Court Opinion

ID: 9476498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:57:25.182483+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:20.780762
License: Public Domain

STARR, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The resolution of this case depends in no small measure on where one draws the starting line for analysis. The majority, urged on by appellee, begins from what would facially appear to be a reasonable starting point: the chronically overcrowded conditions that prevail in the prison and jail facilities of the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia, now under judgment to pay appellee $75,000 for injuries resulting from a beating administered by another inmate, starts from a rather different perspective. As counsel for the District well put it at oral argument, this case is about a fight over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Both perspectives are, as not atypically happens in litigation, grounded in reality. There is no ignoring the unhappy history, ably chronicled by my colleagues, of the District of Columbia’s unsuccessful efforts to deal with the swelling ranks of inmate population. This is, of course, a nationwide phenomenon. Even the most respected and thoroughly professional prison systems in the Nation have been obliged to resort to such measures as double bunking. Overcrowding, as we all know, is endemic to modern prison life.
Since overcrowded prisons are likely to be the order of the day far into the future, I think it behooves the judiciary to be exceedingly cautious in translating this unfortunate reality into a powerful instrument of constitutional tort liability. The spectre of overcrowded prisons, in the manner of Holmesian “hard cases,” can distort the judgment, rendering difficult and uncertain that which should be clear. In my judgment, that is what has happened here.
I
This is, above all, a tort suit arising out of a fight. It is critical to a dispassionate understanding of this case that one quickly dismiss from his or her mind what the case is not about. For one thing, the injuries inflicted upon Mr. Morgan were not the result of a prison riot. For another, there was no excessive use of force by prison officials. Cf. Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 106 S.Ct. 1078, 89 L.Ed.2d 251 (1986); Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 105 S.Ct. 1694, 85 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985). There was no deliberate indifference to Mr. Morgan’s plight once the war of words erupted into something far more serious. Guards were, indeed, johnny-on-the-spot. Mr. Morgan was thus no prison analogue to a Kitty Geneovese, crying out for help with the prison personnel pulling down the window shades, as it were, or in the vernacular of the day, taking a walk.
And that brings me to what I believe is the correct analytical starting point in this case. Upon analysis, this is not, or at least should not be, a case about overcrowding. The issue is, much more narrowly, whether the record in this case provides a sufficient factual predicate for what on its face seems an extraordinary result — a $75,000 award to a co-combatant in a routine prison fight in which the plaintiff conducted himself in a manner calculated to irritate and, more, to outrage.
In analyzing and reflecting on the record in this case, I have come to the conclusion that this verdict should not stand. Even under the daunting standards governing the review of jury verdicts, see, e.g., Tavoulareas v. Piro, 817 F.2d 762 (D.C.Cir.1987); Vander Zee v. Karabatsos, 589 F.2d 723, 726 (D.C.Cir.1978), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 962, 99 S.Ct. 2407, 60 L.Ed.2d 1066 (1979), this case is not even close.
II
Dwelling on the facts of the operative events themselves leaves no small sense of wonder that a well-ordered system of jus*1069tice could produce this result. As the majority faithfully recounts the facts, it appears beyond doubt that the characterization by the District of Columbia’s counsel is precisely what was before the jury. Mr. Morgan and Mr. Hurt got into a fight over a jar of peanut butter, and Mr. Morgan lost.
Here is what happened. On a Sunday evening in June, almost exactly four years ago, Mr. Morgan was preparing to settle down to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. En route to enjoy this nocturnal repast, Mr. Morgan had the misfortune of being approached by the aptly named Mr. Hurt, a rather unpleasant fellow who obviously believed in the jailhouse principle that what’s yours is mine. Perhaps animated by such egalitarian notions, upon which a goodly measure of Twentieth Century social policy has been based, Mr. Hurt had the audacity to demand a sandwich.
Now at this unhappy point on that otherwise uneventful June evening, Mr. Morgan had several choices. Apparently eschewing diplomatic initiatives, “Morgan refused, and a loud argument ensued.” Majority Op. at 1054. An officer arrived on the scene, seeking to inject a modicum of peace and calm into this worsening state of affairs. As the majority ably recounts, Mr. Hurt thereupon conducted himself in a most disagreeable fashion, prompting Mr. Morgan to engage in what some might view as rather odd and indeed sophomoric conduct: “When Hurt grabbed for the jar, Morgan spit into it.” Id. This singularly unpleasant response to Mr. Hurt’s ultimatum led to fisticuffs, with Mr. Morgan disproportionately on the receiving end.
So this truly was, even as the majority recounts it, a fight over a sandwich. The notion that, like cheap novels, this was really about prisonhouse sex, complete with rebuffed suitors, is fanciful, unsupported in the record save for a fellow inmate’s testimony that Mr. Hurt had designs on something other than peanut butter. As spicy as that salacious innuendo might be, this is all of whole cloth. The law deals with facts. And the uncontested, undisputed truth is that these two inmates — whatever else may have been going on (or not) on the side — got into a bloody battle over Wonderbread and Skippy. The case is as simple as that.
Ill
It may be thought at this juncture that I have conveniently overlooked the psychiatric record of Mr. Hurt and the evidence that he should have been situated in a different section of the facility. But apropos to what the case is really about, the charge will not stick. The reason is that the precise issue before us is not whether the D.C. jails are overcrowded (they are), or whether Mr. Hurt is a dangerous man (he is), but whether the District obdurately and wantonly failed adequately to protect Mr. Morgan. See Whitley, 106 S.Ct. at 1084; Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104-06, 97 S.Ct. 285, 291-92, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976).
True, overcrowded conditions and the degree of risk posed by each individual prisoner bear on the amount of security necessary to ensure a reasonably safe prison environment. But the record in this case is totally devoid of evidence that the security at the District of Columbia Jail fell short of the constitutional minimum.
The Supreme Court’s teaching is clear: “To be cruel and unusual punishment, conduct that does not purport to be punishment at all must involve more than ordinary lack of due care for the prisoner’s interests or safety. This reading of the Clause underlies our decision in Estelle v. Gamble....” Whitley, 106 S.Ct. at 1084. Rather than mere negligence, “[i]t is obduracy and wantonness, not inadvertence or error in good faith, that characterize the conduct prohibited by the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, whether that conduct occurs in connection with establishing conditions of confinement, supplying medical needs, or restoring official control over a tumultuous cell block.” Id. (emphasis added).
Now the question whether prison officials acted reasonably to secure an inmate’s safety is scarcely one within the layperson’s realm. The reasonably pru*1070dent juror cannot be expected to appreciate the multifarious considerations involved in either prison security arrangements or the closely related questions of safekeeping and assignment of prisoners. Indeed, the Court has repeatedly stressed that “ ‘a prison’s internal security is peculiarly a matter normally left to the discretion of prison administrators,’ Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S., at 349, n. 14 [101 S.Ct. at 2400, n. 14].” Whitley, 106 S.Ct. at 1085. For that reason, “ ‘[p]rison administrators ... should be accorded wide-ranging deference in the adoption and execution of policies and practices that in their judgment are needed to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security.’ Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S., at 547 [99 S.Ct. at 1878].” Id. (ellipsis in original).
Because matters of prison security are so sensitive, and involve so many competing considerations unappreciated by the lay juror, the law generally requires expert testimony to establish a lack of proper security precautions. See Murphy v. United States, 653 F.2d 637, 646 & n. 32 (D.C.Cir.1981). This is a sound and sensible principle, which merits application in the case at hand. But, in this case, there was no expert testimony (and, indeed, no evidence whatever) as to prison security (such as the placement of prisoners, the proper number and placement of guards in relation to the arrangement of prisoners, and correctional procedures regarding inmate fights). Likewise, there was no expert testimony that Mr. Hurt was misassigned. Indeed, the majority concedes that Dr. Papish, the head of the prison’s psychiatric clinic, refused to say that, in light of Mr. Hurt’s history of violence and instability, he would have recommended Mr. Hurt’s placement in the lock-down facility. Majority Op. at 1060.
The disturbing result of this absence of expert guidance is that the jury was left in its deliberations to speculate on the role of overcrowding in the jail as a whole, and whether the security arrangements in Southeast-Three were sufficient to deal with someone of Mr. Hurt’s propensities. In other words, the jury was permitted to determine that security in Southeast-Three was inadequate (and, indeed, inadequate due to obduracy and wantonness), without evidence as to what constitutes adequate security at a prison. And it should go without saying that a correct instruction as to the law will not do service for a gaping evidentiary hole.
As we made clear in Murphy, “a prisoner has no right to demand the level of protection necessary to render an institution assault-free (he is only entitled to ‘reasonable protection’ from assaults ...).” 653 F.2d at 644. And, to establish a constitutional violation, the prisoner must show “obduracy and wantonness, not inadvertence or error in good faith.” Whitley, 106 S.Ct. at 1084. The facts in this case manifestly do not rise to this daunting standard.
For when the altercation began (indeed even before it had escalated into a fistfight) a prison guard was on the spot trying to subdue the argument. As the dispute moved beyond a war of words, a second guard arrived on the scene. The two guards, far from standing idly by with deliberate indifference to Mr. Morgan’s plight, intervened (with one apparently receiving blows as well). This is scarcely the stuff of obduracy and wantonness, which is what Whitley interprets the Constitution (and Estelle) as demanding. There is not one whit of evidence that Mr. Hurt was assigned to Mr. Morgan’s precinct as part of some sadistic or malevolent plot to unleash a mad-dog prisoner on the law-abiding, pacific general populace.
IV
As should by now be apparent, this case represents a wild extension of causation principles in the law of constitutional tort. General overcrowding coupled with a violent, and perhaps misassigned, prisoner will now, taken together, do service to work a constitutional violation, regardless of how intemperate and ill-advised the conduct of the “victim.” It is all the more troubling since prison authorities are well advised not to keep individuals, even those like the redoubtable Mr. Hurt, in conditions that are unduly confining. For prison officials are also threatened with liability for shack*1071ling potential aggressors to extraordinary restraints, such as conditions of administrative segregation and the like.
We do well in the law to remember the simple truths. And one such truth, uttered at the Founding, is that if men were angels, government would not be necessary. The complicated souls who are unable, for whatever reason, to live peacefully in society in obedience to law present among the most difficult challenges to governments that are obliged to deal with them consistent with constitutional constraints. Today’s result blinks at that truth, representing a triumph of skilled lawyering over basic common sense.
This verdict is profoundly wrong.