Purcell ex rel. Estate of Morgan v. Toombs County, No. 02-11994.

• Decision Date: 24 February 2005
• Docket Number: No. 02-11994.
• Citation: 400 F.3d 1313
• Parties: Mollie Jo PURCELL, as natural parent and administrator of the ESTATE OF Matthew Shawn MORGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TOOMBS COUNTY, GA, Defendant, Alvie Kight, Jr., individually and in his official capacity as Sheriff of Toombs County, Jerry White, individually and in his official capacity as Detention Administrator of Toombs County, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

400 F.3d 1313

Mollie Jo PURCELL, as natural parent and administrator of the ESTATE OF Matthew Shawn MORGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TOOMBS COUNTY, GA, Defendant Alvie Kight, Jr., individually and in his official capacity as Sheriff of Toombs County, Jerry White, individually and in his official capacity as Detention Administrator of Toombs County, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 02-11994.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

February 24, 2005.

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Dana K. Maine, Theodore Freeman, Freeman, Mathis & Gary, LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Defendants-Appellants.

Thomas A. Nash, Jr., Inglesby, Falligant, Horne, Courington & Nash, Brent J. Savage, C. Dorian Britt, Savage, Turner, Pinson & Karsman, Savannah, GA, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

Before EDMONDSON, Chief Judge, and BIRCH and FARRIS^*, Circuit Judges.

EDMONDSON, Chief Judge:

While detained at the Toombs County Jail, Matthew Morgan was beaten and injured by three other inmates. Mollie Jo Purcell brought this action, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, on behalf of Morgan, her now deceased son. She alleged that Toombs County, Sheriff Kight and Jail Administrator White violated Matthew Morgan's Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights in failing to prevent this inmate-on-inmate attack.

The district court denied Defendants Kight and White qualified immunity in their individual capacities and also denied Defendant Kight Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit in his official capacity. We conclude that the district court erred in denying Kight and White qualified immunity. In addition, given our en banc decision in Manders v. Lee, 338 F.3d 1304 (11th Cir.2003)(en banc), we conclude that the Eleventh Amendment precludes suit against Sheriff Kight, in his official capacity, for establishing the jail policies and other jail practices pertinent to Purcell's claims. Therefore, we reverse.

Background

On 9 February 1999, Matthew Morgan was arrested and incarcerated in the Toombs County Jail.¹ Morgan had been arrested for two misdemeanors, but he also had an outstanding felony-probation warrant pending.

Morgan asked for and was assigned to cell 5, where his friends from the "street" were being held.² On the night of 21 February 1999, three inmates in cell 5 attacked Morgan while he was asleep. The daytime lights had been turned off.³ The three inmates kicked and punched Morgan repeatedly, leaving Morgan beaten on the prison floor.⁴

At the time of the incident, the Toombs County Jail held 118 inmates and was staffed at normal levels, having five officers on duty.⁵ Jailers Brown and Dickerson, both stationed in the control tower, became aware of the altercation when they heard a "banging noise" in cell 5.⁶ Brown turned on the overhead daytime lights; and after the lights warmed up, the officers saw Morgan lying on the second-level floor.⁷ Brown then phoned the Jail's front office, reaching jail staffer Smith and Sergeant Hill who came back to the scene of the incident. Shortly thereafter, another officer called an ambulance that arrived around ten or eleven minutes later. Morgan was then taken to a hospital.⁸

Kight took office as Toombs County's newly elected sheriff in November 1998. Before the incident involving Matthew Morgan, Sheriff Kight had directed that a new commissary system be instituted at the Toombs County Jail. The new computerized commissary system would keep up with inmate funds without the inmates having to keep money on their persons. The new commissary system, however, had not been put in place by the day of the Matthew Morgan incident. At the time of the pertinent incident, the Toombs County Jail had a policy that allowed inmates to have up to $30 for making purchases from vending machines.⁹ Record evidence shows that some inmates would gamble with money while playing card games, and Deputy Michael Harlin testified that some fights resulted over card games.¹⁰

Daniel Morgan (Matthew Morgan's brother) gave deposition testimony that several inmate-on-inmate fights occurred at the Jail during the months before Matthew Morgan's beating.¹¹ Three fights were evidenced by his testimony.¹² One of the fights involved an inmate named "Tank" who Matthew Morgan could hear being beaten by a group of inmates in another cell. Daniel Morgan was able to notice that it took jailers "about five minutes" to arrive and help "Tank." Daniel Morgan also recalled two black inmates, "Head" and James Polk, beating up three Hispanic inmates and witnessed "two white guys square off [ ] over a meal[.]"

Mollie Jo Purcell, Matthew Morgan's mother, filed this lawsuit alleging that Sheriff Kight and Jail Administrator White, in their individual and official capacities, violated Morgan's Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights in failing to prevent this inmate-on-inmate beating.¹³ On the conclusion of discovery, Defendants moved for summary judgment. Defendants argued that insufficient evidence existed on the record to support a conclusion that Morgan's constitutional rights had been violated and also argued that Defendants, in their individual capacities, were entitled to qualified immunity. In addition, both Sheriff Kight and Jail Administrator White urged that the Eleventh Amendment protected them from suit in their official capacities.¹⁴

Discussion

I. Claims Against Sheriff Kight and Jail Administrator White in their Individual Capacities.

The district court denied summary judgment to Defendants Kight and White, in their individual capacities, rejecting their defense of qualified immunity to Purcell's § 1983 claims.

We have jurisdiction over this appeal because the Supreme Court and this Court long ago determined that a district court's denial of a claim of qualified immunity is an appealable interlocutory order. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2817, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985); Jones v. Cannon, 174 F.3d 1271, 1280 (11th Cir.1999). This court reviews de novo the denial of qualified immunity on summary judgment, construing the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiff. Jones, 174 F.3d at 1281.

"Qualified immunity protects government officials performing discretionary functions from civil trials [ ] and from liability if their conduct violates no clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Lassiter v. Alabama A&M University, Board of Trustees, 28 F.3d 1146, 1149 (11th Cir.1994)(en banc) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). This immunity protects "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law." McCoy v. Webster, 47 F.3d 404, 407 (11th Cir.1995) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 1096, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986)). For the purposes of this appeal, we will decide two things: (1) whether the summary judgment evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to Purcell, shows a violation of a constitutional right; and, if so (2) whether that right was, on 21 February 1999, already clearly established in such a particularized way to make obvious the conclusion for all reasonable, similarly situated jail officials that what Defendants were doing violated Plaintiff's federal rights under the circumstances. Marsh v. Butler County, Ala., 268 F.3d 1014, 1024 n. 5 (11th Cir.2001)(en banc).

Violation of a Constitutional Right

The Eighth Amendment, which the Supreme Court has extended to the States, prohibits the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishments." U.S. Const. amend. VIII. "We begin with the proposition that, while the Constitution does not require prisons to be comfortable, it also does not permit them to be inhumane, `and it is now settled that the ... conditions under which [a prisoner] is confined are subject to scrutiny under the Eighth Amendment.'" Jordan v. Doe, 38 F.3d 1559, 1564 (11th Cir.1994) (citations omitted). "`[P]rison officials have a duty ... to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners.' ... It is not, however, every injury suffered by one prisoner at the hands of another that translates into [a] constitutional liability...." Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 1976-77, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994) (citations omitted).¹⁵

To show a violation of Morgan's Eighth Amendment rights, Plaintiff must "produce sufficient evidence of (1) a substantial risk of serious harm; (2) the defendants' deliberate indifference to that risk; and (3) causation." Hale v. Tallapoosa County, 50 F.3d 1579, 1582 (11th Cir.1995). To be deliberately indifferent a prison official must know of and disregard "an excessive risk to inmate health or safety; the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference." Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1979. We will not allow the advantage of hindsight to determine whether conditions of confinement amounted to "cruel and unusual" punishment. See Brown v. Hughes, 894 F.2d 1533, 1537 (11th Cir.1990). Whether a substantial risk of serious harm exists so that the Eighth Amendment might be violated involves a legal rule that takes form through its application to facts. For summary judgment purposes, we resolve all the truly disputed facts in accord with Plaintiff's view of the facts; but we, as judges, decide the legal consequences of the given facts, that is, whether the supposed facts amount to a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Purcell draws our attention to the following conditions at the Toombs County Jail: inmates were allowed to keep money in their cells; inmates were allowed to play cards and gamble;¹⁶ the physical layout of the Jail hindered guards from preventing inmate-on-inmate attacks; and a history of inmate-on-inmate fights.¹⁷

We accept that an excessive risk of inmate-on-inmate violence at a jail creates a substantial...