Campbell v. Bergeron, Civ. A. No. 77-343-B.

• Decision Date: 17 March 1980
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 77-343-B.
• Citation: 486 F. Supp. 1246
• Parties: Wardell CAMPBELL v. Belvin F. BERGERON, Sheriff, West Baton Rouge Parish, John Doe and XYZ Insurance Company.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Louisiana

486 F. Supp. 1246

Wardell CAMPBELL v. Belvin F. BERGERON, Sheriff, West Baton Rouge Parish, John Doe and XYZ Insurance Company.

Civ. A. No. 77-343-B.

United States District Court, M. D. Louisiana.

March 17, 1980.

Michael C. Palmintier, Baton Rouge, La., for plaintiff.

Emile C. Rolfs, III, Durrett, Hardin, Hunter, Dameron & Fritchie, Baton Rouge, La., for defendants.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

JOHN V. PARKER, Chief Judge.

This action is brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for damages because of personal injuries sustained by plaintiff during his pretrial detention in the West Baton Rouge Parish jail. Defendants are Belvin F. Bergeron, Sheriff of West Baton Rouge Parish, and former deputy, Paul C. Pattan. Under Louisiana law the Sheriff is responsible for the operation of the parish jail.

Plaintiff also attempted to assert pendent state law negligence claims under Article 2315 of the Louisiana Revised Civil Code (there is no diversity of citizenship between plaintiff and defendants), but the Court declined to permit the filing of an amended complaint asserting those claims. Thus, only the "constitutional tort" claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 are before the Court.

This matter was tried without a jury and was submitted to the Court upon post-trial briefs which have been filed by each side. For reasons given below, I find no liability on the part of the Sheriff, I find that the claim against Deputy Pattan has not prescribed and, on the merits, that Deputy Pattan is not liable to plaintiff.

I. Factual Background

On the afternoon of Sunday, September 19, 1976, Wardell Campbell and his friend, Charles Welch, both of whom reside in Baton Rouge, drove across the Mississippi River bridge into West Baton Rouge Parish in Campbell's automobile. They went to visit friends in Addis, Louisiana, and there they stayed for a period of an hour or so. Thereafter, they went to a local night spot, "W. G. West's." While at the tavern, Campbell drank "quite a few" beers and "a pint or so" of Jack Daniels. The length of their sojourn in the barroom is not clearly established, but they were there certainly for five or six hours. In any event, at some time past midnight, Campbell and Welch left the lounge and started back toward Baton Rouge. Campbell, recognizing that he had consumed more beer and Jack Daniels than would be safe for the operation of a motor vehicle, requested that Welch drive. As they approached the old Mississippi River bridge, something in the operation of the vehicle attracted the attention of the Port Allen City Police Department, and two officers stopped the vehicle. The City Police determined that Welch, who had had little or nothing alcoholic to drink, was operating the vehicle with a suspended driver's license. They also determined that Campbell's automobile was not equipped with the license plate issued for it by the State of Louisiana but instead displayed a different tag. The Port Allen officers brought both men to the West Baton Rouge Parish jail, issued Welch a ticket for driving without a valid operator's license,¹ and issued Campbell a ticket because of the switched license plates.

Both Welch and Campbell were, in Welch's term, "feeling salty" because of the arrest; neither felt that the arrest was justified, Welch because he thought that his license had been restored to him and Campbell because he thought that it was a simple accident in putting the wrong tag on the vehicle. In any event, the police officers apparently indicated to them that they would be permitted to leave if they signed the tickets.² They refused to do so. The Port Allen police officers then requested that the jailer, Deputy Sheriff J. C. Tullier, book them in the parish jail as persons in custody awaiting trial on City Police charges.

Tullier issued a "booking slip" regarding each of the men, gave each a bag in which to place his personal belongings and then placed them into a cell which also contained three other occupants. The time noted on the "booking slip" was 1:30 A.M., September 20, 1976.

The other occupants of the cell were: Ronald G. "Devil" Griffin, age twenty-three, who was serving a year and one month for burglary; George "Popeye" Cummings, Jr., age twenty-three, who was a pretrial detainee charged with (and later acquitted of) possession of stolen property; and James "Sport" Matthews, Jr., age thirty-two, who was serving time on a burglary conviction.

Deputy Tullier testified, and the Court accepts the testimony, that Tullier put Campbell in the cell and was about to put Welch in a different cell when someone, either Welch or Campbell or both of them, requested that Welch be placed in the same cell. The deputy then obtained a mattress from another cell and Welch stretched out on it on the floor. The four other occupants all had bunks.

At some time undetermined, after the men were placed into the cell, a fight broke out between Campbell and others, and Campbell suffered very serious injuries to his left eye. He is now completely blind in that eye and it will have to be surgically removed.

II. Liability of Sheriff Bergeron

The evidence is undisputed that Campbell was arrested by Port Allen police officers with whom Sheriff Bergeron has no connection, that Sheriff Bergeron was not present in the jail on the night of the arrest, that he did not personally participate in the booking of plaintiff and did not find out about plaintiff's injuries until after his arrival at his office on Monday morning, some time after 8:00 A.M. In other words, Sheriff Bergeron had no personal participation in or involvement with plaintiff's arrest, detention or injury.

The law is now settled that in a Section 1983 action a Louisiana sheriff may not be held liable for the acts of his deputies under the doctrine of respondeat superior or any other theory of vicarious liability. Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978); Baskin v. Parker, 602 F.2d 1205 (5th Cir. 1979). Thus, since the Sheriff had no personal involvement with any phase of Campbell's arrest, incarceration or injury, there can be no liability unless those injuries resulted from some official policy which the Sheriff had adopted or which, under the Constitution, the Sheriff was clearly and unequivocally required to adopt.

Plaintiff argues that the Sheriff is liable here upon the theory that the Constitution mandates that pretrial detainees be physically separated from those who have already been convicted of crime. Further, he argues that Sheriff Bergeron had not promulgated such a policy and that the lack of such a rule deprived him of his constitutional right as a pretrial detainee to separate facilities. Finally, plaintiff argues that the absence of a separate housing policy proximately caused his injuries when the other occupants jumped upon him and beat him.

No authority from the Constitution or from the jurisprudence has been cited to this Court to sustain the threshold proposition, that a pretrial detainee has a constitutional right to be confined in separate facilities from convicted persons. The Court, on its own, has not been able to discover any authority to sustain that proposition.

There can be no doubt that persons arrested and charged with offenses who do not make bail are entitled, under the Constitution, to humane and reasonably safe detention facilities. Since they have not yet been convicted of any crime and the only reason for their confinement is to secure their presence at trial, they must be held under the least restrictive means necessary to accomplish that result. Of course, they are not subject to punishment, retribution and deterrents which may be imposed upon those who have been convicted. Taylor v. Sterrett, 532 F.2d 462 (5th Cir. 1976); Collins v. Schoonfield, 344 F.Supp. 257 (D.C. Md.1972).

The courts have, rather frequently, addressed the rights of pretrial detainees but they usually involve such issues as jail conditions, including sanitation and overcrowding, Rhem v. Malcolm, 507 F.2d 333 (2d Cir. 1974); Detainees of the Brooklyn House of Detention for Men v. Malcolm, 520 F.2d 392 (2d Cir. 1975); Campbell v. McGruder, 416 F.Supp. 100 (D.C.D.C.1975), affirmed in part, remanded in part, 188 U.S.App.D.C. 258, 580 F.2d 521 (D.C.Cir.1978); Hamilton v. Love, 328 F.Supp. 1182 (E.D.Ark.1971); Brenneman v. Madigan, 343 F.Supp. 128 (N.D.Cal.1972); or use of punishment, Anderson v. Nosser, 438 F.2d 183 (5th Cir. 1971); Pugh v. Rainwater, 557 F.2d 1189 (5th Cir. 1977), rehearing 572 F.2d 1053 (5th Cir. 1978); Collins v. Schoonfield, supra; or excessive restrictions on freedom of movement, including length of time in cell and the use of maximum security installations, Rhem v. Malcolm, supra; Duran v. Elrod, 542 F.2d 998 (7th Cir. 1976); or the censorship of prison mail and the unnecessary limitation of visitation privileges, exercise and recreation, Taylor v. Sterrett, supra; Duran v. Elrod, supra; Rhem v. Malcolm, supra; Collins v. Schoonfield, supra. No case that we have been able to find mandated the segregation of pretrial detainees from the rest of the institution population.

The Sheriff had no policy requiring separate facilities for pretrial detainees. There was a policy requiring isolation of prisoners with reputations for violence, without regard to pretrial or post-trial status.

Plaintiff does not complain about the physical conditions of the cell, nor has he alleged or offered evidence that his confinement restricted him beyond that necessary to insure his appearance for trial. The fact that five men were put in a four-man cell is unimportant, because there is nothing in the record to show that such a situation so overcrowded the cell as to cause genuine privations or hardships. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). On the contrary, the evidence convinces the Court, as noted above, that Campbell and Welch requested that they be placed in...