Cruz v. Safford
| Decision Date | 28 August 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 08-3083.,08-3083. |
| Citation | 579 F.3d 840 |
| Parties | Oscar E. CRUZ, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. John SAFFORD, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and BAUER and MANION, Circuit Judges.
Oscar Cruz, an inmate at the Pendleton Correctional Facility, filed a pro se civil rights action against prison guard John Safford under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that Safford reached into Cruz's cell and choked him, in violation of his Eighth Amendment right to be free from excessive force. The case was tried to a jury and Cruz lost. On appeal, Cruz argues that the district court committed several reversible errors by: (1) erroneously instructing the jury; (2) denying a motion to amend his complaint; and (3) limiting the cross-examination of one of Safford's witnesses. For the following reasons, we affirm.
In answer to Cruz's § 1983 excessive force complaint, Safford denied even touching Cruz; according to Safford, he brought Cruz his correspondence and only passed it through the cell bars, which his employment duties required him to do. Finding that there were triable issues of material fact, the district court denied Safford's summary judgment motion.
Cruz filed his proposed jury instructions before trial, which, in addition to an excessive force instruction, included instructions for assault and battery, and requested that these state law claims proceed as part of the case. Safford objected. At the final pretrial conference, Safford claimed that the issues in the complaint had already been briefed—namely, the § 1983 action. Although the district court noted that "assault and battery is not a stranger to excessive force actions," it denied Cruz's assault and battery instructions. The court found that because the assault and battery claims "have not previously been identified through the pleadings or through any pretrial order," the way to avoid prejudice "at this late date" was to treat Cruz's case as only an excessive force claim. Cruz renewed his request for the instructions at the jury instructions conference, but the district court again denied it.
The district court intended to use its own § 1983 instruction, based on the Eighth Amendment claim. The instruction stated that prisoners have the right to be free from excessive force by prison staff and, for § 1983 purposes, that the jury had to find that Cruz had a constitutionally protected right. Cruz challenged the instruction on the ground that the right to be free from excessive force was a guaranteed right, not a right that had to be determined by the jury or proved by Cruz. The district judge rejected this objection; he stated,
At trial, Cruz called prisoners from cells adjacent to his, to testify on his behalf. The prisoners testified that, upon hearing the interaction between Cruz and Safford, they were informed by Cruz that Safford attacked Cruz; one prisoner also claimed to have seen Safford reach into Cruz's cell. However, they testified that they could not see if there had been any contact. These witnesses later described the incident as Safford reaching into the cell and attempting to grab Cruz.
Safford testified that he never put his hands into the cell, but that Cruz began to shout that Safford had, in an attempt to grab Cruz. Safford, and other correctional officers, including Safford's supervisor Rick Shannon, stated that all employees were trained to not put their arms into a prisoner's cell to avoid injury. Shannon also summarized the incident, along with a conversation with Cruz, in a report. The report stated that
In an attempt to discredit Shannon's testimony, Cruz intended to cross-examine Shannon using his previous deposition testimony. Outside the presence of the jury, Cruz informed the district court that Shannon had testified that he had only been arrested twice, but Madison County Sheriff's Department records indicated that he had, in fact, been arrested about six other times. The district court, in light of the fact that one of the arrests was for child molestation, limited Cruz's cross-examination, because "the prejudicial nature of that given the fact that he's found not guilty is overwhelming." The court also prohibited Cruz from inquiring into the number of times Shannon was arrested since the arrests did not deal with Shannon's credibility, and nor did his sole conviction which was for battery.
At the close of evidence, Cruz orally moved to amend his pleadings to conform to the evidence presented and add assault and battery claims, with accompanying jury instructions. The motion was denied.
The jury found in favor of Safford and Cruz timely appealed.
Cruz argues that the district court abused its discretion in three ways: (1) when it instructed the jury to find whether Cruz had presented enough evidence to establish that he had a constitutionally protected right to be free from excessive force; (2) when it refused to include assault and battery claims as part of the case; and (3) when it prohibited Cruz from questioning Shannon about his number of previous arrests.
We begin by reviewing the propriety of the district court's instruction that the jury had to find that the Eighth Amendment protected Cruz from excessive force. "We consider a district court's jury instructions with deference, analyzing them as a whole to determine if they accurately state the law and do not confuse the jury." Aliotta v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., 315 F.3d 756, 764 (7th Cir. 2003) (citation omitted). This inquiry requires us to first determine whether an instruction misstates or insufficiently states the law and, if legally improper, then to determine whether the instruction could produce prejudice by a confusing or misleading jury instruction. Id.
The instruction in question stated that:
Mr. Cruz asserts that Mr. Safford violated his federal constitutional rights by subjecting him to constitutionally excessive force. The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects prisoners from the use of excessive force by prison staff. This claim is brought pursuant to Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code, which permits an individual to seek redress in this Court, by way of money damages, against any person who, under color of state law, deprives that individual of any of his or her constitutional rights. . . .
In order to find a defendant liable under Section 1983, you must find that (1) plaintiff had a constitutionally protected right, (2) he was deprived of that right in violation of the Constitution, (3) the defendant intentionally caused that deprivation and (4) the defendant acted under color of state law. The plaintiff has the burden of proving each of these elements.
According to Cruz, this instruction—informing the jury that there is a right and later that it must find whether a right...
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