Campbell v. Arkansas Dept. of Correction

• Decision Date: 14 October 1998
• Docket Number: No. 98-1161,98-1161
• Citation: 155 F.3d 950
• Parties: 14 IER Cases 773 Terry CAMPBELL, Plaintiff--Appellee, v. ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, An Agency for the State of Arkansas; Larry Norris, Personally and in his Official Capacity as Director of Arkansas Department of Correction; G. David Guntharp, Personally and in his Official Capacity as Assistant Director of Arkansas Department of Correction; Defendants--Appellants, Jane Manning, Personally and in her Official Capacity as Equal Employment Opportunity Grievance Officer, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 950

155 F.3d 950

14 IER Cases 773

Terry CAMPBELL, Plaintiff--Appellee, v. ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, An Agency for the State of Arkansas; Larry Norris, Personally and in his Official Capacity as Director of Arkansas Department of Correction G. David Guntharp, Personally and in his Official Capacity as Assistant Director of Arkansas Department of Correction Defendants--Appellants Jane Manning, Personally and in her Official Capacity as Equal Employment Opportunity Grievance Officer, Defendant.

No. 98-1161.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted June 8, 1998.

Decided Aug. 28, 1998.

Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing

En Banc Denied Oct. 14, 1998.

Kyle Ray Wilson, Little Rock, AR, argued (Gregory T. Jones and W. Stuart Jackson, on the brief), for Appellant.

Charles A. Banks, Little Rock, AR, argued (Brent L. Moss and Mark S. Carter, on the brief), for Appellee.

Before WOLLMAN and MURPHY, Circuit Judges, and FENNER, ¹ District Judge.

MURPHY, Circuit Judge.

Terry Campbell, a career employee of the Arkansas Department of Correction, was demoted from his position as warden of the state maximum security unit after he spoke out about corruption and lack of security in the institution. He sued the department and several of its officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Ark.Code Ann. § 16-123-105 (Michie 1997), alleging that he had been transferred because of his criticisms in violation of his free speech and due process rights. A jury found in favor of Campbell and awarded him $94,000 in damages, and the district court ² ordered equitable relief in the form of reinstatement or $74,000 in front pay and elimination of his one year probation. The defendants appeal from the judgment, and we affirm except as to the equitable part of the award.

I.

On appeal from a jury verdict, the facts must be stated in the light most favorable to the prevailing party and he must receive the benefit of all reasonable inferences from the evidence at trial. See Ryther v. KARE 11, 108 F.3d 832, 844 (8th Cir.1997), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 2510, 138 L.Ed.2d 1013 (1997).

Terry Campbell was employed in the Arkansas state prison system for seventeen years prior to his appointment as warden of the Tucker Maximum Security Unit on September 20, 1994. The prison system had a number of separate correctional institutions, and the Tucker Unit contained the system's death row, as well as inmates who had been placed in administrative segregation due to violent behavior. Campbell had begun his career as a correctional sergeant and had worked his way up to be warden of the Varner Unit by 1993. The Varner Unit housed a younger population and some maximum security inmates and featured education and vocational programs. The Director of the Arkansas Department of Correction (ADC) was Larry Norris. Assistant Director G. David Guntharp reported directly to Norris, and he was the official who appointed Campbell warden at Tucker.

Guntharp had consistently given Campbell high annual performance evaluation ratings, and part of the reason he offered him the Tucker position was because he believed Campbell was strong on policy. Campbell was regarded by others in the system as meticulous in his implementation of ADC policies and procedures. The previous warden at Tucker had been demoted for leaving the institution to gamble while on duty, and the prison had been run in the interim by Tom Pitts, the assistant warden. Guntharp encouraged Campbell to accept the appointment as an opportunity to broaden his warden experience. From the time of his appointment in September, Campbell spent one day a week at Tucker and moved there from Varner full time in January 1995.

When Campbell arrived at Tucker he was faced with morale and turnover problems and numerous vacant staff positions. He saw that changes needed to be made, and he set about interviewing Tucker personnel, reviewing existing policies and procedures, and investigating how money came to be missing from the Employee Corporation Fund. Illegal contraband was moving into and within the prison so he instituted policies to search all staff, including himself, upon entry to death row and to conduct random searches of inmate cells. He also updated the orders and duties associated with each officer's post. Through his investigation he learned there were security breaches at Tucker, including unlocked cell doors, overheated control panels for cell door operation, and cell doors which had been altered so that inmates were able to open them. He reported these conditions, and the steps he had taken in response, to Guntharp and Norris. He also submitted recommendations on how to correct the problems with cell doors and sought a hazardous pay increase for Tucker employees and additional security equipment.

Campbell ordered a "shakedown" for February 14, 1995, which is a comprehensive search of inmate cells. The shakedown revealed there was contraband on the death row complex at Tucker. The contraband included hammers, chisels, shanks, gunpowder, hacksaw blades, wire cutters, glass jars, exacto knives, civilian clothes, marijuana, syringes, paint thinner, and photographs of inmates cohabitating. The search also discovered cell windows which were being enlarged to permit escape and a missing cinder block adjoining two cells. It was undisputed at trial that the contraband had been introduced before Campbell took over full time as warden of the maximum security unit.

Intense media attention followed the discovery of the death row contraband. Campbell believed that Guntharp and Norris blamed him for the attention, but he testified at trial that he had not initiated any media contact. On one occasion Guntharp criticized Campbell for the way the contraband had been displayed and photographed before it was disposed of, commenting that the display looked like it was intended for a media photo opportunity. Norris was subsequently asked to testify before a subcommittee of the state legislature about the contraband discovered in the unit.

Several months later, on June 9, 1995, Campbell terminated assistant warden Pitts for breaches of security, falsification of information, and unsatisfactory work performance. During the time the position of warden was vacant, Pitts had been the top official at Tucker and much of the contraband could have been introduced during this period. Pitts filed a grievance challenging his termination, and Campbell testified at the Pitts hearing on November 1, 1995 that the action had been taken on the recommendation of ADC Assistant Director Guntharp and Director Norris. During a meeting in October 1995 with Guntharp, Norris, and an ADC attorney, Campbell had commented that Guntharp and Norris had instructed him to fire Pitts while they were together in a June 6 meeting about contraband and an alleged rape of a death row inmate. He testified at the trial in this case that Norris and Guntharp had objected to this comment and that Norris had become very angry. Sometime after the Pitts hearing, Campbell learned that Guntharp and Norris had both testified there that they had not authorized Pitts' termination. Campbell became concerned about possible repercussions due to the conflict in their testimony and to their reactions at the October meeting.

Shortly before his demotion in January of 1996, Campbell was appointed to a Critical Incident Review Committee (CIRC) which had been established to conduct an internal review of the November 15, 1995 murder of Scott Grimes, a guard in the administrative segregation barracks at Tucker. Grimes had been fatally stabbed by an inmate who had escaped from his cell after tampering with the cell door. Long before the killing of Grimes, Campbell had brought the problem with cell doors to the attention of Guntharp and Norris. One instance was after another inmate had escaped in the same manner in January of 1995. Guntharp did not proceed with a program to alter the doors to prevent escape until after Grimes' murder, however. At the first CIRC meeting Campbell announced his intention to discuss his concerns about the cell doors and other security issues at Tucker. Campbell was unable to do so, however, because he was demoted and transferred on the day that the next CIRC meeting was scheduled to take place. The CIRC never made a recommendation to management concerning defective cell doors, although it did look into cell door maintenance at Tucker as part of its review.

On several occasions before Campbell's demotion and transfer, Guntharp and Norris complained to him about the amount of media attention the maximum security unit was receiving and the pressure on them from the governor's office and the state legislature to do something about it. After the contraband was discovered, Campbell was sought out for interviews. He referred the requests to the ADC public information officer, and one interview was approved. Guntharp instructed him "to be pretty goddamned careful" about what he said to the media, not to "volunteer anything," and "to keep it simple" because he and Norris did not want "any of this coming out right now." Both Guntharp and Norris told Campbell on several occasions that the ADC was getting negative publicity and that they wanted him to keep the media out of Tucker while the unit was being cleaned up. During the time that the media attention was especially intense, Norris and Guntharp regularly discussed the public scrutiny and negative publicity at management team meetings. Campbell testified that he was afraid he would be fired if he ever spoke to a member of the press. When he discovered a jar of flammable liquid in one of the cells on death row in December 1995, he notified Guntharp about it and said that he was trying to find the source. Guntharp called Campbell into his office and told him he was overreacting to the discovery. He also told him that he needed to get the media out of Tucker and that "the...