Court Opinion

ID: 9483320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:17:17.61436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:33.495170
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially:
“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. ”1
I concur in Judge Higginbotham’s well-written, well-reasoned, opinion because I too agree that the plaintiff’s case suffered from critical evidentiary deficiencies. Plaintiff did not sustain her burden of proving that this defendant-municipality acted with deliberate indifference towards the mental health needs of pretrial detainees. These jail officials undertook commendable efforts to provide, what they believed to be, reasonable mental health care. Their efforts fell short, and, as a result, a man in their custody succeeded in taking his own life.
Fortunately, the policymakers in charge can learn from their mistakes and take the necessary additional steps to insure the safety of pretrial detainees in need of mental health care. Other municipalities should also take heed of the tragic consequences which are likely to ensue in the absence of adequate safety measures to deal with detainees displaying suicidal tendencies.2
What we learn from the experiences of Henderson County is that when jailers know a detainee is prone to committing suicide, a policy of observing such a detainee on a periodic, rather than on a continuous, basis, will not suffice;3 that vesting *396discretion in untrained jail personnel to assess the need for, and administer, mental health care, will not be responsive to the medical needs of mentally ill detainees;4 and that delegating the task of providing mental health care to an agency that is incapable of dispensing it on the weekends will endanger the well-being of its emotionally disturbed detainees.5 We need not remind jailers and municipalities that the Constitution works day and night, weekends and holidays — it takes no coffee breaks, no winter recess, and no summer vacation.
So the plaintiff in this case did not prove that Henderson County adopted its policy of handling suicidal detainees with deliberate indifference to their medical needs. But that does not insulate Henderson County, or any other municipality, from liability in future cases. Jailers and municipalities beware! Suicide is a real threat in the custodial environment. Showing some concern for those in custody, by taking limited steps to protect them, will not pass muster unless the strides taken to deal with the risk are calculated to work: Employing only “meager measures that [jailers and municipalities] know or should know to be ineffectual” amounts to deliberate indifference.6 To sit idly by now and await another, or even the first, fatality, in the face of the Henderson County tragedy, would surely amount to deliberate indifference.
Comforted somewhat, and certainly hopeful, that jailers and municipalities everywhere can learn from the mistakes of Henderson County, I concur.

. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windmere's Fan, Act III (1892). '

. Ours is not the first case involving a detainee suicide. See, e.g., Bowen v. City of Manchester, 966 F.2d 13 (1st Cir.1992); Barber v. City of Salem, 953 F.2d 232 (6th Cir.1992); Simmons v. City of Philadelphia, 947 F.2d 1042 (3d Cir.1991); Colburn v. Upper Darby Township, 946 F.2d 1017, 1022, 1030 (3d Cir.1991); Rellergert v. Cape Girardeau County, 924 F.2d 794, 797 (8th Cir.1991) Buffington v. Baltimore County, 913 F.2d 113 (4th Cir.1990); Popham v. City of Talladega, 908 F.2d 1561 (11th Cir.1990); Lewis v. Parish of Terrebonne, 894 F.2d 142 (5th Cir. 1990); Cobrales v. County of Los Angeles, 864 F.2d 1454 (9th Cir.1988), reinstated, 886 F.2d 235 (9th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1091, 110 S.Ct. 1838, 108 L.Ed.2d 966 (1990); Partridge v. Two Unknown Police Officers of Houston, 791 F.2d 1182 (5th Cir.1986).

.See Simmons, 947 F.2d 1042, 1071 n. 28 (3d Cir.1991) (opinion of Becker, J.) ("[T]he City’s police directives concerning the fifteen minute checks, the double celling of detainees, and the *396removal of personal articles do not, in and of themselves, preclude the City’s constitutional liability for a policy or custom tainted by deliberate indifference.”); Lewis, 894 F.2d at 145 (evidence was sufficient to support jury verdict that warden was deliberately indifferent when he placed detainee in solitary confinement knowing that detainee had suicidal tendencies and should not be left alone); cf. Colburn v. Upper Darby Township, 946 F.2d 1017, 1022, 1030 (3d Cir.1991) (no deliberate indifference where detainees monitored continuously by means of a video camera and a closed circuit television); Rellergert v. Cape Girardeau County, 924 F.2d 794, 797 (8th Cir.1991) (no deliberate indifference where "policy used by the Sheriffs office ... represented] affirmative and deliberate steps to prevent suicides by subjecting suicidal inmates to nearly constant watch.”).

.Cf. Colburn, 946 F.2d at 1022, 1030 (municipal policy not deliberately indifferent because detainees were provided with any necessary medical attention, and a crisis intervention officer. trained to handle emergency situations including suicides, was on call during each shift); Cabrales v. County of Los Angeles, 864 F.2d 1454, 1461 (9th Cir.1988) (medical understaffing at the jail amounted to a policy of deliberate indifference), reinstated, 886 F.2d 235 (9th Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1091, 110 S.Ct. 1838, 108 L.Ed.2d 966 (1990).

. See Cabrales, 864 F.2d 1454 at 1461 ("Access to medical staff has no meaning if the medical staff is not competent to deal with the prisoners’ problems.”); cf. Colburn, 946 F.2d at 1022, 1030 (no deliberate indifference where trained personnel were on call during every shift).

. See Simmons, 947 F.2d at 1071 n. 28 (rejecting the dissent’s position that “the implementation of some measures intended to reduce the risk of suicides in the City’s lockups negates the possibility that the City policymakers could be found to have been anything more than negligent in addressing the medical needs of ... suicidal detainees.”).