Braggs v. Dunn

• Decision Date: 27 December 2021
• Docket Number: CIVIL ACTION NO. 2:14cv601-MHT
• Citation: 562 F.Supp.3d 1178
• Parties: Edward BRAGGS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Jefferson S. DUNN, in his official capacity as Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Alabama

562 F.Supp.3d 1178

Edward BRAGGS, et al., Plaintiffs,

v.Jefferson S. DUNN, in his official capacity as Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, et al., Defendants.

CIVIL ACTION NO. 2:14cv601-MHT

United States District Court, M.D. Alabama, Northern Division.

Signed December 27, 2021

Ashley Nicole Austin, Prison Law Office, Montgomery, AL, Patricia Clotfelter, William Glassell Somerville, III, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, Birmingham, AL, William Van Der Pol, Jr., Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP), Tuscaloosa, AL, for Plaintiff Edward Braggs.

Patricia Clotfelter, William Glassell Somerville, III, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, Birmingham, AL, William Van Der Pol, Jr., Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP), Tuscaloosa, AL, for Plaintiffs Tedrick Brooks, Gary Lee Broyles, Chandler Clements, Christopher Gilbert, Dwight Hagood, Sylvester Hartley, John Maner, Rick Martin, Willie McClendon, Roger McCoy, Jermaine Mitchell, Tommie Moore, Matthew Mork, Bradley Pearson, Turner Rogers, Timothy Sears, Brian Sellers, Augustus Smith, Hubert Tollar, Daniel Tooley, Joseph Torres, Donald Ray Turner, Jamie Wallace, Robert Myniasha Williams, Roger Moseley, Quang Bui, Charlie Henderson, Sheila Allen, William Sullivan, Serena English, Valerie Wheeler, Justin Hall, Raymond Bosarge, Cordara Dunner, Karen Norris, Cherritha Harris, Brittany Ellis, Tomas Snyder.

Edward A. Bedard, Pro Hac Vice, King & Spalding LLP, Atlanta, GA, Evan David Diamond, Pro Hac Vice, King & Spalding LLP, New York, NY, Joshua Christopher Toll, Pro Hac Vice, King & Spalding LLP, Washington, DC, Patricia Clotfelter, William Glassell Somerville, III, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, Birmingham, AL, Rachel Sarah Rubens, King & Spalding, San Francisco, CA, William Van Der Pol, Jr., Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP), Tuscaloosa, AL, for Plaintiffs Christopher Jackson, Brandon Johnson, Leviticus Pruitt.

Anil Ashok Mujumdar, Dagney Johnson Law Group, Birmingham, AL, Andrea Jane Mixson, Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program, Tuscaloosa, AL, Rhonda C. Brownstein, Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program, Montgomery, AL, for Plaintiff Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program.

Bruce Warfield Hamilton, Pro Hac Vice, Southern Poverty Law Center, New Orleans, LA, Catherine E. Stetson, Pro Hac Vice, Neal Kumar Katyal, Pro Hac Vice, Jo-Ann Tamila Sagar, Pro Hac Vice, Hogan Lovells US LLP, Washington, DC, Jasmin Louisa Mize, Pro Hac Vice, Southern Poverty Law Center, Decatur, GA, Kristina Alekseyeva, Pro Hac Vice, Hogan Lovells LLP, New York, NY, Leslie Faith Jones, Pro Hac Vice, Southern Poverty Law Center, Jackson, MS, Mark S. Whitburn, Pro Hac Vice, Whitburn & Pevsner, PLLC, Arlington, TX, Patricia Clotfelter, Lisa Wright Borden, Anil Ashok Mujumdar, Dagney Johnson Law Group, William Glassell Somerville, III, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, Birmingham, AL, Rhonda C. Brownstein, Susanne Emily Cordner, Pro Hac Vice, Ashley Nicole Austin, Brock Boone, Jonathan Michael Barry-Blocker, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, AL, William Van Der Pol, Jr., Barbara Ann Lawrence, Lonnie Jason Williams, Sophia Leigh Hoppock, Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP), Tuscaloosa, AL, for Plaintiff All Plaintiffs.

David Randall Boyd, John Garland Smith, Balch & Bingham LLP, Joseph Gordon Stewart, Jr., Alabama Department of Corrections, Montgomery, AL, LaKeisha W. Butler, Matthew Reeves, William Richard Lunsford, Maynard Cooper & Gale PC, Huntsville, AL, Steven C. Corhern, Balch & Bingham, Birmingham, AL, for Defendant Alabama Department of Corrections.

David Randall Boyd, John Garland Smith, Balch & Bingham LLP, Joseph Gordon Stewart, Jr., Stephanie Lynn Dodd Smithee, Alabama Department of Corrections Legal, Montgomery, AL, Luther Maxwell Dorr, Jr., Maynard, Cooper & Gale, P.C., Steven C. Corhern, Balch & Bingham, Birmingham, AL, Stephen Clarence Rogers, William Richard Lunsford, Matthew Reeves, Dustin David Key, Kenneth Scott Steely, LaKeisha W. Butler, Maynard Cooper and Gale PC, Huntsville, AL, for Defendant Deborah Crook.

David Randall Boyd, John Garland Smith, Balch & Bingham LLP, Joseph Gordon Stewart, Jr., Stephanie Lynn Dodd Smithee, Alabama Department of Corrections, Legal Division, Montgomery, AL, Dustin David Key, Kenneth Scott Steely, LaKeisha W. Butler, Matthew Reeves, Stephen Clarence Rogers, William Richard Lunsford, Maynard Cooper & Gale PC, Huntsville, AL, Luther Maxwell Dorr, Jr., Maynard, Cooper & Gale, P.C., Steven C. Corhern, Balch & Bingham, Birmingham, AL, for Defendant John Q. Hamm.

PHASE 2A OMNIBUS REMEDIAL OPINION

Myron H. Thompson, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

[562 F.Supp.3d 1191]

PART I.

I. INTRODUCTION...1191

II. BACKGROUND...1193

III. LEGAL STANDARD...1198

A. The "Current and Ongoing Violation" Standard...1199

B. Burdens of Proof...1201

C. The "Facility-by-Facility" Issue...1202

D. Monitoring of the Proposed Remedies...1204

I. INTRODUCTION

The plaintiffs in the current phase of this longstanding class-action lawsuit are a group of seriously mentally ill state prisoners and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP), which represents mentally ill prisoners incarcerated in Alabama. The defendants are the Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) and ADOC's Interim Associate Commissioner of Health Services. They are sued in their official capacities for injunctive and declaratory relief.

Four years ago, the court found that ADOC failed to provide minimally adequate mental-health care to inmates in its custody, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. See Braggs v. Dunn, 257 F. Supp. 3d 1171 (M.D. Ala. 2017) (Thompson, J.). Since then, the parties have engaged in a series of court proceedings and negotiations to develop the relief necessary to remedy this constitutional violation. Certain remedies have been entered by agreement of the parties; others have been ordered following adversarial proceedings. And, most recently, the parties presented additional evidence at a series of omnibus remedial hearings between May 24 and July 9, 2021.

This opinion, which the court will issue in three parts, and the accompanying order represent the culmination of these efforts and mark the point at which the claims presented in this phase of the litigation transition into the period of monitoring. They establish an omnibus remedial framework that will govern this phase of the litigation moving forward—a "remedy that addresses the serious constitutional violations" found by the court "and that will be a durable solution for the monitors to help ADOC implement." Braggs v. Dunn, No. 2:14cv601-MHT, 2020 WL 7711366, at *8 (M.D. Ala. Dec. 29, 2020) (Thompson, J.).

The court has divided the opinion into three parts primarily for the convenience of the recently created monitoring team. The first part discusses the history of the litigation leading up to this point, and the

[562 F.Supp.3d 1192]

legal standards governing the court's provision of relief. The second part discusses ways in which conditions in ADOC facilities have changed since the time of the liability opinion. The third part discusses the parties’ proposed provisions, the relief that the court orders and its reasons for doing so, and the court's findings under the Prison Litigation Reform Act or PLRA, 18 U.S.C. § 3626(a)(1)(A). While the monitoring team may wish to read the first and second parts, it is the third part that they will find most useful. The court anticipates that they may use it as a reference guide to better understand the intricacies of the remedial order, which will be their touchstone in determining the defendants’ compliance.

While the opinion is long, its length is due in significant part to the fact that in the years leading up to the omnibus remedial proceedings, ADOC addressed some of the problems identified in the liability opinion. The court describes that progress in detail, both to give ADOC due credit and to explain why certain relief that the plaintiffs request, and which may have been necessary at the time of the liability opinion, is no longer needed. In fact, a significant portion of the present opinion is devoted to contextualizing the court's decision to decline to adopt relief. The court's omnibus remedial order does not address certain violations identified in the liability opinion, and it was important to the court that readers, including the parties and the men and women incarcerated in ADOC facilities, understand why.

The opinion is also lengthy because many deeply serious problems remain unresolved, and the court took seriously both its obligation to provide adequate relief and its PLRA obligation to explain why it adopted each of the various remedial provisions it did. When Jamie Wallace took his own life during the course of the liability hearing, the court called it "powerful evidence of the real, concrete, and terribly permanent harms that woefully inadequate mental-health care inflicts on mentally ill prisoners in Alabama." Braggs, 257 F. Supp. 3d at 1186. In the four years since, at least 27 more men in ADOC's custody have died by suicide--including one immediately after the conclusion of the omnibus remedial hearings.

The common thread among these tragedies is ADOC's lack of correctional staff. As its own mental-health vendor has noted: "No one disputes that the ADOC has a severe shortage of Correctional Officers (COs), as documented in an April 2019 US Department of Justice report as well as in multiple quotes from ADOC staff to the media." Wexford Health Response to the February 14, 2020 ADOC Letter on Performance Deficiencies (P-3323) at 2 (emphasis in original). This deficiency in correctional staff is nearly unchanged in its severity and impact since the court's liability opinion four years ago. Indeed, ADOC has never reported an increase in the number of correctional supervisors in any quarterly correctional staffing report since it...