Beck v. Hamblen Cnty.

• Decision Date: 10 August 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-5428,19-5428
• Citation: 969 F.3d 592
• Parties: Zackery BECK, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. HAMBLEN COUNTY, TENNESSEE, Defendant, Esco Jarnagin, Hamblen County Sheriff, in his individual capacity, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

969 F.3d 592

Zackery BECK, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v. HAMBLEN COUNTY, TENNESSEE, Defendant,Esco Jarnagin, Hamblen County Sheriff, in his individual capacity, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 19-5428

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: December 11, 2019

Decided and Filed: August 10, 2020

Rehearing En Banc Denied September 29, 2020

ARGUED: Jeffrey R. Thompson, O'NEIL, PARKER & WILLIAMSON, PLLC, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Lance K. Baker, THE BAKER LAW FIRM, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Jeffrey R. Thompson, N. Craig Strand, O'NEIL, PARKER & WILLIAMSON, PLLC, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Lance K. Baker, THE BAKER LAW FIRM, Knoxville, Tennessee, Thomas C. Jessee, JESSEE & JESSEE, Johnson City, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Before: BATCHELDER, WHITE, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.

MURPHY, Circuit Judge.

Zackery Beck claims to have been assaulted by other inmates while detained at the jail in Hamblen County, Tennessee. He seeks damages from Hamblen County Sheriff Esco Jarnagin under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. But his claim faces an immediate obstacle: Sheriff Jarnagin had no direct involvement in Beck's detention, and § 1983 does not impose vicarious liability on supervisors for their subordinates’ actions. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal , 556 U.S. 662, 676, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009). Beck responds that the overcrowded jail has repeatedly flunked minimum standards and that Jarnagin has long known of its failures. Beck thus seeks to hold Jarnagin liable for his assault on the ground that Jarnagin has been deliberately indifferent to inmate safety. Yet our existing caselaw would not have clearly signaled to Jarnagin that his responses to the overcrowding problem were so unreasonable as to violate the Fourteenth Amendment. We thus reverse the district court's denial of qualified immunity to Jarnagin.

I

A

On October 3, 2016, Beck was arrested for alleged drug crimes. He was booked in the Hamblen County Jail the next morning. His booking sheet listed Beck's age as 22, his height as six feet, two inches tall, and his weight as 148 pounds. Beck also underwent screening under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) to assess his risk of sexual assault from other inmates. The booking officer decided that Beck had no history of sexual assault and classified him as a "Non-Victim" based on various factors, including age, physical stature, disability, and sexual orientation. Yet the officer failed to identify a safety classification for Beck in a separate "status classification assessment sheet." That sheet noted that no status-assessment record was available.

On October 5, corrections officers moved Beck to a four-person cell, A-4. During the transfer, Beck allegedly overheard an inmate warn a corrections officer not to put Beck "in little Mexico" and "that if you do, it's going to be bad for him." Despite that warning, officers placed Beck in this four-person cell with two inmates whom Beck described as "Mexican": Sergio Cisneros and William Rayle.

On October 7, Beck was watching a television located outside his cell when an inmate in the adjoining cell suggested he come closer for a better view. After Beck walked over, the inmate grabbed him through the bars between the cells and held a shank made of shower tile to his throat. Meanwhile, Cisneros pulled down Beck's pants and put his fingers into Beck's rectum to search for drugs. The attackers warned Beck that they would kill him if he did not stay quiet. Beck described this assault as "very painful and something I never want to go through again in life." (Cisneros denied the assault and prosecutors found insufficient evidence to charge him, but we must view the facts in the light most favorable to Beck.)

Beck did not initially tell corrections officers about this attack. Three days later, Cisneros and other inmates told officers that Beck had been stealing from them and that he had better get moved. The officers moved Beck to a cell in another area.

On October 12, Beck filed a request asking for immediate medical assistance because Cisneros's prior assault continued to cause rectal bleeding

. The request went unanswered that day.

The next morning, Beck told his mother about the assault over the phone, explaining that he could get released if she posted a $100 bond. She refused to post bond at that time, believing he was lying. Soon after that call, another inmate allegedly broke into Beck's cell and repeatedly punched him in the throat. Officers broke that fight up and took Beck to another cell. But Beck asserts that other inmates there were threatening him within minutes of this transfer. Officers took him to yet another cell to be housed alone.

Later that day, officers found Beck lying on the ground in his cell with a blanket wrapped around his neck. Beck says he feigned suicide to gain the opportunity to talk to someone other than the guards. Officers brought Beck to the medical station, where he told a nurse that Cisneros had sexually assaulted him. An officer transported Beck to a hospital. According to hospital records, a physical exam showed a small rectal tear

with no active bleeding (from Cisneros's alleged assault) and injuries to Beck's lower lip and neck area (from the later attack by the other inmate). The hospital report listed the diagnoses as an assault with anal penetration, a contusion to the neck, and a right lower lip contusion.

Upon returning to the jail, Beck was placed on suicide watch for a few days. He was released a short time later.

B

Sheriff Jarnagin had no personal involvement with Beck's detention. Jarnagin delegates much of the jail's day-to-day operations to others, including Teresa Laws, the jail administrator, and Chief Deputy Wayne Mize. But Beck believes that systemic problems at the jail caused the assaults. He has been detained at the jail many times. And while he was never physically assaulted before October 2016, he says that "almost every time I go to that jail I'm in fear for my life."

The jail was designed around 1977. Since 2010, it has not met the minimum standards for the safety of inmates set by the Tennessee Corrections Institute, a state entity tasked with creating jail standards. Tenn. Code. Ann. § 41-4-140(a)(1). The Tennessee Corrections Institute has identified the jail's failures in inspection reports that it has sent to Sheriff Jarnagin each year. See id. § 41-4-140(a)(3). In 2014, county administrators also tasked Carter Goble Associates with undertaking a needs assessment, and that assessment likewise found many of the same deficiencies.

Most of the jail's problems stem from what Chief Deputy Mize has called "chronic" overcrowding. According to the 2016 report from the Tennessee Corrections Institute, the jail has a maximum capacity of 255 inmates, but housed an average of 365 inmates during the first half of 2016. This overcrowding creates safety risks. To begin with, it affects the jail's ability to classify inmates. Administrators seek to detain inmates based on their threat level: They seek to house less dangerous inmates charged with misdemeanors in one area and more dangerous inmates charged with felonies in others. Yet the 2016 report noted that overcrowding has made the "classification process" "impossible to achieve." This report added that the classification failures were "evident" from the number of inmate-on-inmate assaults: 153 between January and July 7, 2016.

In addition, up to 100 inmates must sleep on mats on the floor during times of peak overcrowding. These inmates, according to Chief Deputy Mize, are also placed at greater risks of assault.

Staffing shortages exacerbate the safety concerns. The reports from the Tennessee Corrections Institute have repeatedly noted that the jail needs more corrections officers. According to a 2013 report, "the lack of security checks and inmate counts is a direct reflection of insufficient staffing to perform the necessary duties to maintain the safety and security throughout the facility." The 2016 report likewise flagged two-hour "time gaps" between physical security checks. According to Chief Deputy Mize, corrections officers ideally should do security checks every hour.

The jail's physical layout also exacerbates the safety concerns. The 2016 report suggested that the jail "does not have enough cells to accommodate the facility's classification plan." And it noted that the lighting in some areas of the jail can be controlled only by the inmates, so "[o]fficers have to enter areas with very little lighting and have the inmates turn on lights in the cells to be able to see."

As the report from Carter Goble Associates concludes, "the jail is overcrowded, understaffed, and has an antiquated design." Sheriff Jarnagin has taken some steps to combat these problems. When he became sheriff in 2006, he told the Hamblen County Commissioners, the relevant decisionmakers, that the county would need a new jail soon. The commissioners have opted not to build one. They have, however, increased funding for the jail, which has allowed administrators to hire about 16 new corrections officers since 2010. Still, the same problems that existed in 2010 continue to exist today. Sheriff Jarnagin and Chief Deputy Mize have notified the commissioners over and over again of the continued risks and the need to address the problem. But the commissioners have told Sheriff Jarnagin that they cannot fix this jail issue due to "[b]udget restraints."

C

Beck sued Sheriff Jarnagin and Hamblen County under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He initially challenged both of the assaults from October 2016, but later clarified that he sought relief only for the purported sexual assault by Cisneros. Beck sought damages from Jarnagin in his personal capacity, alleging that the sheriff had been deliberately indifferent to inmate violence in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Beck also sought damages from Hamblen County under Monell v. New York City Department of Social Services , 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56...