Alberti v. Klevenhagen, Civ. A. No. 72-H-1094.

• Decision Date: 10 April 1985
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 72-H-1094.
• Citation: 606 F. Supp. 478
• Parties: Lawrence R. ALBERTI, et al. v. Johnny KLEVENHAGEN, Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas

606 F. Supp. 478

Lawrence R. ALBERTI, et al. v. Johnny KLEVENHAGEN, Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, et al.

Civ. A. No. 72-H-1094.

United States District Court, S.D. Texas, Houston Division.

April 10, 1985.

Jim Oitzinger, Houston, Tex., for plaintiffs.

Roderick Lawrence, Asst. County Atty., Houston, Tex., atty. for defendants Commissioners Court.

Ray Speece, Asst. Dist. Atty., Houston, Tex., for defendant Sheriff Klevenhagen.

ORDER

CARL O. BUE, Jr., District Judge.

On December 18, 1984, after listening in two separate hearings to nine days of testimony and reviewing scores of documents, this Court issued an Order ("the December 1984 Order") directing the defendants to hire and train additional deputies and sergeants for actual guard duty on the housing floors of the Harris County Jails in order to correct the existing constitutional deficiencies prevailing therein. The functions and assignments of utility deputies, recreation deputies, deputies necessary to meet the shift relief factor, or deputies involved in other miscellaneous duties, both on and off of the jail premises, were outside the scope of the Court's Order as those issues did not directly impinge upon the actual safety of the inmates on a given floor and were thus better left to the administrative discretion of the sheriff.¹ Moreover, the Court recognized its judicial limits when fashioning a remedy, considered carefully the testimony of four highly qualified outside penological experts, and adopted a staffing plan designed solely to accomplish the goal of eradicating or at least minimizing unsafe living conditions for inmates within the Harris County Jails which conditions under the law constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Now, some two months later, the defendants reappear, not to seek a modification of the Court's plan or of the time limits within which it is to be implemented, but rather to stay its execution entirely until the appeal process is completed. Not unexpectedly, plaintiffs, along with their memorandum in opposition to defendants' motions to stay, also have filed their motion for contempt for failure to comply with the Court's December 1984 Order. Having carefully reviewed the arguments and submissions of counsel in these matters, the Court is abundantly aware of the applicable law when a stay is requested, as well as defendants' actions in responding to the December 1984 Order. Thus, it needs little time to reach its decision that the motions to stay should be denied in all respects and that an order directing defendants to answer why they should not be held in contempt should be issued at once.

I.

The Fifth Circuit has reviewed many times the criteria to be applied in determining whether a court should stay an injunction pending appeal. So well-established in this circuit as to be a rubric, the criteria required to be established by the movant are as follows:

(1) whether the movant has made a showing of likelihood of success on the merits;

(2) whether the movant has made a showing of irreparable injury if the stay is not granted;

(3) whether the granting of the stay would substantially harm the other parties; and

(4) whether the granting of the stay would serve the public interest.

Ruiz v. Estelle, 650 F.2d 555, 565 (5th Cir.1981) (per curiam) (citing cases). However, "on motions for stay pending appeal the movant need not always show a `probability' of success on the merits; instead, the movant need only present a substantial case on the merits when a serious legal question is involved and show that the balance of the equities weighs heavily in favor of granting the stay." Id. Nonetheless, "likelihood of success remains a prerequisite in the usual case even if it is not an invariable requirement. Only `if the balance of equities (i.e. consideration of the other three factors) is ... heavily tilted in the movant's favor'" will a stay be issued in its absence, "and, even then, the issue must be one with patent substantial merit." Ruiz v. Estelle, 666 F.2d 854, 857 (5th Cir.1982), quoting, Ruiz, 650 F.2d at 565-66. Guided by these principles, the Court considers defendants' present motions.

II. Likelihood of Success on the Merits

In this circuit,² the threshold question to be answered when determining whether a federal court may interject itself into the administration of a jail facility is "whether the totality of the circumstances violates `contemporary standards of decency'," thus constituting cruel and unusual punishment. Sampson v. King, 693 F.2d 566, 568-569 (5th Cir.1982) (citations omitted). If that question is answered in the affirmative, then a federal court has both the power and the duty to intervene. Smith v. Sullivan, 611 F.2d 1039, 1044 (5th Cir.1980). However, despite the clear authority of a federal court to intervene to prevent further constitutional deprivations, a court is limited when fashioning a remedy: "the remedy must be designed to accomplish that goal of eradicating cruel and unusual punishment, not to exercise judicial power for the attainment of what we as individuals might like to see accomplished in the way of ideal prison conditions." Taylor v. Sterrett, 600 F.2d 1135, 1141 (5th Cir.1979) (quoting Newman v. Alabama, 559 F.2d 283, 287 (5th Cir.1977), modified, 438 U.S. 781, 98 S.Ct. 3057, 57 L.Ed.2d 1114, cert. denied, 438 U.S. 915, 98 S.Ct. 3144, 57 L.Ed.2d 1144 (1978)). It was with these considerations in mind that the Court analyzed the testimony of witnesses, the scores of exhibits, and the arguments and submissions of counsel; it was with these considerations in mind that the Court determined which course of action to follow.

The December 1984 Order requires that defendants maintain a specified minimum staffing plan within sixty (60) days of its issuance. Alberti v. Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, 600 F.Supp. 443, 461-463 (S.D.Tex.1984). Simply stated, the Court's plan, arrived at after careful consideration of all of the evidence presented, requires that two guards per quadrant and one guard in "the picket"³ be present at all times on the housing floors in the central jail, each of which is an acre and a quarter in size, as well as the detention center during the day and evening watches.⁴ The Order requires also that the deputies visit the inmate cells at a frequency of no less than once per hour. Id. at 462. However, as stated earlier, the Court's plan did not address the use of utility deputies, recreation deputies, deputies necessary to meet the shift relief factor, or deputies involved in other miscellaneous duties, as the Court believed that these issues were better left to the Sheriff's administrative discretion.

Apart from the enormous areas to be patrolled and the large number of inmates to be supervised, there were several reasons why the Court concluded that two guards per quadrant constituted the minimum number of guards required to meet Constitutional muster. First, the Court had no difficulty in determining from the evidence that a high level of violence existed in the jails. Id. at 450. The inmates' testimony, corroborated in large measure by the expert witnesses of both parties, established that the violence in the jails was widespread and will likely increase as the jail population approaches capacity, that there was a high degree of inmate control within the housing units, and that the existing plan and supervisory regulations were insufficient to protect adequately the inmates personal safety. Id. at 450, 452-455. In addition, the inmates and experts testified that the electronic call-button system was an ineffective and inefficient substitute for human surveillance. Id. at 451, 453, 454, 456.

Moreover, to the Court's surprise and dismay, all experts uniformly agreed that the physical design of the new jail from a security point of view was one of the poorest that they had ever seen. Id. at 451, 452, 454, 455. In short, the physical design contains so many blind spots and routinely unobservable areas that the officers' ability to supervise the inmates on a continuing basis is ineffective. Id. In addition, the cell configuration contains a mix of dormitories, multiple occupancy cells and single cells. Id. at 451. Consequently, in order to check the well being of the people in the cells, the officers must physically go into the cell areas. Id. at 451, 452, 455. Finally, Mr. Buchanan, the classification expert, testified that all levels of security risk inmates were assigned to each floor, thus making it impossible to staff the floors on a security classification basis. Id. at 451.

It was the Court's conclusion that the high level of violence, sexual assault, and inmate control could not be attributed to one source. Rather, inadequate staffing levels, inadequate supervisory techniques, a poor physical design, and an unreliable communications system all contributed to the problems found in both facilities. Id. at 457. Thus, the Court concluded that the sum total of all of those acts and practices resulted in deprivations of the rights of inmates to a safe and suitable place of incarceration and thereby constituted a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Second, when formulating an appropriate plan, the Court was forced to abandon its prior order ("the May 1983 Order") to which defendants had agreed which required the implementation of a one-to-fortyfive (1:45) ratio.⁵Id. at 459-460. All parties criticized the use of a strict state-wide ratio that applied to jails of all sizes and designs and contended that most experts in the penological field now prefer staffing plans based on "post" assignments rather than ratios. Id. at 452, 454, 456, 459. Accordingly, both defendants' and plaintiffs' experts submitted proposed staffing plans based upon a post assignment theory.

The state's own regulatory body for jails, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards ("Commission"), although previously relied on heavily by the Court, was now of dubious assistance in...