Harrison v. Culliver
| Citation | 746 F.3d 1288 |
| Decision Date | 02 April 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 11–14864.,11–14864. |
| Parties | Jody O'Neil HARRISON, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Grantt CULLIVER, Sylvester Folks, et al., Defendants–Appellees. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit) |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Jody O'Neil Harrison, pro se.
Holman CF Warden, Holman CF–Inmate Trust Fund, Atmore, AL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.
Jeffery Long, Luther J. Strange, III, Attorney General's Office, Montgomery, AL, for Defendants–Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. D.C. Docket No. 1:09–cv–00283–KD–C.
Before CARNES, Chief Judge, TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge, and MARRA, * District Judge.
This appeal arises out of an inmate-on-inmate assault that occurred on August 6, 2008, at the W.C. Holman Correctional Facility (“Holman”) in Atmore, Alabama. The plaintiff, Jody O'Neil Harrison,1 was assaulted with a knife by another inmate, Dale Pounders, who cut Harrison's throat, nearly killing him. Harrison, proceeding pro se, brought this action against Warden Grantt Culliver, Deputy Warden Sylvester Folks, Captain David Craft, and Officer Allen Lang, seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. § 19832 for the injuries he received on August 6. According to Harrison's complaint, these defendants were deliberately indifferent to the substantial risk of serious harm Harrison faced at the time of the assault, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.3
The defendants denied liability and moved the District Court for summary judgment. The court granted their motion and gave the defendants judgment. Harrison appeals the judgment. We affirm.
The record before the Magistrate Judge on summary judgment consisted of statements Harrison and another inmate made under penalty of perjury pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1746,4 an inmate's affidavit, affidavits of the defendants, copies of the prison's policies governing searches of inmates and the operation of the hobby craft shop, copies of reports of inmate incidents, and copies of two order forms inmates sent to outside vendors for the purchase of utility knives. In subpart A, we recount the August 6 assault on Harrison. Subpart B describes the course of the proceedings below.
On August 6, 2008, at approximately 3:20 p.m., Harrison was in line in an area of Holman known as the “back hallway,” waiting to receive his medication from the medical prescription pick-up window on the “main hallway,” which ran perpendicular to the back hallway. While he stood in line, another inmate, Dale Pounders, came from behind Harrison and cut his throat with a box-cutter blade that was attached to a wooden handle. Pounders then passed the weapon into the hobby craft shop—which is adjacent to the back hallway—through a hole in the security screen that surrounds the hobby shop, and informed a detention officer on the main hallway that he “just cut a rat's throat.” Record, no. 69–4, at 11 (quoting Dale Pounders). When asked about the knife, Pounders stated he threw the knife down the back hallway. There is nothing in the record to indicate how Pounders obtained the knife or what materials were used to make it. Detention officers searched for but were unable to find the knife. It was never recovered.
No officer was present on the back hallway at the time of the attack, and the officers on duty in the area at the time were supervising inmates going to the cafeteria and those going to the dispensary to pick up medicine. The back hallway was not a duty post for a detention officer, but detention officers assigned as rovers on the main hallway were also responsible for monitoring the back hallway. A security camera is located on the back hallway, but it does not record video. Instead, the camera feeds footage to a monitor that is manned by a detention officer twenty-four hours a day. Multiple cameras feed into the monitor, and the monitor displays the cameras in a loop, which leaves periods of time in which the officer is unable to view the security footage of the back hallway.5
According to an inmate at Holman, the back hallway is an area of the prison where inmates commonly go to settle disputes because detention officers were not posted there. However, the record does not bear this assertion out. From the incident reports produced by the defendants during discovery, it appears that from 2005 until August 6, 2008, only five assaults occurred on the back hallway.6 Of these back-hallway assaults, three involved knives, one involved a lock, and one involved no weapon.
On May 21, 2009, Harrison filed a pro se complaint and a motion to proceed in forma pauperis in the Southern District of Alabama. The complaint named Warden Culliver, Deputy Warden Folks, Captain Craft, Officer Lang,7 and a Nurse Poindexter as defendants, and alleged that the defendants had deprived Harrison of his Eighth Amendment right not to be subjected to deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm. The complaint alleged that the defendants were deliberately indifferent in two ways: (1) they failed to provide adequate security on the back hall and (2) they failed to implement and enforce a policy to ensure that inmates could not possess a box cutter or utility knife outside of the hobby shop.8 Harrison filed a motion to amend his complaint on November 25,9 which the Magistrate Judge granted on March 19, 2010.
Also on March 19, the Magistrate Judge ordered the defendants to file special reports containing the sworn statements of all individuals with knowledge of the subject matter of the complaint, certified copied of medical or psychiatric records, and copies of relevant administrative rules, regulations, and guidelines. On May 28, Warden Culliver, Deputy Warden Folks, Captain Craft, and Officer Lang filed their answer and their special report. The report included affidavits of each defendant, as well as Holman's standard operating procedures and certified copies of reports of incidents involving Harrison. The Magistrate Judge entered an order converting the special report to a motion for summary judgment and took the motion under submission. The order explained the relevant standard of review, and highlighted that
except in certain circumstances, a person against whom a motion for summary judgment is filed may not rely on the allegations of his pleadings. In other words, a plaintiff against whom a motion for summary judgment is filed must oppose that motion by affidavits, depositions, answers to interrogatories, admissions, or as otherwise provided in the rules. If a party against whom a motion for summary judgment is filed fails to respond, the materials filed by the moving party may be taken as true.
On August 4, 2010, Harrison propounded interrogatories to Warden Culliver, Deputy Warden Folks, Captain Craft, and Officer Lang. He also filed a motion to produce (1) all incident reports relating to assaults on the back hallway, (2) all incident reports from inmate-on-inmate assaults involving the use of a weapon, (3) all disciplinary and behavioral reports for Dale Pounders, (4) the names of the correctional officers assigned to the main hallway on August 6, 2008, (5) all duty shift rosters for August 6, 2008, (6) all known administrative policies governing the use of the back hallway, (7) all employee complaints regarding security hazards on the back hallway, (8) all hobby craft order invoices of inmates assigned to the hobby shop, (9) a list of the inmates assigned as hobby craft wood workers, (10) all policies governing the use of hobby craft tools by inmates, and (11) any standard operating procedures governing hobby crafting. On September 15, 2010, Harrison filed a motion pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(f)10 requesting a delay of the disposition of the defendants' motion for summary judgment pending further discovery, arguing that he was unable to meet his burden of pleading without obtaining the documents requested and answers to the interrogatories.
The Magistrate Judge partially granted Harrison's motion for discovery on November 30, ordering the defendants to produce incident reports involving inmate-on-inmate assaults from 2005 to 2010 in which a blade, box cutter, or other cutting instrument was involved; incident reports involving inmate-on-inmate assaults in the back hallway from 2005 to 2010; and guidelines, policies, and procedures related to hobby craft activity.11 The Magistrate Judge granted Harrison's motion to delay ruling on the summary judgment motion pending production of the documents. The Magistrate Judge did not address the interrogatories in his November 30 order, and the defendants never responded to the interrogatories.12 The defendants compliedwith the Magistrate Judge's order on February 4, 2011.
On March 2, 2011, Harrison sought leave of court to conduct further discovery. Specifically, he sought (1) all invoices for purchases of cutting instruments by inmates assigned to the hobby shop from 2005 to the present, (2) all invoices for purchases of cutting instruments by inmates assigned the status of “Wood Worker” from 2005 to the present, (3) all policies related to the dispensing of cutting instruments, and (4) all policies related to the securing and recovery of used, broken, or no longer functional cutting instruments. The defendants objected, arguing that Harrison's request was not calculated to lead to admissible evidence, was unreasonable in scope, and was irrelevant insofar as it sought evidence receipts for after the August 6, 2008, incident. On April 13, Harrison moved the court for leave to submit an interrogatory to Officer Lang. The interrogatory contained three questions related to the number of utility blades that inmates ordered from 2008 to 2011, how the blades were dispensed to inmates, and whether a procedure existed that required inmates to dispose of old blades prior to receiving new ones.
On August 26, 2011, the Magistrate Judge issued a report and recommendation recommending that the...
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