Crittindon v. LeBlanc

• Decision Date: 10 June 2022
• Docket Number: 20-30304
• Parties: Jessie CRITTINDON; Leon Burse; Eddie Copelin; Phillip Dominick, III; Donald Guidry, Plaintiffs—Appellees, v. James LEBLANC; Perry Stagg; Angela Griffin, Defendants—Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

37 F.4th 177

Jessie CRITTINDON; Leon Burse; Eddie Copelin; Phillip Dominick, III; Donald Guidry, Plaintiffs—Appellees,

v.James LEBLANC; Perry Stagg; Angela Griffin, Defendants—Appellants.

No. 20-30304

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

FILED June 10, 2022

Emily M. Washington, James W. Craig, Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center, New Orleans, LA, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Andre' Charles Castaing, Louisiana Department of Justice, Litigation Division, Baton Rouge, LA, Elizabeth Baker Murrill, Esq., Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, LA, Phyllis Esther Glazer, Louisiana Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General, Baton Rouge, LA, Benjamin William Wallace, Louisiana Department of Justice, Office of the Solicitor General, Baton Rouge, LA, for Defendants-Appellants.

Before Higginbotham, Costa, and Oldham, Circuit Judges.

Patrick E. Higginbotham, Circuit Judge:

Jails typically house pretrial detainees, but in Louisiana, the Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) also regularly engages local parish jails to house convicted state prisoners. Five of the locally housed prisoners brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against local jail officials and DPSC officials. They allege that the DPSC officials, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, looked away from the administrative failure they knew was leaving prisoners in jail who had served their sentences. Here, the defendant DPSC officials challenge the district court's denial of qualified immunity. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand.

I.

A.

As the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office has more people in its custody than beds in its facility, the Sheriff's Office regularly houses those arrested elsewhere. In September 2015, Orleans Parish entered into an agreement with the East Carroll Parish Sheriff's Office to house Orleans pretrial detainees in East Carroll at the River Bend Detention Center. Although these detainees remained in the legal custody of Orleans Parish, they were in the physical custody of East Carroll Parish.

About once a week, East Carroll Parish transported Orleans inmates to the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court for any necessary trial proceedings. Inmates convicted and sentenced during these proceedings were no longer in Orleans Parish's legal custody. They were rather in the legal custody of DPSC.¹ But DPSC, lacking enough beds to house all its prisoners in state facilities, often did not take physical custody of these prisoners. Instead, Orleans, as the parish of conviction, regularly transferred DPSC-sentenced prisoners back to East Carroll to be housed at River Bend.² DPSC then paid East Carroll a daily rate to house each of its prisoners.³

But this arrangement, simple in concept, suffered in execution. This, with other difficulties, led to a 1996 settlement that ended over 20 years of court supervision and consent decrees in almost all of Louisiana's jails and prisons.⁴ As part of the settlement, the State established a formal partnership with the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association for the housing of DPSC prisoners in local jails. Pursuant to this partnership, the State and Sheriffs adopted the "Basic Jail Guidelines" "designed to assure that the fundamental constitutional rights of [DPSC] offenders housed in local jails would not be jeopardized by such housing arrangements."⁵

DPSC officials, including the Department's Secretary, Assistant Secretary, and Chief of Operations, are responsible for determining the content of the Guidelines, and DPSC employees regularly audit local jails housing state prisoners to ensure compliance. If DPSC discovers a jail's noncompliance with the Guidelines, it must work with the jail to reach compliance; should a jail fail to comply with the Guidelines, DPSC will remove DPSC prisoners from the institution.

The Guidelines cover an array of correctional operations, including provisions related to the admission, processing, and release of prisoners. One provision is especially relevant here: parish jails housing state prisoners must send pre-classification paperwork to DPSC so that DPSC can enter the prisoner's information into its computer system, calculate the prisoner's release date, and issue the release.⁶

But when Orleans Parish transferred DPSC-sentenced prisoners to East Carroll to be housed there, neither Orleans nor East Carroll Parish immediately sent the prisoner's pre-classification paperwork to DPSC. The two offices differed in their understanding of which parish was responsible for communicating with DPSC about the new DPSC prisoners housed by East Carroll.⁷ And DPSC had no system in place to ensure it had pre-classification paperwork from local jails for its newly-sentenced prisoners. DPSC simply waited on the local jail to send the paperwork.⁸

DPSC officials knew that local jails often transmitted pre-classification paperwork to them in an untimely manner. In 2012, DPSC investigated overdetentions caused by delays in processing sentencing paperwork. Known as the Lean Six Sigma study, DPSC's investigation exposed widespread overdetentions of DPSC prisoners. The Lean Six Sigma study attributed these overdetentions to delays in transmitting local jail pre-classification paperwork and to DPSC's own delays in processing this paperwork on its receipt. DPSC considered placing oversight mechanisms to ensure that local jails timely transmitted pre-classification paperwork to DPSC, but did not to do so. Instead, DPSC chose to address only its own internal workflow problems.

Plaintiffs in this case, Jessie Crittindon, Leon Burse, Eddie Copelin, Phillip Dominick, and Donald Guidry, were among prisoners that suffered the consequences of that decision, lost in the shuffle between Orleans Parish and East Carroll Parish. Each was arrested in Orleans Parish and initially placed in the custody of Orleans. Each was subsequently transferred to East Carroll to be housed at River Bend as Orleans pretrial detainees. Between July and October 2016, each Plaintiff was transferred back to Orleans Parish to enter a plea in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. Four of the Plaintiffs (Crittindon, Burse, Copelin, and Dominick) were entitled to immediate release upon sentencing.⁹ Plaintiff Guidry was entitled to release less than two months after his sentencing.¹⁰ Once their pleas were entered and sentences handed down, they became DPSC-sentenced prisoners and were automatically under the legal custody of DPSC.¹¹ Orleans Parish then transferred the Plaintiffs back to East Carroll to be housed at River Bend as DPSC-sentenced prisoners. But neither Orleans nor East Carroll Parish promptly sent their pre-classification paperwork to DPSC. Since DPSC did not timely receive this paperwork, DPSC did not timely issue their release, and Plaintiffs remained imprisoned beyond the terms of their sentences.

On November 21, 2016, Crittindon's mother called DPSC about her son, complaining that he had been sentenced in August 2016, was housed in East Carroll at River Bend, and still lacked a release date. The next day, Burse's mother called DPSC, complaining that her son had been sentenced in August 2016, was housed at River Bend, and still lacked a release date.¹² Burse's mother contacted DPSC again on November 28 and December 7. Both Crittindon and Burse had been entitled to immediate release upon their sentencing in August. Perry Stagg, then-Assistant Secretary of DPSC, and Angela Griffin, DPSC's Director of the Pre-Classification Department, were both notified of each of these calls.

On December 8, 2016, DPSC's Pre-Classification Department Manager e-mailed the East Carroll Sherriff's Office, asking for "an updated list of offenders that are housed with [East Carroll] from Orleans parish that are DOC without paperwork." Within hours, East Carroll replied with a spreadsheet, naming 57 DPSC prisoners who were transferred from Orleans to River Bend during November but who were not yet in the CAJUN system.¹³ The list included Plaintiffs Copelin, Crittindon, and Dominick. On December 27, 2016, DPSC received another list of DPSC-sentenced prisoners held at River Bend from Orleans that were not in DPSC's system. This list named roughly 100 prisoners, including Plaintiff Guidry. Stagg testified that DPSC then "realized we had a systematic problem."

Now aware that many DPSC prisoners were being held in East Carroll without a release date, Stagg testified that he "established a line of communication" with Orleans. Over a month later, DPSC received each Plaintiff's required pre-classification paperwork. On its receipt, DPSC calculated each Plaintiff's (now-past) release date and then discharged them within approximately one day. All told, Plaintiffs were held months beyond their release dates: Crittindon for 164 days, Burse for 156 days, Guidry for 143 days, Dominick for 97 days, and Copelin for 92 days.

B.

On August 2, 2017, Plaintiffs Crittindon and Burse filed their § 1983 suit with supplemental state claims against the Orleans Parish Independent Jail Compliance Director, several East Carroll and Orleans officials, as well as three DPSC officials: Secretary James LeBlanc, then-Assistant Secretary Stagg, and Pre-Classification Director Griffin.¹⁴ On August 31, 2017, Plaintiffs Copelin, Dominick, and Guidry brought similar claims against the same officials. The cases were consolidated on October 18, 2017.

All the defendants filed motions to dismiss Plaintiffs' complaints. The district court granted the Compliance Director's motion, finding him entitled to absolute immunity as a quasi-judicial officer, but the court denied the rest of the defendants' motions. After extensive discovery, Plaintiffs moved for summary judgment on a narrow subset of their claims, and the defendants moved for summary judgment as to all of Plaintiffs' claims. As to Plaintiffs' federal law claims, each official claimed that they were entitled to qualified immunity in their...