Court Opinion

ID: 9482027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:37:59.801286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:43.056531
License: Public Domain

FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judge,
Dissenting:
I agree with the general approach of the majority to the legal standards, but, as Judge Thompson so eloquently points out, its application of the standards seems to suggest that a policy of placing all inmates in the general population unless there is some clear indication that the person is a danger or in danger amounts to deliberate indifference. In other words, it seems to suggest that those who run jail facilities must either segregate everyone from everyone else, or prove that there is no danger from mixing them. If that is what is meant, I cannot agree, for it smacks of the kind of judicial intrusion into the management of the jail system that we should eschew.
Moreover, I do agree that if a policy or custom called for the placement of known physically violent inmates with others who are known to be vulnerable to violence, there would, at the very least, be a jury question on the issue of deliberate indifference. Furthermore, if that policy or custom were caused by the dangerous overcrowding of the facility, I should think that, absent evidence to the contrary, a jury could infer knowledge and acquiescence by the policymakers in the decision to allow the facility to be overcrowded. Nor would the fact that overcrowding throughout our jail and prison system is largely driven by economics make a difference. That kind of economics does not define our constitutional rights. In any event, economists have expatiated on the value to be found in enforcement of individual rights when we wish to encourage people to rethink their attitudes toward imposing risks on others in order to save initial outlays of money by themselves. I need not rehearse the well known economic arguments here.1
However, as Judge Thompson again demonstrates, the majority, does not point to evidence that would justify a determination that deliberate indifference was involved in the placement of these particular *1457actors in the general prison population or together. True it is that the terrible events which ensued showed that Clark and Red-man should not have been housed together. That, however, is a far cry from showing that the decision to house them was deliberately indifferent or resulted from a deliberately indifferent policy. In fact, it appears that the evidence of acts of deliberate indifference is to be found in the attitudes taken by individual jailers after the danger to Redman became more readily apparent. Strangely enough, the person most directly connected with that wrongdoing was not even joined as a defendant.
In short, the evidence here may support a common law tort remedy; it will not support a constitutional tort remedy.2
Thus, I join in Judge Thompson’s dissent.

. But cf. Wilson v. Seiter, - U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2321, 115 L.Ed.2d 271 (1991) (The concurring opinion expressed particular concerns about economics, id. — U.S. at -, 111 S.Ct. at 2329-31 (White, J.), which were not directly reached by the majority, id. — U.S. at -, 111 S.Ct. at 2326-27).

. Wilson v. Seiter, id.., underscores this.