Carver v. Knox County, Tenn.
| Decision Date | 29 December 1989 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 89-5341,89-5369,s. 89-5341 |
| Citation | 887 F.2d 1287 |
| Parties | Wayne Dillard CARVER, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. KNOX COUNTY, TENNESSEE, Joe Fowler, Sheriff, Defendants/Cross-Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Ned Ray McWHERTER, et al., Defendants/Cross-Defendants/Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
John E. Eldridge, Dean Rivkin, Knoxville, Tenn., for plaintiff-appellee.
John C. Duffy, Asst. City Atty., Dale C. Workman, Law Director, Richard T. Beeler, Robert H. Watson, Jr., Watson, Reeves & Beeler, Knoxville, Tenn., for defendants-appellees, Knox County, Tenn., and Joe Fowler.
Kimbra R. Spann, and David M. Himmelreich, Asst. Atty. Gen., Charles W. Burson, Atty. Gen., Office of the Attorney General of Tennessee, Nashville, Tenn., for
Ned McWherter, W. Jeff Reynolds, and Deborah Miller.
Before MERRITT, Chief Judge, NELSON, Circuit Judge; and LIVELY, Senior Circuit Judge.
This is an action challenging conditions of confinement in the penal facilities of Knox County, Tennessee. The original defendants, the county and its sheriff, filed a third party complaint against state officials responsible for administering the Tennessee penal system. The county defendants contended that the state's policies and practices have caused unconstitutional conditions to exist in the county facilities and that these conditions form the basis of the inmates' claims against the county and the sheriff. When the third party complaint was filed there was an ongoing class action in another district within the state dealing with conditions of confinement in all state-run penal institutions. We conclude that the district court, after making findings of fact and declaring the rights of the inmates, should have transferred a portion of this action to the district court in which the state-wide litigation is ongoing for determination of an appropriate remedy.
This action was commenced on April 25, 1986, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee by Wayne Carver, a pretrial detainee in the Knox County jail, who filed a pro se complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. The complaint alleged that the jail was overcrowded, causing unsanitary living conditions. It also charged that the jail afforded insufficient opportunity for access to legal material. After determining that the complaint was not frivolous, a magistrate granted Carver's motion for appointment of counsel. Appointed counsel filed an amended complaint naming Knox County and the sheriff as defendants and alleging in greater detail violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
The defendants filed an answer denying all allegations of constitutional violations and a third party complaint against the governor, the commissioner of the state department of corrections and other state officials. The third party complaint alleged that the state operated an unconstitutional penal system. In order to relieve overcrowding in state facilities, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee had entered an order in Grubbs v. Norris, a class action, severely curtailing the admission of new inmates into the state system. Since Knox County housed a number of prisoners sentenced to the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) while awaiting transfer to a state facility, the Grubbs order caused a back-up in the Knox County facilities, which consisted of a jail, a penal farm and an intake center. The county defendants alleged that the effect of this order and a later order entered in Grubbs that prohibited acceptance of any new prisoners into the state's reception centers was to greatly increase overcrowding in the Knox County facilities. The county defendants charged that actions and omissions of the third party defendants had caused the county defendants to become vulnerable to prosecution and to be named as defendants in inmates' lawsuits. The third party complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief.
The original plaintiff then filed a second amended complaint, naming as defendants the governor and the other state officials first brought into the action by the county defendants' third party complaint, and charging them under Sec. 1983 with responsibility for the alleged unconstitutional conditions in the Knox County facilities. The district court denied the state defendants' motion to dismiss the claims against them.
On July 7, 1988, the plaintiff filed yet another amended complaint, asserting a class action "on behalf of all persons who have been or are confined in the Knox County Jail." The complaint listed two sub-classes: one consisting of present and future pretrial detainees in the jail and the other consisting "of all Tennessee Department of Corrections sentenced inmates awaiting transfer to the penitentiary." The amended complaint described injuries to TDOC-sentenced inmates as well as to pretrial detainees and other county prisoners. It charged that the overcrowded conditions were the "direct result" of the state's "failure and/or neglect to remove inmates from the [j]ail, after each inmate ha[d] been sentenced to the Department of Corrections." The amended complaint sought relief against both county and state defendants. On July 15 the district court entered an order certifying the class action as requested by the plaintiff. The issues were joined on the basis of the amended class action complaint and the third party complaint.
The district court conducted a bench trial in August 1988 and issued its decision on January 25, 1989. The court found serious overcrowding in two of the three Knox County facilities. The court recognized that overcrowding, in and of itself, is not unconstitutional but found that overcrowding in the Knox County facilities resulted in specified conditions that violated the inmates' constitutional rights. Among these conditions were increased violence at both the jail and the county intake center, a breakdown in the classification system, which added to the violence, a lack of exercise programs and equipment, unsanitary living conditions, and a lack of adequate ventilation. The court also found that the jail's unwritten policy concerning use of the law library and procedure for copying legal materials resulted in "occasional violation" of inmates' constitutional right to court access. In addition, the court found that "the presence of TDOC-sentenced inmates is the primary cause of the overcrowded conditions at the Jail and the Intake Center."
The district court recognized that the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment defines the rights of convicted inmates and that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause defines the rights of pretrial detainees. Applying these constitutional provisions the court found that both groups of inmates suffered constitutional deprivations that flowed directly from the overcrowded conditions at the jail and the intake center. The court ordered the state and county defendants to propose plans for reducing or eliminating the impermissible conditions found to exist in the facilities. Both groups of defendants filed proposed plans. However, the state defendants did so under protest, stating that adoption of the plan it proposed would interfere with the ongoing relief being fashioned by the Middle District of Tennessee in Grubbs.
The district court adopted the major provision of the state defendants' proposal and ordered the removal of 80 TDOC-sentenced inmates from the Knox County facilities within 30 days from February 21, 1989. Thereafter, the court ordered the simultaneous removal of the TDOC-sentenced inmate with the longest incarceration upon the admission of each additional TDOC-sentenced inmate.
On March 6, 1989, the state defendants moved for a change of venue to the Middle District of Tennessee with respect both to issues involved in the cross-claims between the defendants and to relief issues. In support of their motion, the state defendants cited both the ongoing Grubbs case dealing with overcrowding in state facilities and a temporary restraining order issued against the state in another overcrowding case before a different judge in the Eastern District of Tennessee involving the Hamilton County facilities (Roberts v. Reynolds, 6th Cir. No. 89-5307) The movants argued that the overcrowding cases should be consolidated before one judge and coordinated with the ongoing relief in Grubbs to avoid "chaos." This motion was denied from the bench.
The district court filed another order and opinion on March 17. The court found that the presence of TDOC-sentenced inmates was the proximate cause of the unconstitutional conditions it had found in the Knox County facilities and that "the only adequate and complete remedy" was for the state defendants to remove additional prisoners until it reduced the overall population to no more than the rated capacity of both facilities. The court ordered that this reduction be accomplished on or before May 30, 1989. This order was made final by entry of a Rule 54(b) certification. The certification was not required to make the order appealable, however, as this court has jurisdiction over appeals from interlocutory orders granting injunctions. 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1292(a).
The district court denied the state defendants' motion for a stay pending appeal. On March 30 the present panel granted an emergency motion for stay after hearing oral arguments, and ordered the appeal expedited. The case has been fully briefed and argued and is now ready for decision. Upon consideration we deny the county defendants' motion to dismiss the appeal and proceed to the issues.
This case cannot be considered in isolation. What began as one inmate's effort to obtain relief from local conditions that he considered...
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