Mathie v. Fries

• Decision Date: 31 July 1997
• Docket Number: Docket 96-9138.,No. 1274,1274
• Citation: 121 F.3d 808
• Parties: Maurice J. MATHIE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Roy FRIES, in both his individual capacity and his official capacity as Sergeant of Security, Suffolk County Correctional Facilities, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

121 F.3d 808

Maurice J. MATHIE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Roy FRIES, in both his individual capacity and his official capacity as Sergeant of Security, Suffolk County Correctional Facilities, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 1274, Docket 96-9138.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued April 30, 1997.

Decided July 31, 1997.

Robert H. Cabble, Asst. County Atty., Hauppauge, NY (Robert J. Cimino, Suffolk County Atty., Hauppauge, NY, on the brief), for Defendant-Appellant.

Charles J. Rappaport, Melville, NY (Gregory M. Kobrick, Gandin, Schotsky & Rappaport, Melville, NY, on the brief), for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Before: MESKILL and NEWMAN, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN,^* District Judge.

JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge.

This appeal primarily concerns the proper amount of compensatory and punitive damages that should be awarded to a prisoner in a section 1983 suit in which the prisoner alleged that he was sexually assaulted by a prison official. Roy Fries, an officer at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility ("SCCF"), appeals from the August 8, 1996, judgment of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Arthur D. Spatt, Judge), awarding Maurice J. Mathie, formerly an SCCF inmate, $250,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages, following a bench trial. See Mathie v. Fries, 935 F.Supp. 1284 (E.D.N.Y.1996). We conclude that (1) the District Judge's factual finding that Fries had sexually assaulted Mathie was not clearly erroneous, (2) the compensatory award is not excessive, and (3) the punitive award of $500,000 is excessive. We therefore remand for entry of a judgment reducing the punitive award to $200,000.

Background

Considered in the light most favorable to the prevailing party, the evidence disclosed the following. Mathie is a homosexual. He was arrested in August 1989 for his role in the strangulation death of a man on Long Island.¹ For a year following his arrest, Mathie was held as a pretrial detainee at the SCCF. All events relevant to the present suit occurred during this period.

Fries was employed by the Suffolk County jail from 1969 until his retirement in 1995. During the period of Mathie's confinement at the SCCF, Fries was employed as the sergeant in charge of internal security at this facility. Fries's duties included arranging housing assignments for prisoners. He thus had the power to transfer inmates from one area of the facility, for instance, the protective custody section, to another if he thought a transfer was necessary. When considering transfers and other security matters, Fries interviewed inmates in either of two offices, one on the first floor and another on the second floor. The windowless second floor office could be locked from the inside so that no one could enter it from the outside, even with a key. Fries was once married but divorced in 1971. At trial, Fries acknowledged that, by the time of the events in question, he was bisexual.

Mathie first met Fries in January 1990, when Mathie requested that he be transferred to another section of the facility because someone was threatening him. Mathie testified that during this lengthy initial meeting, which occurred in the second floor office, Fries questioned him extensively about his homosexuality and his life outside the prison — inquiring, for instance, when did Mathie discover that he was gay, whether his family knew about his sexual orientation, what type of men he liked, and whether he currently had a lover. At one point, Fries asked Mathie whether "he was feeling what I (Fries) was feeling."

Following this initial encounter, Fries met with Mathie on approximately 25 to 30 occasions over the next two months. Mathie testified that Fries gradually manifested his sexual desire for him over the course of these meetings and described the progression of Fries's conduct in vivid detail. By their fourth or fifth meeting in mid-February, for instance, Fries held Mathie's hands and rubbed his thighs. By the end of February, Fries progressed to rubbing Mathie's genitals and attempting to perform oral sex on Mathie. By the beginning of March, Fries exposed his penis to Mathie and attempted to have Mathie perform oral sex on him. As a result of these encounters, Mathie was able to describe at trial the appearance of Fries's penis in great detail. Mathie requested Fries to stop his advances, but acknowledged that Fries did not use physical force during any of these early encounters.

Mathie described in detail a final horrific episode. In mid-March 1990, Fries requested Mathie to come to the second floor office. After locking the door, Fries grabbed Mathie from behind in a bear hug, handcuffed him to two vertical pipes in a corner of the room, pulled down his own and Mathie's pants, rubbed lotion on their bodies, and anally penetrated Mathie. Afterwards, Fries told Mathie that he loved him and cautioned him to keep quiet about this incident. Mathie testified that he had not engaged in anal intercourse prior to Fries's assault, and that he suffered physical pain and bleeding in his anal area for the next week as a result.

A few weeks after this final encounter, Mathie informed officials at the SCCF about Fries's sexual abuse. Prison officials subsequently investigated Mathie's allegations, but no formal proceedings against Fries materialized. Fries denied all of Mathie's allegations and stated that he did not engage in any sexual activities with this prisoner. Fries steadfastly maintained that Mathie was a "wannabe snitch" who often wanted to speak with Fries about prison life, the progress of his criminal case, and his family.

Mathie was transferred out of the SCCF around August 1990. He filed the present section 1983 suit in January of the following year.² After a bench trial at which both Mathie and Fries testified, Judge Spatt credited Mathie's account of the events over Fries's and ruled that Mathie had met his burden of establishing that Fries sexually abused and sodomized him. Among other things, Judge Spatt relied on the following sources to support his finding of liability against Fries: (1) Mathie's detailed and credible testimony concerning the progression of Fries's sexual advances over a two-month period; (2) Mathie's detailed and credible testimony about the final incident of coerced sodomy; (3) SCCF log books indicating that Mathie visited Fries's office approximately seven times more often than any other inmate at the SCCF during the same period; (4) the duration of Mathie's visits, which lasted on average more than one hour, compared to a typical meeting between Fries and other inmates, which lasted only 25 minutes; (5) the timing of Mathie's visits — Mathie was often the last inmate seen by Fries during his work shift; (6) Fries's inability to explain satisfactorily why he met with Mathie so frequently, what occurred at these meetings, and why Mathie was accorded privileges available only to reliable informants; (7) Mathie's knowledge of Fries's unlisted home phone number and address; (8) Fries's failure to inform prison officials and prosecutors that Mathie had confessed to Fries his participation in the charged homicide; and (9) the credible testimony of Mathie's mother and a prison social worker concerning the rapid and dramatic change in Mathie's behavior at the time of the alleged sexual abuse. See Mathie, 935 F.Supp. at 1298-99.

Based on the direct evidence in the form of Mathie's testimony, the available circumstantial evidence summarized above, and the numerous inconsistencies and gaps in Fries's version of what occurred between the two men, the District Court ruled that Mathie had established that he was repeatedly sexually abused by Fries and that Fries sodomized him while he was handcuffed to pipes in the second floor security office. The District Court further concluded that Fries's "malicious" acts caused Mathie physical and emotional injury, and awarded compensatory damages in the amount of $250,000 and punitive damages in the amount of $500,000.

Discussion

I. The Liability Finding

Fries contends that the District Court's finding that he had sexually abused and sodomized Mathie is clearly erroneous. He points out, for instance, that some aspects of Mathie's testimony are inconsistent, that Mathie, in a letter to his criminal attorney, initially denied that Fries had sexually abused him, and that a former SCCF inmate testified that Mathie discussed with him the possibility of framing Fries with false charges of sexual abuse.

"Following a bench trial, we may not set aside findings of fact, whether based on oral or documentary evidence, unless they are clearly erroneous," Travellers International, A.G. v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 41 F.3d 1570, 1574 (2d Cir.1994); see Fed. R.Civ.P. 52(a), i.e., unless we are "left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed," United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 542, 92 L.Ed. 746 (1948). Moreover, although a "trial court's credibility determinations are not completely immune from appeal," United States v. Rios, 856 F.2d 493, 495 (2d Cir.1988), a reviewing court "owes particularly strong deference where the district court premises its findings on credibility determinations," Castrol, Inc. v. Quaker State Corp., 977 F.2d 57, 64 (2d Cir.1992); see Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 575, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1512, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985) ("If a trial judge's finding is based on his decision to credit the testimony of one of two or more witnesses, each of whom has told a coherent and facially plausible story that is not contradicted by extrinsic evidence, that finding, if not internally inconsistent, can virtually never be clear error.").

Although Fries highlights some points of vulnerability in Mathie's account, he has not persuaded us to overturn Judge Spatt's careful findings. We are not remotely left with a "definite and firm conviction that a mistake has...