James v. Milwaukee County

• Decision Date: 12 February 1992
• Docket Number: No. 91-1497,91-1497
• Citation: 956 F.2d 696
• Parties: Frank JAMES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MILWAUKEE COUNTY and Franklin Lotter, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 696

956 F.2d 696

Frank JAMES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MILWAUKEE COUNTY and Franklin Lotter, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 91-1497.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Dec. 3, 1991.

Decided Feb. 12, 1992.

Arthur W. Aufmann, argued, Law Offices of Merle Royce, Chicago, Ill., Thomas K. Archie, Milwaukee, Wis., for plaintiff-appellant.

Mary Ellen Poulos, argued, Milwaukee, Wis., for defendants-appellees.

Before WOOD, Jr. and FLAUM, Circuit Judges, and ESCHBACH, Senior Circuit Judge.

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

On April 10, 1988, a dispute erupted between Willie Hannah and Frank James, two inmates at the Milwaukee County House of Correction (HOC). Hannah, the larger of the two men, apparently attacked James over an outstanding gambling debt. In the ensuing struggle, Hannah grabbed James' head with his bare hands and broke his neck, rendering him a quadriplegic. James filed suit, not against the perpetrator of this assault, but under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Milwaukee County and its prison officials for allowing the assault to occur under their watch. James alleges that the County's inmate classification system, under which parole violators and probation violators are housed in the same open dormitories without regard to criminal history, is cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment. ¹

I.

James was originally convicted for a single count of theft, a non-violent misdemeanor against property, and received probation in lieu of prison time. He subsequently violated the terms of his probation and was sent to prison. Hannah, by contrast, was originally convicted of three counts of sexual assault, a violent felony against persons, and served part of his sentence for those crimes before a grant of parole. Hannah was back in prison for violating the terms of his parole at the time of his encounter with James. Both James and Hannah were classified as probation/parole violators and assigned to the "H dorm," an open, medium security dormitory of 60 inmates under the supervision of one guard.

James asserts that he and Hannah should never have been housed together. He contends that the defendants' inmate classification policy created a substantial risk of violence by permitting violent felons (like Hannah) and non-violent misdemeanants (like James) to be assigned to the same dormitory. James argues that a meaningful classification system would, at minimum, separate parole violators from probation violators, thereby reducing inmate violence. The unstated premise of this argument is that an inmate's status as a parole violator (versus a probation violator) accurately reflects propensity for violence behind bars. Presumably this is so because parolees, unlike probationers, were given prison time and hence must have committed a crime serious enough, or had a criminal history serious enough, to warrant incarceration in the first place. Conversely, under this reasoning, probationers were granted clemency after conviction and never served time, presumably because their crime was less serious or because they had a less serious criminal history. According to the plaintiff, non-violent inmates like James (a convicted thief) are more susceptible to attack by violent inmates like Hannah (a convicted rapist).

In support of his claim, James offered the testimony of expert witness John Buckley, a former prison superintendent. Buckley testified that, to reduce prison violence, an effective classification system should separate inmates as follows: parole violators from probation violators, felons from misdemeanants, inmates convicted of crimes directed at people from those convicted of crimes directed at property, and inmates with violent criminal records from those with non-violent records. Buckley further testified that these classification criteria have been universally accepted throughout the United States and Western Europe and that, of the 150 correctional facilities he has inspected, nearly all employed some classification designed to separate violent criminals from non-violent criminals. In addition to this expert testimony, James points out that a consultant hired by Milwaukee County in 1987 recommended that it discontinue the practice of housing parole and probation violators together.

In response, the defendants argue that James failed to present any concrete evidence of inmate violence at the HOC (aside from Hannah's assault of James) to support his claim that its inmate classification system spawns violence. James' expert witness testified only as to his view of the ideal inmate classification system--he was never asked to review statistical evidence of violence at the HOC, or to demonstrate a causal relationship between Milwaukee County's classification system and inmate violence. The defendants also maintain that inmates Hannah and James had more in common than not. Parole and probation are both acts of grace or clemency granted to a seemingly deserving defendant and both Hannah and James had recently been determined appropriate candidates for release into the community. Both were adult males and convicted criminals. Neither had been seriously disciplined while in the HOC and neither had a record of inmate violence in prison.

At trial, after James rested his case, the district judge granted the defendants' motion for a directed verdict, concluding that James had failed to show an eighth amendment violation and that the defendants' classification system passed constitutional muster as a matter of law. For the reasons offered below, we affirm.

II.

We review de novo a district court's grant of a motion for directed verdict. Anderson v. Gutschenritter, 836 F.2d 346, 348 (7th Cir.1988). In doing so, we determine whether the evidence presented, combined with all reasonable inferences drawn from it, is insufficient to support the verdict when viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Id. "The district judge is not to resolve conflicts in testimony or weigh and evaluate the evidence, functions that are reserved to the factfinder." Id. However, if the non-movant presents insufficient evidence upon which a reasonable person could properly base a verdict in his favor, judgment as a matter of law for the movant is appropriate. Tice v. Lampert Yards, Inc., 761 F.2d 1210, 1213 (7th Cir.1985). Moreover, a mere scintilla of evidence will not prevent a directed verdict. Id.; see also La Montagne v. American Convenience Prods., Inc., 750 F.2d 1405, 1410 (7th Cir.1984).

III.

Relying on identical provisions in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, the Framers of the eighth amendment sought, as its words suggest, to prevent judges and legislators from imposing on citizens barbarous or "cruel and unusual" forms of punishment. See generally Granucci, Nor Cruel and Unusual Punishments Inflicted: The Original Meaning, 57 Calif.L.Rev. 839 (1969). Consequently, the eighth amendment has long been thought to prohibit such inhumane punishment as torture, lingering death, In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 447, 10 S.Ct. 930, 933, 34 L.Ed. 519 (1890), drawing and quartering, disembowelling and burning at the stake. Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130, 135-36, 25 L.Ed. 345 (1879). But beyond this, the Supreme Court has interpreted the eighth amendment "in a flexible and dynamic manner," Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 171, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2924, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (joint opinion), to reach beyond the extreme physical punishments proscribed in early American history. Today it prohibits punishments which, although not physically barbarous, "involve the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," id., 428 U.S. at 173, 96 S.Ct. at 2925, or are grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime. Harmelin v. Michigan, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 2680, 2703, 115 L.Ed.2d 836 (1991) (Kennedy, J., concurring). ² Thus, prison conditions involving the wanton and unnecessary infliction of pain, totally without penological justification, offend the constitution. Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 346, 101 S.Ct. 2392, 2398, 69 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981).

However, not all prison conditions trigger eighth amendment scrutiny--only deprivations of basic human needs like food, medical care, sanitation, and physical safety. Id.; see also Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 685, 98 S.Ct. 2565, 2570, 57 L.Ed.2d 522 (1978); Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 669, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 1411, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977); Inmates of Occoquan v. Barry, 844 F.2d 828, 832 (D.C.Cir.1988); cf. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). So, for example, a prisoner who is denied a pack of playing cards or a television set has not set out a deprivation of constitutional dimensions under the eighth amendment. Here the alleged deprivation is the right to physical safety, a right addressed by this Court on several occasions. See, e.g., McGill v. Duckworth, 944 F.2d 344, 347 (7th Cir.1991) (sexual assault); Steading v. Thompson, 941 F.2d 498, 500 (7th Cir.1991) (second-hand smoke), petition for cert. filed, --- U.S.L.W. ---- (U.S. Dec. 9, 1991) (No. 90-2588); Wilks v. Young, 897 F.2d 896, 897-88 (7th Cir.1990) (inmate assaults); Santiago v. Lane, 894 F.2d 218, 221 (7th Cir.1990) (same); Goka v. Bobbitt, 862 F.2d 646, 651 (7th Cir.1988) (tool control policy); Richardson v. Penfold, 839 F.2d 392, 394-95 (7th Cir.1988) (sexual assaults); Walsh v. Mellas, 837 F.2d 789, 794 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1061, 108 S.Ct. 2832, 100 L.Ed.2d 933 (1988) (inmate violence); Duckworth v. Franzen, 780 F.2d 645, 652 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 816, 107 S.Ct. 71, 93 L.Ed.2d 28 (1986) (prison bus fire); Benson v. Cady, 761 F.2d 335, 339 (7th Cir.1985) (defective prison exercise equipment).

It is not disputed that James' physical safety was compromised while housed at the HOC. However, to prevail under contemporary eighth amendment standards, he must prove more--namely, that the defendants acted with the...