Coleman v. Newsom, 2:90-cv-0520 KJM DB P

• Decision Date: 17 December 2019
• Docket Number: No. 2:90-cv-0520 KJM DB P,2:90-cv-0520 KJM DB P
• Citation: 424 F.Supp.3d 925
• Parties: Ralph COLEMAN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Gavin NEWSOM, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of California

424 F.Supp.3d 925

Ralph COLEMAN, et al., Plaintiffs,

v.Gavin NEWSOM, et al., Defendants.

No. 2:90-cv-0520 KJM DB P

United States District Court, E.D. California.

Signed December 17, 2019

Cara Elizabeth Trapani, Jessica L. Winter, Lisa Adrienne Ells, Michael Bien, Ernest Galvan, Jeffrey L. Bornstein, Jenny Snay Yelin, Krista Michelle Stone-Manista, Marc J. Shinn-Krantz, Michael S. Nunez, Thomas Bengt Nolan, Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, Claudia B. Center, American Civil Liberties Union Disability Rights Program, San Francisco, CA, Donald Specter, Margot Knight Mendelson, Prison Law Office, Berkeley, CA, for Plaintiff Ralph Coleman.

Kate Martin Falkenstien, Reichman Jorgensen LLP, Redwood Shores, CA, for Plaintiff Jorge Andrade Rico.

Adriano Hrvatin, Elise Owens Thorn, Jeffrey Thomas Fisher, Kyle Anthony Lewis, Nasstaran Ruhparwar, Robert W. Henkels, Chad A. Stegeman, Damon Grant McClain, Danielle Felice O'Bannon, Ian Michael Ellis, Jay Craig Russell, Kevin Allen Voth, Maneesh Sharma, Tobias Snyder, Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General, San Francisco, CA, Glenn A. Danas, Roman M. Silberfeld, Robins Kaplan LLP, Los Angeles, CA, Sharon A. Garske, Office Of The Attorney General, Oakland, CA, Tyler Vance Heath, Xavier Becerra, Attorney General's Office for the State of California, Sacramento, CA, Andrew Gibson, Office Of The California Attorney General, San Diego, CA, Paul B. Mello, Hanson Bridgett LLP, Walnut Creek, CA, for Defendant Gavin Newsom.

Adriano Hrvatin, Elise Owens Thorn, Kyle Anthony Lewis, Robert W. Henkels, Chad A. Stegeman, Damon Grant McClain, Danielle Felice O'Bannon, Jay Craig Russell, Kevin Allen Voth, Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General, San Francisco, CA, Glenn A. Danas, Roman M. Silberfeld, Robins Kaplan LLP, Los Angeles, CA, Tyler Vance Heath, Xavier Becerra, Attorney General's Office for the State of California, Sacramento, CA, Andrew Gibson, Office Of The California Attorney General, San Diego, CA, for Defendants Michael Cohen, Ralph Diaz, Diana Toche, Katherine Tebrock, Pamela Ahlin.

ORDER

KIMBERLY J. MUELLER, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

As set by court order, the court held a focused evidentiary hearing on October 15 and 16, 2019, to address unresolved issues the court identified after reviewing Dr. Golding's whistleblower report and the court's neutral expert's investigation into Dr. Golding's allegations. See ECF Nos. 6242, 6288. The court heard closing arguments from the parties on October 22, 2019. In addition, as authorized by the court, Dr. Golding filed a written closing argument. ECF No. 6362. On October 23, 2019, the court provided an oral pronouncement of its findings and conclusions in open court. Reporter's Transcript of Proceedings (10/23/19 RT), ECF No. 6380. Those findings and conclusions, with record support, are memorialized in this order.

I. INTRODUCTION

In 1995, the court found "the California Department of Corrections... significantly and chronically understaffed in the area of mental health care services.... [It] does not have sufficient staff to treat large numbers of mentally ill inmates in its custody." Coleman v. Wilson , 912 F.Supp. 1282, 1307 (E.D. Cal. 1995). In 2011, the United States Supreme Court observed that the record before that Court supported the conclusion "that the prison system remained chronically understaffed through trial [before a three-judge court] in 2008." Brown v. Plata , 563 U.S. 493, 528, 131 S.Ct. 1910, 179 L.Ed.2d 969 (2011).¹ In October 2017, after more than two decades of remedial effort, this court issued an order requiring defendants to come into complete compliance with the staffing ratios in their 2009 Staffing Plan, ECF No. 3693, and the maximum ten percent staffing vacancy rate required by the court's June 13, 2002 order, ECF No. 1383, with compliance to be achieved by October 2018. ECF No. 5711 at 30.²

In its October 2017 order, the court included a lengthy discussion of defendants' request, made in a March 30, 2017 filing, see ECF No. 5591 at 4, for the court "to revisit the existing staffing ratios for psychiatrists." Id. at 12-20.³ The court made clear defendants faced a "heavy burden" in attempting to persuade the court those ratios should be revisited. Id. at 14, 18-19. The court noted defendants' request could "only be construed as a request to increase the existing caseload of prison psychiatrists" and that there was "scant evidence in the record to suggest this change would advance remediation of the Eighth Amendment violation in this case; rather there is strong evidence that such a change would slow progress toward the end of federal court oversight." Id. at 19. Nonetheless, the court granted defendants limited leave to explore its request, deciding "not to preclude defendants from raising with the Special Master the issue of whether full implementation of the PMA [psychiatric medical assistant] program supports a change in the staffing ratios for psychiatrists." Id. The court limited its permission because the record did not support a more extensive revisiting of the 2009 Staffing Plan and the time for defendants' compliance with the Plan was past due. As of this writing, the record still does not support a more extensive review, and the time for compliance is even more seriously past due.

For the year following the court's October 2017 order, the parties, supervised by the Special Master, engaged in extensive negotiations over issues related to staffing compliance. Ultimately, defendants presented to plaintiffs and the Special Master a staffing proposal that would have cut by approximately twenty percent the total number of line psychiatry staff positions allocated throughout the prison system. See Reporter's Transcript of Proceedings, October 15, 2019 (10/15/19 RT), ECF No. 6377, at 52:9-18.⁴ Plaintiffs were poised to accept the proposal. Before they did, however, on October 3, 2018, Dr. Michael Golding, Chief Psychiatrist for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), sent a whistleblower report to the Plata⁵ Receiver. Id. at 54:23-55:6. The parties brought the report to this court's attention on October 5, 2018, and it is that report that has led to the proceedings culminating in this order. As the findings in this order make clear, and contrary to defendants' initial position — maintained through the evidentiary hearing — that no independent investigation of Dr. Golding's allegations was necessary, those allegations in significant part justified the independent investigation and factfinding the court has undertaken.

At this critical juncture, several key legal principles, articulated by the previously-assigned judge in this action, bear repeating:

‘Whatever rights one may lose at the prison gates, cf. Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Union , 433 U.S. 119, 97 S.Ct. 2532, 53 L.Ed.2d 629 (1977) (prisoners have no right to unionize), ... Eighth amendment protections are not forfeited by one's prior acts. Mechanical deference to the findings of state prison officials in the context of the eighth amendment would reduce that provision to a nullity in precisely the context where it is most necessary. The ultimate duty of the federal court to order that conditions of state confinement be altered where necessary to eliminate cruel and unusual punishments is well established. ’ Spain v. Procunier , 600 F.2d [189] at 193–94 [ (9th Cir. 1979) ] (emphasis added).

Coleman v. Brown , 28 F.Supp.3d 1068, 1077-78 (E.D.Cal. 2014) (emphasis included in 2014 order). The same judge said not so very long ago, in his 2013 order denying defendants' motion to terminate this action, "[t]he Eighth Amendment violation in this action is defendants' ‘severe and unlawful mistreatment’ of prisoners with ‘serious mental disorders,’ through ‘grossly inadequate provision of... mental health care.’ " Coleman v. Brown , 938 F.Supp.2d 955, 969 (E.D.Cal. 2013) (quoting Brown v. Plata , 563 U.S. at 500, 502, 131 S.Ct. 1910 )). Just two years before that denial of termination, in its 2011 decision, the United States Supreme Court had observed that "[f]or years the... mental health care provided by California's prisons has fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements and has failed to meet prisoners' basic health needs. Needless suffering and death have been the well-documented result." Brown v. Plata , 563 U.S. at 501, 131 S.Ct. 1910.

As the prior presiding judge also noted,

once an Eighth Amendment violation is found and injunctive relief ordered, the focus shifts to remediation of the serious deprivations that formed the objective component of the identified Eighth Amendment violation. See Coleman v. Brown , 938 F.Supp.2d at 988. Remediation can be accomplished by compliance with targeted orders for relief or by establishing that the ‘violation has been remedied in another way.’ Id.

Coleman v. Brown , 28 F.Supp.3d at 1077. Under no circumstances may remediation be accomplished by end runs and hiding the ball to create a false picture for the court, as has happened here.

Given the constitutional deprivations underlying this case, and the court's monitoring by way of a Special Master, defendants' expenditure of so much time and effort to create records designed to advance litigation as the primary way to achieve a complete remedy or termination by other means is confounding. This court's predecessor carefully constructed a process supervised by a Special Master that was intended to moderate court intrusion into defendants' own remedial efforts. Such a process is arguably more respectful of defendants' knowledge of their operations and their management prerogatives than a process whereby oversight is transferred to a receivership; it also is more hopeful that defendants can best determine how to meet their constitutional obligations to the seriously mentally ill inmates in their custody. At the same time, given the authority that here remains vested in defendants themselves, the...