Bowen v. City of Manchester

• Decision Date: 10 April 1992
• Docket Number: No. 91-1957,91-1957
• Citation: 966 F.2d 13
• Parties: Carleen BOWEN, etc., Plaintiff, Appellant, v. CITY OF MANCHESTER, et al., Defendants, Appellees. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 13

966 F.2d 13

Carleen BOWEN, etc., Plaintiff, Appellant, v. CITY OF MANCHESTER, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 91-1957.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Heard April 10, 1992.

Decided June 5, 1992.

Andru H. Volinsky, with whom Michael J. Sheehan and Shaheen, Cappiello, Stein & Gordon, P.A., were on brief, for plaintiff, appellant.

William A. Grimes, with whom McDonough & O'Shaughnessy, P.A., was on brief, for defendants, appellees.

Before TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge, COFFIN and CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judges.

TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge.

John Paul Bowen committed suicide in a holding cell at the police department headquarters of the City of Manchester, New Hampshire. His former wife, Carleen Bowen, in her capacity as administratrix of Mr. Bowen's estate, brought suit under the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and various state law provisions against the City of Manchester, Police Chief Thomas King, and Officer Michael DiSabato alleging that these defendants were "deliberately indifferent" to the serious risk that Mr. Bowen would commit suicide. The district court granted summary judgment for all defendants. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I

On July 24, 1986, detectives from the New Hampshire State Drug Task Force arrested Mr. Bowen for selling cocaine to an undercover agent. Mr. Bowen was transported to the police headquarters for the City of Manchester, where he was interviewed by Sergeant Wayne Richards. Mr. Bowen agreed to cooperate with the police and gave a statement admitting that he sold cocaine and had connections to other cocaine dealers. ¹

After the interview with Sergeant Richards, Mr. Bowen was taken to the booking area. Officer Phillip LeBlanc informed Mr. Bowen of the felony charges against him and allowed Mr. Bowen to make a number of calls to attempt to secure money for bail. Officer LeBlanc noted that Mr. Bowen was cooperative. ² At the conclusion of one of the phone calls, Mr. Bowen told Officer LeBlanc: "she's wicked, she told me I belong in here." ³ While Bowen was on the phone, the bail commissioner informed the police houseman that Mr. Bowen's bail had been raised from $1500 to $20,000. Upon overhearing the bail commissioner, Mr. Bowen became "very shocked and [nervous]." ⁴

Sergeant Richards gave Mr. Bowen a shirt before locking him alone in a cell. Once Bowen was inside the cell, Officer LeBlanc gave him a cigarette. Although Mr. Bowen requested a blanket and a book of matches, Officer LeBlanc explained that he was prohibited from issuing these items, but he assured Mr. Bowen that he would return to light other cigarettes. ⁵

On July 24, the officer responsible for the safety and supervision of the detainees held in the lockup, commonly referred to as the houseman, was Michael DiSabato. Officer DiSabato testified it was common practice for the houseman to leave the police station and drive the police wagon to the location of recent arrests in order to transport arrestees to the lockup. ⁶ That evening, Officer DiSabato left the lockup to pick up arrestees. Officer LeBlanc went with him to assist. Consequently, no officer of the Manchester police department was at the station for approximately 45 to 50 minutes after Mr. Bowen was arrested. During this period of time, Mr. Bowen tied one part of his shirt to the cell door and another part to his neck and hung himself by squatting.

Mr. Bowen's suicide was the second suicide in Manchester's police station during a period of three years. On May 19, 1983, an intoxicated detainee, Roger Parent, committed suicide at the station's lockup by hanging himself with his shirt.

At the time of Mr. Bowen's suicide, the City of Manchester offered no formal training to its police officers in the area of suicide screening for detainees. The Manchester police department, however, had a standard operating procedure, which included a provision mandating that the houseman check all the detainees in the lockup every 15 minutes and special procedures to be followed if a potential suicidal detainee was identified. ⁷ In addition, as part of the regular roll call training in May of 1985, the department showed a film clip entitled "Avoiding Custody Deaths." ⁸

Manchester's lockup has ten cells for detainees, arranged in two rows of five cells each. In July of 1986, two video cameras were installed to monitor the walkway in front of the cells. The cameras, however, failed to look directly into the cells. To monitor the sounds in the lockup, a two way intercom was placed in the dispatch area and the cellblock, but the evidence indicates that it was rarely turned on. ⁹

After discovery was completed, the district court entered summary judgment for all defendants. The district court held that Officer DiSabato was entitled to qualified immunity and that Police Chief Thomas King and the City of Manchester were not deliberately indifferent to Mr. Bowen's rights. Plaintiff appeals.

II

Rule 56(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that summary judgment shall be entered against a party who, after adequate time for discovery, "fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party's case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2552, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986).

The district court's decision to grant summary judgment is reviewed de novo. Rivera-Muriente v. Agosto-Alicea, et al., 959 F.2d 349, 351-52 (1st Cir.1992); Elliott v. Cheshire County, 940 F.2d 7, 8 (1st Cir.1991). We read the record in the light most favorable to the appellant and indulge all inferences in favor of her claim in determining whether a genuine issue of material fact is present in this case, which would preclude the grant of summary judgment. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248-49, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2510-11, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).

III

A. Qualified Immunity

Appellant challenges the district court's conclusion that Officer DiSabato was entitled to qualified immunity from liability. The defense of qualified immunity shields "public officials 'from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.' " Elliott, 940 F.2d at 10 (citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). "Unless the plaintiff's allegations state a claim of violation of clearly established law, a defendant pleading qualified immunity is entitled to dismissal before the commencement of discovery." Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). Summary judgment should be granted if the defendant official can establish as a matter of law that a reasonable official in her position would have believed that her conduct did not violate clearly established law. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987) ("The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.").

By 1986 it was clearly established that police officers violate the fourteenth amendment due process rights of a detainee if they display a "deliberate indifference" to the unusually strong risk that a detainee will commit suicide. Colburn v. Upper Darby Tp., 946 F.2d 1017, 1023 (3d Cir.1991); Elliott, 940 F.2d at 10 (citing Danese v. Asman, 875 F.2d 1239, 1243 (6th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1027, 110 S.Ct. 1473, 108 L.Ed.2d 610 (1990); Rellergert v. Cape Girardeau County, Mo., 924 F.2d 794, 796 (8th Cir.1991); Buffington v. Baltimore County, Md., 913 F.2d 113, 119 (4th Cir.1990); Partridge v. Two Unknown Police Officers, 791 F.2d 1182, 1187 (5th Cir.1986).

The "deliberate indifference" standard means more than simple negligence. Torraco v. Maloney, 923 F.2d 231, 234 (1st Cir.1991). We have held, for example, that a plaintiff may establish deliberate indifference in a prison suicide case by showing

(1) an unusually serious risk of harm (self-inflicted harm, in a suicide case), (2) defendant's actual knowledge of (or, at least, willful blindness to) that elevated risk, and (3) defendant's failure to take obvious steps to address that known, serious risk. The risk, the knowledge, and the failure to do the obvious, taken together, must show that the defendant is "deliberately indifferent" to the harm that follows.

Manarite v. Springfield, 957 F.2d 953, 956 (1st Cir.1992). Appellants must therefore show that a reasonable officer in the position of Officer DiSabato should have known that his actions, or willful failure to act, amounted to "deliberate indifference" to the serious risk that Mr. Bowen would commit suicide.

Appellant asserts that Officer DiSabato's conduct in abandoning the lockup to pick up other detainees and in failing "to understand the signals given by one at high risk [of] suicide [was] blatantly unreasonable." ¹⁰ Appellant's argument is wide off the mark. The issue is not whether Officer DiSabato's conduct was reasonable or not; rather the qualified immunity inquiry turns on whether an objective officer in Officer DiSabato's position would have reasonably believed that his conduct amounted to "deliberate indifference." We think the answer is no.

Deliberate indifference requires a showing by the plaintiff that the public official had actual knowledge, or was willfully blind, to the serious risk that a detainee would commit suicide. Manarite, at 956 (citing DesRosiers v. Moran, 949 F.2d 15, 19 (1st Cir.1991)); Colburn, 946 F.2d at 1024 (deliberate indifference requires "a level of culpability higher than a negligent failure to protect from self-inflicted harm"). Appellant has failed to adduce any evidence to lead a reasonable juror to infer that Officer DiSabato had actual knowledge, or willfully blinded himself, to the unusual and large...