Court Opinion

ID: 9475418
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:26:55.571868+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:42.739373
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Respectfully, I dissent. While deciding the case, the majority does not reach the issue. The district court also did not reach the issue, as I understand the contentions and proof of the plaintiff. The real issue is whether summary judgment should have been granted for the defendant Wainwright in light of the pleadings and genuine issues of fact present in the record.
The amended complaint alleges that the plaintiff was incarcerated in the Florida prison system at the age of 19 in the year 1978 and until the filing of the complaint he had been forcibly raped by other inmates as follows:
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Amended Complaint, p. 4. As an alternative to being subjected to such abuse, plaintiff alleges that he was placed in protective custody, which custody is described in note 7 of the majority opinion. It has been plaintiff’s complaint that defendant Wainwright had an affirmative duty to provide a safe environment from sexual assault and that the only alternative available to plaintiff was to obtain protective custody under conditions that amounted to evidence of deliberate indifference.
*404It may be that the plaintiff is not entitled to recover in this case. However, the pleadings, affidavit, and answers to interrogatories reflect that there is a genuine issue of fact as to the conditions under which Zatler was confined. There is no issue of fact as to Zatler having been raped since this is disclosed by the defendant’s own admissions in the Record, Vol. 1, Tab 42.
The foregoing matter was not addressed by the district court nor the state in its brief. My individual research indicates that the regulation, Florida Administrative Code Rule 33-8.13(13), provides that prisoners may be placed in administrative confinement as a disciplinary punishment. However, Rule 33-3.081 defines administrative confinement and states that inmates in such confinement are not being punished. Upon a preliminary review there seems to be a question as to the conditions prescribed for administrative confinement. Since this matter was not dealt with by the state nor the district court, I do not pursue it further.
The majority opinion acknowledges at page 400 that under the evolving standards of decency that mark our maturing society, a prison inmate is entitled to be protected from the constant threat of violence and assault by other inmates. If operation of the Florida prison system results in a conscious and callous indifference to such rights, a constitutional tort has been committed.
There is no question about the legal principle that where prison supervisors with knowledge of “a pervasive and unreasonable risk of harm” to the prisoners, fail to take reasonable remedial steps to prevent such harm, their conduct may be properly characterized as “deliberate indifference” or as “tacit authorization of the offensive acts,” for which they may be held independently liable under § 1983. (citations omitted)
Orpiano v. Johnson, 632 F.2d 1096 (4th Cir.1980). As reflected by Secretary Wainwright’s answers to interrogatories, “sexual abuse is not the subject of specific instructions.” As other answers reflect, Wainwright has had knowledge of sexual abuses and the only specific assistance to offenders who have been sexually abused is the opportunity to have after-the-fact counseling by a psychologist or psychiatrist.
I conclude that the truth in this case has not been reached because of the district court’s premature ruling that Wainwright was not legally responsible. The material issue of fact as to whether the protective or administrative confinement of Zatler as an alternative to being raped constituted a form of punitive response to Zatler’s request for help has not been decided.
I would remand this case to the district court for trial.