to his plight. Instead, we should respect juries’ unique ability to evaluate government conduct for deliberate indifference. See Berg v. Kincheloe, 794 F.2d 457, 462 (9th Cir.1986). Juries encompass the wealth of community experience, hear the evidence first hand, and weigh its credibility. In determining that the government’s motives in conduct resulting in grave injury to Red-man did not amount to deliberate indifference, the majority improperly intrudes on the jury’s function.
Finally, because I would reverse for jury determination under the deliberate indifference standard, I also depart from the majority’s conclusion that Redman failed to present evidence of a constitutional violation. In Daniels v. Williams, cited by the majority, the Supreme Court reiterated that the Fourteenth Amendment secures “ ‘the individual from the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government’ ” and prevents “governmental power from being ‘used for purposes of oppression.’ ” Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 331, 106 S.Ct. 662, 665, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (quoting Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 527, 4 S.Ct. 111, 116, 28 L.Ed. 232 (1884) and Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 277, 15 L.Ed. 372 (1856)). As an identified “young and tender” detainee, Redman necessarily depended upon his jailers, the government, to secure his personal security while confined. Tort law may assure Redman a remedy for his jailers’ negligent “contribution” to Red-man’s trauma, as the majority observes. But the Constitution at last restrained his jailers “from abusing governmental power, or employing it as an instrument of oppression.” Davidson, 474 U.S. at 348, 106 S.Ct. at 670.
From the evidence Redman presented, a jury could reasonably find that his jailers’ response to the call alerting them to Red-man’s peril was callous and arbitrary. Further, a jury could find the jailer’s questioning of Redman in front of his attacker deliberately abusive and oppressive. Indeed, only a jury could determine whether Redman’s jailers acted negligently or whether they wielded their governmental power over Redman arbitrarily and oppressively, deliberately refusing to aid him in a time of known peril. If Redman’s jailers deliberately refused to secure his personal security while he was subject to government’s total control, then Redman rightly invoked the Constitution to redress him for such abusive governmental conduct. If properly left to a jury’s evaluation of the jailers’ conduct, Redman’s case turns on just such a constitutional issue.