Mayoral v. Sheahan

• Decision Date: 27 March 2001
• Docket Number: DEFENDANTS-APPELLEES,PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT,No. 00-1034,00-1034
• Citation: 245 F.3d 934
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2001) JOEL MAYORAL,, v. MICHAEL F. SHEAHAN, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS SHERIFF OF COOK COUNTY, AND SHARON JACKSON, WILLIAM JANAK, AND DANIEL THEISEN, IN HIS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS A CORRECTION OFFICER AT THE COOK COUNTY JAIL,
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 934

245 F.3d 934 (7th Cir. 2001)

JOEL MAYORAL, PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, v. MICHAEL F. SHEAHAN, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS SHERIFF OF COOK COUNTY, AND SHARON JACKSON, WILLIAM JANAK, AND DANIEL THEISEN, IN HIS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS A CORRECTION OFFICER AT THE COOK COUNTY JAIL, DEFENDANTS-APPELLEES.

No. 00-1034

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

Argued September 29, 2000

March 27, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 96 C 7249--Paul E. Plunkett, Judge.

Timothy C. Klenk, Michael R. Phillips (argued), Ross & Hardies, Chicago, IL, for plaintiff-appellant.

Patrick M. Blanchard (argued), Office of the State's Attorney of Cook County, Federal Litigation Division, Chicago, IL, for defendants-appellees.

Before Easterbrook, Ripple, and Evans, Circuit Judges.

Evans, Circuit Judge

While Joel Mayoral was a pretrial detainee at the Cook County jail, he was attacked by other inmates. His complaint in this 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 action says the attack rendered him paralyzed and disfigured. Mayoral's suit alleges that certain correctional officers were deliberately indifferent to his welfare and that Cook County Sheriff Michael F. Sheahan and Captain David Theisen failed to implement a policy which would consider gang affiliation in the housing of inmates at the jail. The district judge granted summary judgment for the defendants and Mayoral appeals. We take the facts, in this fact-intensive case, in the light most favorable to Mayoral at this stage of the case.

Mayoral, a former member of the Latin Kings street gang, was arrested for the murder of a member of the Latin Disciples, a rival gang. At midnight on November 23, 1994, he was taken to the Cook County jail, where he told the receiving officer that he had been a gang member, that his charged crime involved a rival gang member, that he feared for his life, and that he needed protective custody. The officer recorded the information. But when Mayoral said he was no longer in a gang, the officer became annoyed and scratched over the information on the form.

Mayoral was taken to Division I of the jail, a maximum security division, where he received his prison uniform. He then went to court, and when he returned around 4 p.m. he again told an officer that he needed protective custody. He was taken, however, to a general section of Division I known as Tier B-3 where he was checked in by Officer Sharon Jackson. Mayoral tried to tell her he needed protection, but she said she was busy and rushed him into the tier's day room.

She was, in fact, busier than she should have been. She was "cross-watching" tiers--which means that because the jail was short-staffed she was watching two tiers. She had been working as a correctional officer for a year or so at the time of the incident, and there was deposition testimony that she did not have sufficient experience to be cross-watching two tiers. Also, her radio--a means of summoning help fast--was not working and had not been working for several days.

As soon as he entered the tier, Mayoral was approached by an inmate who asked his gang affiliation. Eventually, Mayoral admitted that he was a former Latin King. Inmates gathered, saying that theirs was a "Folks" deck and they could not have a member of a "People" gang there. When Mayoral tried to make a telephone call to his sister, an inmate came up to him and said he could not use that particular telephone because it was a Folks' phone. He tried to use the other phone; an inmate reached over his shoulder and disconnected the call. On a third attempt, Mayoral managed to speak with his sister for a few minutes before other inmates told him to hang up because it was a Folks' phone.

Mayoral also noticed that the tier reeked of "hooch," a type of prison alcohol. He observed inmates drinking an orange substance that he believed to be hooch. Hooch, apparently, is widely produced by inmates in the Cook County jail and is frequently confiscated in shakedowns at the jail.

Officer Jackson had also observed inmates drinking an orange substance and noted that they were "being very loud." She noted that the inmates appeared to be intoxicated. She notified Sgt. William Janak, who arrived on the scene and locked most of the inmates in their cells. An inmate named Jamie O'Kelly and a few others refused to be locked up. Janak told O'Kelly that if he could not control his guys, the inmates would have to remain locked up. Janak left the area and told his supervisor that the inmates seemed drunk from hooch.

Janak returned to the tier at about 5:30 and told inmate O'Kelly that he would release the inmates if O'Kelly would promise to control "his guys," which O'Kelly agreed to do. Jackson noted in her logbook that the inmates were released from their cells "per Sgt. Janak." Janak, in turn, says he received permission from his supervisors to end the lockdown. Jail policies require a search of the tier before releasing inmates from a lockdown, but this time no search was conducted.

Dinner was served, and soon Mayoral again tried to call his sister. While he was on the phone, less than an hour after the lockdown ended, a fight broke out. Mayoral tried to reach his cell, but O'Kelly and others backed him into a corner. O'Kelly stabbed him with a weapon (a shank in prison lingo) and others hit him on the head with a mop wringer. Someone also threw a television at Mayoral, hitting him in the head. The beating lasted around 15 minutes. Ultimately, Mayoral was lying unconscious on the floor. It was later determined that he had been stabbed around 16 times.

Jackson stated that inmates were fighting at 6:20. She claims to have immediately called Janak from a telephone, but Janak denies that he spoke with her at that time. At her deposition, Jackson seemed to have forgotten all about the events of November 23 and had to be reminded that an incident took place on her tier on that date. Once reminded, she said that loud noise and profanity are what inspired her to call Sgt. Janak, who in turn called an "all available." On the other hand, Janak says he heard about the riot when he heard an "all available" call at 6:45. He does not know who made the call. Captain Theisen thought it was Officer Leonardo Brown. But Brown said that the first he knew of the riot was when he heard the "all available" call at 6:45 when he was picking up dinner trays on another tier. When Theisen arrived at Tier B-3, one inmate, presumably Mayoral, was already unconscious on the floor. Officers who responded to the call described what they saw when they arrived at Tier B as a "gang riot" involving numerous inmates, some of whom were intoxicated. Contrary to the time period involved here before help arrived, it ordinarily takes only around 4 minutes for additional officers to respond to an "all available" call.

Captain Theisen estimates that over 80 percent of inmates in Division I in 1994 were gang members, with about 60 percent of these affiliated with the Disciples, the Vice Lords, or the Latin Kings. The gangs are divided into two umbrella organizations known as "People" and "Folks." Gang-related violence is fairly common, occurring as often as once or twice a week in Division I. Not surprisingly, "Folks" do not like "People," such as Mayoral, who kill "Folks." Despite what seems to be general knowledge of gangs in the jail, Officer Jackson testified at her deposition that she did not know anything about gang affiliations of inmates, that she would not know a gang sign or gang colors if she saw them. She claimed not to be aware of any gang-related violence at the jail, and she said that no inmate ever asked her for protection because he was a member of a gang:

Q: Are you familiar with what inmates belong to what gangs?

A: No.

Q: Do you ever see any inmates flashing gang signs?

A: No. I don't--I don't--No.

Q: Would you know a gang sign if you saw one?

A: No.

Q: Would you know gang colors if you saw them?

A: No.

Q: Are you aware of any gang-related violence at the jail?

A: Hearsay.

Q: Have you ever observed any gang-related violence?

A: No.

She acknowledged that she had heard the names of gangs on television:

Q: You don't know the names of any gangs?

A: I've heard them like on TV.

Captain Theisen testified that it would be likely that within the time that Mayoral had been booked into the jail until the assault, other inmates would be able to gain knowledge of the nature of the crime with which he was charged.

The Cook County Department of Corrections (CCDOC) has no policies regarding separating rival gang members, even in cases where the crime for which an inmate is incarcerated is the murder of a rival gang member. Lieutenant Isaac Chatman testified that protective custody is not automatically offered to an inmate who has killed a rival gang member: "He's the one that did whatever he did." When asked whether he thought that would put him at risk, Chatman said, "He's the one who is charged with the crime."

Mayoral's case was resolved in the district court on summary judgment. Accordingly, our review is de novo. Summary judgment may be granted only when there are no genuine issues of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56. We construe the facts and inferences in the light favorable to the nonmoving party. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986). The issue here is whether, based on the facts in the record and the inferences which can be drawn from those facts, Jackson, Janak, and Theisen, as a matter of law, were not deliberately indifferent to Mayoral's health and safety and that the lack of a policy was likewise not the result of deliberate indifference to inmate safety.

Mayoral is a pretrial detainee whose claim arises under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause rather than directly under the Eighth...