Lindell v. Houser, 04-2020.

• Decision Date: 04 April 2006
• Docket Number: No. 04-2020.,04-2020.
• Citation: 442 F.3d 1033
• Parties: Nathaniel LINDELL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Steven HOUSER, Officer, William Schultz, and Jeffrey Friday, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

442 F.3d 1033

Nathaniel LINDELL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Steven HOUSER, Officer, William Schultz, and Jeffrey Friday, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 04-2020.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued February 13, 2006.

Decided April 4, 2006.

Hannah L. Renfro-Sargent (argued), Foley & Lardner, Madison, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

David E. Hoel, Frank Sullivan (argued), Office of the Attorney General Wisconsin Department of Justice, Madison, WI, Douglas S. Knott, Leib & Katt, Milwaukee, WI, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before KANNE, EVANS, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

EVANS, Circuit Judge.

Wisconsin inmate Nathaniel Lindell is no stranger to this court. Over the past three years, we have decided five appeals arising from three separate civil suits Lindell has brought against prison officials. See Lindell v. O'Donnell, 135 Fed.Appx. 876 (7th Cir.2005) (unpublished order); Lindell v. McCaughtry, 115 Fed.Appx. 872 (7th Cir.2004) (unpublished order); Lindell v. Frank, 377 F.3d 655 (7th Cir.2004); Lindell v. McCallum, 352 F.3d 1107 (7th Cir.2003); Lindell v. Doe, 58 Fed.Appx. 638 (7th Cir.2003) (unpublished order). At least two more are pending. See Lindell v. Huibregtse, Case No. 05-4627 (7th Cir.); Lindell v. Govier, 2006 WL 616011 (7th Cir.). Most of these cases have involved First-Amendment claims based on Lindell's practice of Wotanism (a.k.a. "Odinism" or "Asatru"), a pagan religion often associated with a white-supremacist philosophy. See "Developments in the Law—In the Belly of the Whale: Religious Practice in Prison," 115 Harv. L.Rev. 1891, 1903-04 (2002) (discussing adoption of pagan religions by white supremacist groups). Now, Lindell turns to the Eighth Amendment, claiming that Wisconsin's prison policy of randomly assigning cellmates placed him in harm's way.

In April 1999, Lindell was ordered to share a cell at the Waupun Correctional Institution with Antoine Delarosa. For various reasons, the two did not get along. For one thing, Delarosa was black, and Lindell was an outspoken white supremacist. For another thing, Delarosa was a member of the Gangster Disciples, and the word around the prison was that Lindell had recently assaulted another member of that gang. According to his complaint, Lindell "told numerous staff that he and Delarosa ... were not getting along due to racial/cultural conflicts." He asked to be "moved into another cell by himself or with a prisoner [he] got along with" in order to avoid the possibility of a fight. His request was denied. A few days later, tensions between the two cellmates boiled over—Lindell made a comment about some music Delarosa was playing and Delarosa responded by attacking Lindell (this, of course, is Lindell's version of the events), punching him in the face. Adding insult to injury, Lindell then got written up for his involvement in the fight, which eventually led to a stint in segregation.

A similar scene played out in December 2000 when, despite his ongoing efforts to persuade prison officials not to house him with nonwhite inmates and others with whom he did not get along, Lindell was assigned to a cell with Darrel Jenkins, who like Delarosa was black and a Gangster Disciple. Lindell again expressed his misgivings to a prison guard (identified in the complaint only as "Sgt. Burns"), telling the guard that he "was not supposed to be put in a two-man cell" and that he "didn't get along with blacks." Finding no documentation of any single-cell restriction, Sgt. Burns ordered Lindell to go to his assigned cell or be returned to segregation. Lindell declined segregation (an ironic term given Lindell's racial attitude) and went to the cell. This time a confrontation came more quickly—within 10 minutes Jenkins went after Lindell (again, Lindell's claim), injuring his face and (we cringe to think of it) biting off his thumbnail. Lindell again got sanctioned, but this time he was able to get the conduct report thrown out by a state court.

Lindell filed a blunderbuss complaint in the district court naming more than 40 prison officials and employees as defendants. Weighing in at 55 pages, Lindell's complaint¹ covered a lot of ground but focused primarily on the two episodes we have just described. He alleged that in double-celling him with Delarosa and Jenkins, prison officials were deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk of serious harm, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 828, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). He also alleged that the medical care he received for his injuries was inadequate and that the discipline he received was retaliatory, but those claims are not developed in this appeal, so we will not discuss them.

Screening the complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the district court concluded that although Lindell did not have a right to be celled with an inmate of a particular race, or even one with whom he "got along," his complaint did state a claim that Sgt. Burns was deliberately indifferent to a known hazard when he ordered Lindell into the cell with Jenkins. But eventually, when Sgt. Burns moved for summary judgment, the court found insufficient evidence of an Eighth—Amendment violation. There was no evidence that Jenkins threatened Lindell before the attack or that Lindell made Sgt. Burns aware of any particular threat from Jenkins. And...