Penn v. Escorsio

Decision Date22 August 2014
Docket NumberNo. 13–2309.,13–2309.
PartiesCathy PENN, in her capacity as Guardian of Matthew Lalli, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. Angela ESCORSIO and Dane Winslow, individually and in their official capacities as Knox County Corrections Officers, Defendants, Appellants, and Knox County; Knox County Sheriff's Department; Knox County Jail; Donna Dennison, in her official capacity as Knox County Sheriff; and Julie Stilkey, Christopher Truppa, Warren Heath IV, Robert Wood, John Hinkley, Kathy Carver, Warren Heath III, and Bradley Woll, individually and in their official capacities as Knox County Corrections Officers, Defendants.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Peter T. Marchesi, with whom Cassandra S. Shaffer and Wheeler & Arey, P.A. were on brief, for appellants.

Nolan L. Reichl, with whom Ralph I. Lancaster, Daniel J. Stevens, Catherine R. Connors, and Pierce Atwood LLP were on brief, for appellee.

Before THOMPSON, BALDOCK,* and SELYA, Circuit Judges.

BALDOCK, Circuit Judge.

Defendants Dane Winslow and Angela Escorsio were involved in a series of troubling events that led to the attempted—and nearly completed—suicide of Matthew Lalli. Lalli was at the time a pre-trial detainee being held at the jail where Defendants work as corrections officers. Lalli's guardian, Plaintiff Cathy Penn, sued Defendants. Penn claimed, among other things, deliberate indifference in violation of Lalli's Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights.1 Defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing they were not deliberately indifferent and, in any event, were entitled to qualified immunity. The district court denied Defendants' motion. The court held that, accepting all facts and drawing all inferences in Penn's favor, a reasonable jury could conclude Defendants were deliberately indifferent because they took essentially no action to forestall a substantial risk that Lalli would attempt suicide. The court also held reasonable officials in Defendants' positions would have known they violated Lalli's clearly established Fourteenth Amendment rights if a jury indeed concluded that Defendants effectively failed to take any action to forestall this risk.

Defendants now appeal, steadfastly asserting qualified immunity. But Defendants' appeal relies heavily on factual arguments despite our holding that “a district court's pretrial rejection of a qualified immunity defense is not immediately appealable to the extent that it turns on either an issue of fact or an issue perceived by the trial court to be an issue of fact. Cady v. Walsh, 753 F.3d 348, 359 (1st Cir.2014) (emphasis in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). In particular, Defendants concede clearly established law at the time Lalli attempted suicide dictated officers must take some reasonable measures to thwart a known, substantial risk that a pre-trial detainee will attempt suicide. But the district court found a reasonable jury could conclude Defendants “effectively failed to take any action to forestall” this risk as to Lalli. Based on the conceded law and the district court's factual analysis, Defendants cannot show they are entitled to qualified immunity at the summary judgment phase of this litigation. Therefore, after winnowing away the chaff to reveal the very narrow legal question we may answer under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and the collateral order doctrine, we affirm.

I.

We may exercise jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal from a denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity only to the extent the appeal rests on legal, rather than factual grounds. We thus summarize the facts in the light most favorable to Penn, taking as unchallenged any inferences the district court drew in her favor. Cady, 753 F.3d at 350.2 A more thorough recitation of these facts can be found in the district court's order, see Penn v. Knox Cnty., No. 2:11–cv–00363, 2013 WL 5503671, at *1–13 (D.Me. Sept. 30, 2013) (unpublished), but the following will suffice for our purposes.

A. Defendant Winslow

On Saturday, October 3, 2009, Matthew Lalli was arrested and taken to Knox County Jail (KCJ) for allegedly being intoxicated and committing assault in violation of the terms of his release. Lalli's arraignment on these charges was set for Monday, October 5. When Lalli arrived at KCJ, Defendant Winslow was on duty as KCJ's shift supervisor. In accordance with KCJ's intake procedures, Officer Stilkey, who was the booking officer under Winslow's supervision, filled out both a suicide risk assessment form and a medical screening form for Lalli. The suicide risk assessment revealed that Lalli had, among other things, (1) lost two close friends to suicide, (2) attempted suicide himself two years prior, and (3) when asked whether he then felt like killing himself responded “not sure, feels that ... life is over.” Under KCJ's model suicide risk assessment form, a suicide risk score of 15 or more points qualifies as the highest suicide risk level and requires KCJ to provide one-on-one observation of the inmate and to conduct a mental health evaluation within one hour. When Lalli's answers to the suicide risk assessment and medical screening forms are applied to this model, his risk of suicide scored at least 20 points. A final portion of the suicide risk assessment form calls for the booking officer to indicate with checkmarks which of five levels of intervention the detainee received ranging from “NO INTERVENTION/GENERAL POPULATION” to “PLACED ON SUICIDE WATCH STEP 2.” Neither Stilkey nor Winslow checked off any of these boxes.

But Lalli's suicide risk assessment and medical assessment worried Officer Stilkey. As a result, after completing the forms, Stilkey told Defendant Winslow: [Y]ou need to look at this.” After reviewing Lalli's intake forms, Winslow decided to place Lalli on “welfare watch,” which required staff to make separate log entries regarding Lalli's condition when they conducted their fifteen-minute checks of his cell and ensured that a mental health care worker would speak with Lalli the next time one was scheduled to visit the jail. Although KCJ had an available suicide prevention cell, Cell 127, which could be constantly monitored from the intake desk, Winslow decided to place Lalli in Cell 135. Officers sitting at the intake desk can hear people in Cell 135 if they make a loud noise, but have no view into Cell 135 itself. Moreover, Cell 135 is not stripped of objects a detainee could use to harm himself. For instance, Cell 135 contains sheets and bedding which a detainee could potentially fashion into a makeshift noose—as Lalli did here. Winslow had no further notable contact with Lalli and Sunday, October 4 was uneventful.

B. Defendant Escorsio

On the morning of Monday, October 5, Officer Heath, who was at that time the on-duty intake officer, documented in KCJ's intake/release log and in Lalli's welfare-watch log that: “while moving inmate Wood, inmate Matthew Lalli told me that he has sole custody of his daughter and that if he were not allowed to be on the outside then it would be better if he wasn't alive at all.” At 12:07 p.m., KCJ's intake/release log indicates Defendant Escorsio took over for Heath as intake officer.

Between noon and 12:30 p.m., jail staff assembled nine detainees in the intake area to prepare them for their trip to the Knox County District Court for court appearances. The group included Lalli and several other inmates who were deposed in relation to this suit. One inmate testified that Lalli began “really freaking out” before being loaded into a van for transport to the court—apparently loud enough for Defendant Escorsio to have heard. Another inmate testified that Lalli made various threats to hurt himself during the trip from the jail to the courthouse, saying “if I don't get the hell out of here I'm going to hurt myself, kill myself.”

At his arraignment, Lalli told the presiding judge that “it would be all be over” and that he would “just end it” if he was denied bail. The judge nevertheless ordered that Lalli be held without bail. After the judge issued the ruling, Lalli became upset and started crying. As Lalli returned to the dock area, one witness testified, he was “screaming hysterically and crying and threatening suicide.” This witness recalled that after Lalli rejoined the other inmates, he said that he “might as well just kill himself because he [couldn't] go back to jail” and that he was “going to lose everything.” Another inmate in the van testified that Lalli, loudly and throughout the short trip back to jail, “kept saying he was going to kill himself.”

Although none of the transport officers relayed Lalli's suicide threats to Defendant Escorsio, the district court found “one of the inmates [probably] did inform Escorsio.” At approximately 2:52 p.m., a corrections officer strip-searched Lalli. Lalli was upset after the search and began to cry. Hoping to calm Lalli down, Escorsio allowed him to make a call from the phone next to the jail's intake desk. As the call began, Escorsio heard Lalli speak about his daughter and the denial of his bail. Corporal Woll, who was also nearby, heard Lalli say that he would rather die if he did not have his daughter.

At this point, Defendant Escorsio and the other officers on duty decided Lalli should be moved from Cell 135 to Cell 127, the vacant suicide prevention cell. But because a female inmate occupied Cell 126, which shares a day room with Cell 127, the officers needed to move some inmates around before putting Lalli in Cell 127. Instead of taking any precautions in the interim, however, at about 3:00 p.m. Escorsio returned Lalli to Cell 135. She did not put him in a suicide smock, nor did she take away his bedding. Escorsio then secured Lalli's two neighboring inmates in their cells, allowing only Lalli access to the adjoining day room. Before she left the area, Escorsio told Lalli to “sit down” and “shut up” and warned him that she would bring him “up front in the turtle suit [a.k.a....

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