Court Opinion

ID: 9890394
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-12 20:00:42.741371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:12.093757
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                 For the Seventh Circuit
                     ____________________

No. 22-2948
LISA ALCORN, as Administrator of the Estate of Tyler Lumar,
                                          Plaintiff-Appellant,

                                 v.

CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, et al.,
                                               Defendants-Appellees.
                     ____________________

         Appeal from the United States District Court for the
           Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
           No. 17 C 5859 — Virginia M. Kendall, Judge.
                     ____________________

  ARGUED SEPTEMBER 19, 2023 — DECIDED OCTOBER 12, 2023
                ____________________

   Before EASTERBROOK, WOOD, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges.
    EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Tyler Lumar caused a ruckus
at a medical clinic in Chicago. Called to the scene, police dis-
covered that Lumar was wanted on an arrest warrant and
took him into custody. About 19 hours later he commiQed su-
icide while waiting for a bail hearing. Lisa Alcorn, as admin-
istrator of his estate, contends in this suit under 42 U.S.C.
§1983 that defendants are liable because Lumar should have
2                                                  No. 22-2948

been released without waiting for a bond hearing. Had he
been released swiftly, Alcorn asserts, Lumar would not have
killed himself.
   Alcorn presents three principal arguments: ﬁrst, that the
warrant itself set a bond, which Lumar should have been al-
lowed to post immediately; second, that detention should not
have been extended after an oﬃcer accused him of possessing
cocaine in jail; third, that defendants are responsible for
Lumar’s suicide. The district court did not agree with any of
these contentions and entered judgment for the defendants.
631 F. Supp. 3d 534 (N.D. Ill. 2022); 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS
175961 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 28, 2022). We take them up in order.
    The warrant set bond at $500. Under the system Illinois
used at the time, a suspect could be released by posting 10%
of the bond in cash. Lumar had more than $100 in his pocket
when arrested, and Alcorn maintains that the police should
have taken $50 and let him go without ado. Problem: The war-
rant had been issued in Lee County, about 100 miles to the
west of Chicago, while Lumar was arrested in Cook County.
General Administrative Order 2015-06, issued by the Chief
Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, requires local
bond hearings for all persons arrested on warrants issued by
courts in Illinois but outside Cook County. Chicago’s police
were abiding by this order. See Bureau of Patrol Directive 15-
0174. Alcorn contends that this order is inconsistent with Illi-
nois law, which permits arrestees to waive local bond hear-
ings. 725 ILCS 5/109-2(b). Lumar wanted to waive a hearing,
post bond, and leave. By refusing to allow him to do this, Al-
corn maintains, the police violated the Fourth Amendment
(applied to state actors by the Fourteenth).
No. 22-2948                                                             3

    We may assume that the Chief Judge’s order is incon-
sistent with state law, to the extent it denies arrestees the right
to waive local bond hearings. It is not clear whether waiver
would have worked to Lumar’s advantage, for the state law
adds: “If a person so arrested waives such right [to a local
bond hearing], the arresting agency shall surrender such per-
son to a law enforcement agency of the county that issued the
warrant without unnecessary delay.” The record does not
show how long it would have taken Chicago’s police to hand
Lumar over to oﬃcials in Lee County. But the answer does
not maQer, because Lumar’s claim rests on the Fourth
Amendment, not on Illinois law—and a violation of state law
does not permit an award of damages under §1983. See, e.g.,
Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164 (2008). The federal rule for how
much time police can take to present an arrested person to a
judge is the subject of Riverside County v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S.
44 (1991), and Alcorn does not contend that the police ex-
ceeded the bounds set by that decision.
   Instead Alcorn wants us to conclude that the police de-
layed unreasonably—where state law deﬁnes reasonableness.
Her brief contends:
   Plaintiﬀ … does not seek enforcement of state law. The violation
   of Illinois law is nonetheless signiﬁcant, and its discussion com-
   pulsory, because it demonstrates Tyler Lumar’s detention was
   needless, and thus unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

This is an argument to apply state law by another name. The
right question, for federal purposes, is whether it would vio-
late the Constitution for police to present every detainee for a
prompt bond hearing in the county of arrest. In other words,
the federal court should assume that the police acted exactly
as they were supposed to act under state law, then ask
whether acting in this way is unconstitutional. See, e.g.,
4                                                   No. 22-2948

Gordon v. Degelmann, 29 F.3d 295, 300–01 (7th Cir. 1994). Given
Riverside, the answer is obvious. Federal law does not prohibit
presenting the arrestee to a local judge, provided that this is
accomplished in a reasonable time not to exceed 48 hours. 500
U.S. at 56. The district court explained why the time Lumar
spent in custody before his suicide, including six hours in a
hospital to address breathing problems, was reasonable as a
maQer of federal law. 631 F. Supp. 3d at 543–44.
    The police arrested Lumar at 3:58 pm on August 18, 2016.
The next morning they took him to Cook County Jail for a
bond hearing. He was placed with many other detainees into
“Bullpen 23”. Oﬃcer Wlodarski, who was supervising this
area, testiﬁed that he saw Lumar pick up a bag and drop it
behind a bench. The bag, when recovered, contained 12 rocks
of crack cocaine. The Sheriﬀ’s Oﬃce, which runs the Jail, re-
turned Lumar to the Police Department. He hanged himself
in a cell at the stationhouse before he could be sent back to the
Jail for a bond hearing.
   Alcorn contends that Wlodarski lacked probable cause to
arrest Lumar for possessing cocaine. The district judge found
otherwise, observing that Wlodarski’s testimony is undis-
puted (a video of Bullpen 23 is inconclusive, and Lumar is no
longer able to contest Wlodarski’s statements). For our part,
we don’t see why the dispute about probable cause maQers.
Probable cause is essential to make a custodial arrest, but
Lumar was already in custody. His return to the station
caused delay in presenting him to a judge for a bond hearing,
but delay is justiﬁed when reasonable, a standard lower than
probable cause. See Riverside, 500 U.S. at 56–57. As we have
said already, Alcorn does not contend that the aggregate
No. 22-2948                                                   5

delay was excessive under the standard set by the Supreme
Court in Riverside.
    This brings us to the ﬁnal contention: that the defendants
did not do enough to prevent Lumar from hanging himself
and so are liable under the Illinois Wrongful Death Act, 740
ILCS 180/1. This claim comes up short because, as the district
judge observed, the police lacked any reason to suspect that
Lumar was at risk. Suicide watch is exceedingly unpleasant
for a detainee, who must give up clothing, shoelaces, bedding,
and anything else that could be used for self-harm. It is un-
digniﬁed and unpleasant, a status to be avoided unless a risk
of self-harm is evident. Yet nothing in Lumar’s medical or cus-
todial history suggested a problem. He was screened for sui-
cide risk shortly after his arrest and denied having any
thoughts of self-harm; this answer, coupled with the absence
of objective risk indicators, led to his placement in a regular
cell with normal surveillance intervals. He was screened
again at the hospital, again without any suggestion of risk.
    Illinois law oﬀers a remedy for suicide during custody
only if the jailers do something that makes suicide foreseea-
ble; otherwise detainees are responsible for their own choices.
See Stanphill v. Ortberg, 2018 IL 122974 ¶35. Alcorn contends
that violations of Lumar’s constitutional rights so maddened
him that the police drove him to kill himself. Yet we have con-
cluded that the police did not violate any of his rights under
federal law—and a few hours’ delay in having a bond hearing
does not foreseeably cause detainees to commit suicide. Al-
corn does not cite, and we did not ﬁnd, any decision in Illinois
ﬁnding liability under remotely similar circumstances.
                                                     AFFIRMED