King v. Blankenship

• Decision Date: 05 December 1980
• Docket Number: No. 78-6184,78-6184
• Citation: 636 F.2d 70
• Parties: Emmitt G. KING, Appellant, v. W. D. BLANKENSHIP, Superintendent; Louise D. Hall, Magistrate; James E.Johnson, Treatment Supr.; S. L. Townley, Captain of Guards, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 70

636 F.2d 70

Emmitt G. KING, Appellant, v. W. D. BLANKENSHIP, Superintendent; Louise D. Hall Magistrate; James E.Johnson, Treatment Supr.; S L. Townley, Captain of Guards, Appellees.

No. 78-6184.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 6, 1980.

Decided Dec. 5, 1980.

Rebecca Thompson Helton and Wayland J. Sermons, Jr., Third Year Law Students (Kenneth A. Zick, Associate Professor of Law, Wake Forest University School of Law, Winston-Salem, N. C., J. Clark Fischer, Third Year Law Student, on brief), for appellant.

Guy W. Horsley, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va. (Marshall Coleman, Atty. Gen. of Virginia, Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellees.

Before WINTER, Circuit Judge, FIELD, Senior Circuit Judge, and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge.

WINTER, Circuit Judge:

Adopting the factual findings and legal conclusions of the magistrate, the district court adjudged that Emmitt G. King had failed to sustain his claim that the excessive use of force on two occasions by officers at Bland Correctional Center, a Virginia penal institution, entitled him to relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. With respect to one incident, that of March 25, 1977, King appeals. We decide that the district court's ultimate finding that King failed to prove actionable excessive use of force on the part of James E. Johnson was clearly erroneous. ^* We reverse and remand for the assessment of damages.

I.

At the trial before the magistrate in which King was represented by counsel, the proof showed that on March 25, 1977, he came before a prison disciplinary committee ostensibly for a hearing on a charge lodged against him. Present in the hearing room were defendant, Johnson, who was Chairman of the Committee and two correctional officers, D. L. Lambert and R. L. Saunders. No other inmates were present in the room. King was informed that the charge against him had been dropped, and upon receiving this information King rose from his chair and started toward the door.

Johnson called King back and delivered to him a lecture regarding King's behavior in prison and the general dislike that each man felt for the other. At some point during the conversation King leaned down and placed his hands upon the desk behind which Johnson was sitting. Johnson admonished King to remove his hands from the desk and King obeyed. Nevertheless, Johnson reached over the desk and grabbed a portion of King's abundant beard. While still grasping the beard, Johnson moved around the desk and threw the much smaller King to the floor pulling an entire portion of King's beard out of his cheek.

Precisely what happened next was a subject of conflicting testimony. King testified that Johnson grabbed him by the beard, slapped him on the head and finally knocked him down, and that when he was down he was hit some more and also kicked. King testified that throughout the incident he told Johnson that he had no desire to fight. The magistrate found that King was sincere in this protestation and also "well advised" to take this position because of the significant size differential between the two men.

Johnson's version is that when King leaned on the desk he (Johnson) thought that he was in physical danger because of King's reputation for misbehavior and King's prior animosity toward him and because there were on the desk a tape recorder, stapler, ashtray, and hole punch which could be used as weapons. As a consequence, Johnson thought it necessary to grab King, pull him forward, throw him back off the desk and pin him to the floor. Johnson emphatically denied that he slapped or kicked King. The magistrate, however, evidently believed King because he found that "Johnson threw King to the floor and slapped King several times around the face and upper torso."

The magistrate also found that Johnson had initiated the physical exchange, but that he had done so in the not unreasonable belief that King's leaning over the desk constituted belligerent action. While the magistrate found that viewed in hindsight Johnson's forceful reaction appears to have been unnecessary, the magistrate concluded that Johnson did not react so unreasonably or employ such unreasonable force as to violate King's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

II.

It has been widely held that the unjustified striking, beating, or infliction of bodily harm upon a prisoner by the police or a correctional officer gives rise to liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See Bruce v. Wade, 537 F.2d 850 (5 Cir. 1976); Aulds v. Foster, 484 F.2d 945 (5 Cir. 1973); Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d 1028 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1033, 94 S.Ct. 462, 38 L.Ed.2d 324 (1973) and cases cited therein; Howell v. Cataldi, 464 F.2d 272 (3 Cir. 1972). While not precisely on the point, our decision in Hudspeth v. Figgins, 584 F.2d 1345, 1348 (1978), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 913, 99 S.Ct. 2013, 60 L.Ed.2d 386 (1979) is in accord with this view. Our decisions in Sykes v. Johnson, 634 F.2d 626, No. 80-6159 (4 Cir. September 26, 1980) (unpublished), and Spruill v. Finkbeinger, 624 F.2d 1095 (4 Cir. 1980) (unpublished), follow the rule stated although they do not constitute binding precedents under Local Rule 18. The courts which have considered the issue have generally said that the cause of action stems from a violation of the Eighth Amendment's proscription against cruel and unusual punishment. In Johnson v. Glick, supra, where the prisoner was a pretrial detainee, the cause of action was ascribed to a denial of due process of law.

Lest there be doubt as to the rule in this circuit, we...