O'Bar v. Pinion, 91-7526

• Citation: 953 F.2d 74
• Decision Date: 31 December 1991
• Docket Number: No. 91-7526,91-7526
• Parties: Paul Brendan O'BAR, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. J.C. PINION, Sr., Joseph L. Hamilton, W.V. Ritchie, R. Alan Harrop, J. Boyd Bennett, Defendants-Appellants, and David L. Murphy, Superintendent, Attorney General of the State of North Carolina, Defendants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

Page 74

953 F.2d 74

Paul Brendan O'BAR, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. J.C. PINION, Sr., Joseph L. Hamilton, W.V. Ritchie, R. Alan Harrop, J. Boyd Bennett, Defendants-Appellants and David L. Murphy, Superintendent, Attorney General of the State of North Carolina, Defendants.

No. 91-7526.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued June 4, 1991.

Decided Dec. 4, 1991.

As Amended Dec. 31, 1991.

Howard Edwin Hill, Asst. Atty. Gen., North Carolina Dept. of Justice, Raleigh, N.C., argued (Lacy H. Thornburg, Atty. Gen., N.C. Dept. of Justice, on brief), for defendants-appellants.

Michael Gray Gibson, Charlotte, N.C., argued, for plaintiff-appellee.

Before WILKINSON and NIEMEYER, Circuit Judges, and JOSEPH F. ANDERSON, Jr., District Judge for the District of South Carolina, sitting by designation.

OPINION

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge:

When Paul Brendan O'Bar, a North Carolina inmate, was removed from a work release program and placed in administrative segregation by state officials, he sued the officials in their individual capacities under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1988), based on allegations that their actions were prompted by the complaint of a member of the public and not by any disciplinary infraction. He contended that the actions taken by state officials 1) denied him equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, 2) denied him a liberty interest without due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, 3) subjected him to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and 4) denied him the right to work and enjoy the fruits of his labor in violation of the North Carolina Constitution. O'Bar was serving a six-year sentence for the multiple stabbing of his former girlfriend and, less than six months after the stabbing, had been placed on work release within five miles of the victim's home. When the girlfriend's mother wrote to state officials to complain and express fear, an investigation was undertaken which resulted in O'Bar's reclassification.

The North Carolina state officials filed a motion for summary judgment on the substantive issues, in which they also claimed official immunity. O'Bar filed a cross motion for summary judgment. On January 10, 1991, the district court entered three interlocutory orders granting the summary judgment motion of the North Carolina state officials on the Eighth Amendment claim; granting O'Bar's summary judgment motion on the equal protection claim with respect to defendant Joseph Hamilton, who made the operative decisions for the state; directing that the equal protection claim be scheduled for trial on the issue of damages; and denying all other motions for summary judgment. The North Carolina state officials appealed, basing appellate jurisdiction on the district court's denial of their immunity defenses under Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526-27, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815-16, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985) (holding that order denying qualified immunity is a final decision under 28 U.S.C. § 1291). For the reasons that follow, we reverse and remand for the entry of judgment dismissing all claims.

I

In the early morning of September 14, 1987, in Charlotte, North Carolina, when Julie Riggs told O'Bar that she wanted to break off their relationship, O'Bar stabbed her with a butcher knife about the head, chest and back over thirty times, inflicting nine potentially fatal wounds. As he stabbed her, he stated, "I love you so much, but I just can't live without you and I'd rather meet you in hell than to be without you so I am going to meet you in hell." Two months later, on November 17, 1987, O'Bar pled guilty in the Superior Court of Mecklenburg County to assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill and was sentenced to six years imprisonment. Shortly after O'Bar's conviction the Office of the District Attorney for Mecklenburg County notified the North Carolina Parole Commission that O'Bar had been "identified for special prosecutorial effort and is considered to be one of the 10 percent of our most active offenders with the highest potential to recidivate." John Wolfe, the prosecutor in the case, also wrote on December 8, 1987:

This office and the citizens of Mecklenburg County oppose anything that would allow this man's release prior to his maxout date. This is not the first time O'Bar has attacked this woman and I have no doubt he will try to kill her again. I realize, of course, that you have no control or responsibility for his actions upon his release, I am just asking you to delay his release as long as possible to allow Miss Riggs (the victim in this case) to establish a new life some place else.

Attached to this letter was a letter from the victim, Julie Riggs, explaining her concerns about O'Bar based not only on the most recent attack but also on a previous occasion on which he had threatened her with a knife. Riggs requested that he serve as much of his sentence as possible to allow her time to relocate.

A few months later, in February 1988, the victim's mother, Elizabeth Riggs, also wrote to the Parole Commission imploring them not to release O'Bar. She wrote:

My daughter Julie was nearly murdered by Paul O'Bar on September 14, 1987, during a seven-minute attack which took place in his house and in the gutter and front yard of a house six or seven houses down the street from his house.

This attack is the second attempt on my daughter's life by Paul O'Bar, with a knife as a weapon. The first incident took place a year ago.

Please, please do not recommend Paul O'Bar for early release-parole. He is 6' 5"' tall and weighs nearly 200 pounds. He has a very high I.Q. My daughter Julie is 5' 8 1/2"' tall, and weighs 111 pounds. She is only alive by the grace of God, and because she fell into the yard of an offduty police officer's, who subsequently heard her cries for help and fired shots at Paul O'Bar as he was "finishing her off."

* * * * * *

I implore you to do what you can to help Julie stay alive, by helping keep Paul O'Bar in prison the entire six years of his sentence.

The various letters from the Mecklenburg County District Attorney's Office, Julie Riggs, and Elizabeth Riggs were received by the Parole Commission and placed in O'Bar's file located in the Combined Records Section of the Department of Correction in Raleigh.

O'Bar was originally incarcerated at the Alexander Correctional Center in Taylorsville, North Carolina. When he was transferred to Iredell Correctional Center in Statesville, North Carolina, the administrator there, J.C. Pinion, who was facing pressures to meet work release quotas, reviewed O'Bar's local file to determine whether he should be placed on work release. At the time of Pinion's review, however, the file consisted only of a locally produced computer printout stating that O'Bar had no prior convictions and that he was sentenced to the relatively short term of six years. Pinion made no attempt to obtain and review the information contained in the central file in Raleigh. Based on the limited information, Pinion recommended that O'Bar be placed on work release. On March 10, 1988, O'Bar began participating in work release at a service station in Charlotte, approximately five miles from the home of his victim, Julie Riggs. He worked at the station without incident until April 11, 1988, when he was removed from work release and placed in administrative segregation for further evaluation, for no reason apparent to him.

What O'Bar did not know was that in early April 1988, when Elizabeth Riggs learned that he had been placed on work release only five miles away, she wrote the Governor of North Carolina describing the crime, the injury to her daughter, and the fear that she and her family held. In the letter she asked rhetorically, "How can the Department of Corrections be so negligent as to place this clearly unstable, dangerous, violent, would-be murderer within five miles of his intended victim, where he can easily play the murder scene out to its completion at any time?" She requested that the Governor intervene to move O'Bar far from Mecklenburg County "before it is too late." To the letter she attached pictures of Julie Riggs taken before and after the assault. Elizabeth Riggs also contacted the office of the Attorney General of North Carolina to convey a similar message.

The Governor's office forwarded Elizabeth Riggs' letter to the Director of the Division of Prisons, defendant Joseph Hamilton, and called him to inform him of Riggs' concerns and to request that Hamilton look into the matter. The Attorney General's office also wrote Hamilton expressing concerns about the situation and requesting that O'Bar "be removed from work release and/or transferred to another area of the state."

After receiving the letters from Elizabeth Riggs and the Attorney General's office, Hamilton decided to conduct a comprehensive review of O'Bar's classification to determine whether he constituted a threat to the victim and whether it was appropriate to have placed him on work release in Charlotte. In the interim, as a precautionary measure, he removed O'Bar from work release and ordered his transfer for evaluation. Hamilton states that it appeared to him then that O'Bar constituted an escape risk and that he was a potential threat to Julie Riggs and the community.

Thus, on April 11, 1988, when O'Bar returned from work release at the service station to the Mecklenburg I unit, he was placed in handcuffs and leg shackles and taken to the sergeant's office where defendant Superintendent Baxter Bridges told O'Bar that he was being removed from work release and was being transferred from the Charlotte area. O'Bar was transferred to Rowan Correctional Center in Salisbury where he was placed in administrative segregation for nine days to complete a psychological evaluation and a review of his classification. The transfer to...