Court Opinion

ID: 9497171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:45:06.189343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:02.601970
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
with whom ROVNER, DIANE P. WOOD and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc.
Today, the court allows to stand the decision of a panel majority that imposes on prison inmates a new and impossibly high standard of proof for establishing deliberate indifference in prison condition cases. The panel majority strongly suggests that, in order to show deliberate indifference, a prisoner must not only identify with particularity the harm he fears but also bolster his own account with a special showing containing material such as statistical evidence of a “strong correlation between prisoners’ professions and actual violence.” Riccardo v. Rausch, at 527. Neither of these requirements find support in circuit or Supreme Court precedent. Consequently, the panel majority’s imposition of these requirements not only does violence to our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, but it also effectively amends, without any legislative mandate, the standard for judgment as a matter of law under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50 for cases brought by prisoners.
*5341.
Mr. Riccardo told Lt. Rausch that the Latin Kings had put out a “hit” on him and that placement in a cell with Garcia, a known Latin King, would endanger his life. Two days later, Mr. Riccardo was forced to perform sexual acts with Garcia. The panel majority nevertheless concludes that this evidence is not sufficient to establish that Lt. Rausch should have appreciated a serious risk to Mr. Riccardo because the “risk from which Riccardo sought protection was not realized.” Id. at 526. In short, in the panel majority’s view, because Mr. Riccardo was raped, but not killed, Lt. Rausch cannot be held liable for his failure to respond to Mr. Riccardo’s fears.
The Supreme Court in Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994), eschewed this sort of distinction. The Court made clear that a prison official cannot escape
liability for deliberate indifference by showing that, while he was aware of an obvious, substantial risk to inmate safety, he did not know that the complainant was especially likely to be assaulted by the specific prisoner who eventually committed the assault. The question under the Eighth Amendment is whether prison officials, acting with deliberate indifference, exposed a prisoner to a sufficiently substantial “risk of serious damage to his future health,” Helling [v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25, 35, 113 S.Ct. 2475, 125 L.Ed.2d 22 (1993),] and it does not matter whether the risk comes from a single source or multiple sources, any more than it matters whether a prisoner faces an excessive risk of attack for reasons personal to him or because all prisoners in his situation face such a risk.
Id. at 843, 114 S.Ct. 1970 (emphasis added). Just as Mr. Riccardo did not need to identify the member of the Latin Kings who would mete out the retaliatory action that he feared, he did not need to identify the specific sort of bodily harm that would be inflicted upon him. Indeed, our case law makes crystal clear that such precision with respect to identifying risks is not required:
While there must be some link between the risk of which the official was aware and the harm that actually occurred — as it would be unfair to hold officials liable for risks they could not have anticipated simply because they ignored other unrelated risks — prison officials need not be specifically aware of the precise risk that unfolds.
Haley v. Gross, 86 F.3d 630, 643 n. 33 (7th Cir.1996). Mr. Riccardo feared reprisal by the Latin Kings. Garcia, a member of that gang, committed an act of physical violence upon Mr. Riccardo. The fact that Mr. Riccardo did not suffer a worse fate does not negate the seriousness or the validity of the threat to Mr. Riccardo that was communicated to Lt. Rausch.
2.
The panel majority further opines that Mr. Riccardo might have overcome the infirmity in his case by showing
that there is a strong correlation between prisoners’ professions of fear and actual violence. How many murders (or homosexual assaults) occur in Centraba (or the Illinois prison system) per hundred inmate-years of custody? How many violent events were preceded by requests for protection? How many requests for protection were dishonored, yet nothing untoward happened? Data along these lines would have enabled a jury (and the court) to evaluate actual risks....
Riccardo, at 527. Neither this court, other courts of appeals, nor the Supreme Court ever has required a showing that expressed fears and violence were related in *535some statistically significant way. It always has been sufficient that the prisoner articulated his fear, that the prison official believed the inmate, but that the official failed to take reasonable actions to protect the prisoner from harm. We often have stated that
[i]f “the circumstances suggest that the defendant-official being sued had been exposed to information concerning the risk and thus ‘must have known’ about it, then such evidence could be sufficient to permit a trier of fact to find that the defendant-official had actual knowledge of the risk.”
Sanville v. McCaughtry, 266 F.3d 724, 737 (7th Cir.2001) (quoting Farmer, 511 U.S. at 842-3, 114 S.Ct. 1970; emphasis added). The question of whether the prison official had the “requisite knowledge is a question of fact” reserved for the jury. Id. Requiring the sort of statistical evidence suggested by the panel majority in order to establish the existence of such a risk imposes on inmates a practical burden that is impossible for prisoners to meet. Prisoners certainly should not be relieved of meeting their burden of proof, but, like other litigants, they ought to be permitted to come forward with any evidence, direct or circumstantial, that is probative of the knowledge of prison officials concerning threats reported to them. The judicial inquiry ought not be whether there was statistical evidence from which a jury could conclude that the threat was “real” or should be taken seriously, but whether the record contains any evidence from which the jury reasonably could conclude that the prison official knew that the prisoner was subject to a risk of serious harm. Moreover, there indeed may be times and circumstances when the representation of the prisoner will be a sufficient basis to require action on the part of the prison official. I see no reason for a categorical rule that, under no circumstances, can such a representation be sufficient.
There is no question that Mr. Riccardo articulated to Lt. Rausch his fear of physical violence if celled with a member of the Latin Kings. In violation of Centralia’s own policy — one presumably founded on a recognteed correlation between complaints and violence — Lt. ■ Rausch did not move Mr. Riccardo to another cell; instead, Lt. Rausch forced Mr. Riccardo to articulate any concerns in the presence of the very source of Mr. Riccardo’s fears, Garcia. As the district court determined in rejecting the defendant’s Rule 50 motion, there was
ample evidence from which to conclude that Rausch’s attempt to ascertain the seriousness of the threat was a mere pretense, and that because he did not want to go to the extra effort to find different accommodations for Garcia, he recklessly disregarded what he knew to be a dangerous situation. That decision to essentially disregard the threat is where liability lies. A jury could have reasonably inferred that Rausch crossed the line from gross negligence to deliberate indifference based on the ludicrousness of “asking” each inmate if he had a problem with the other. Credibility had to have been the key to the jury’s analysis, this Court cannot interject its own credibility determinations; and if it could, having observed both parties’ testimony, it may very well have reached the same conclusion as the jury.
R.64 at 15-16.
The panel majority makes clear its disagreement with the jury’s view of the evidence. The evidence in favor of Mr. Ric-cardo may not be overwhelming, but it is certainly not legally insufficient. When the evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to Mr. Riccardo, as it must be, a jury could reasonably conclude that Lt. Rausch knew of a serious risk of harm to *536Mr. Riccardo but failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it. The panel majority may have come to a different conclusion if it had sat as the trier of fact, but its disagreement in that respect is certainly not an appropriate occasion for revising Eighth Amendment and Rule 50 standards.
The panel majority opinion not only deprives Mr. Riccardo of his right to a jury trial, it also takes a very significant step in depriving individuals incarcerated in this circuit of a realistic opportunity to meet their burden of proof in these cases. I therefore respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.