Hamilton v. Leavy

• Decision Date: 28 February 2003
• Docket Number: No. 01-3062.,01-3062.
• Citation: 322 F.3d 776
• Parties: Jerome HAMILTON, v. Faith LEAVY; Pamela Faulkner; William Queener; Frances Lewis; George Dixon; Jack Stephenson; Deborah Craig; Joanne Smith; Dennis Loebe; Eldora Tillery; Francis Cockroft; Jerry Borga; Richard Shockley, Appellants
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

322 F.3d 776

Jerome HAMILTON, v. Faith LEAVY; Pamela Faulkner; William Queener; Frances Lewis; George Dixon; Jack Stephenson; Deborah Craig; Joanne Smith; Dennis Loebe; Eldora Tillery; Francis Cockroft; Jerry Borga; Richard Shockley, Appellants

No. 01-3062.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued April 18, 2002.

Filed February 28, 2003.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Marc P. Niedzielski (Argued), Stuart B. Drowos, Department of Justice, Wilmington, DE, for Appellants.

John W. Shaw (Argued), Young, Conaway, Stargatt & Taylor, Wilmington, DE, for Appellee.

Before NYGAARD, AMBRO, Circuit Judges and O'NEILL,^* District Judge.

OPINION OF THE COURT

AMBRO, Circuit Judge.

This 42 U.S.C. § 1983 case is before us on interlocutory appeal. The defendants, members of the Gander Hill Prison Multi-Disciplinary Team ("MDT") and the Delaware Department of Corrections Central Institutional Classification Committee ("CICC"), challenge the District Court's denial of their summary judgment motion for absolute or qualified immunity from Delaware prisoner Jerome Hamilton's lawsuit alleging violations of the Eighth Amendment. The defendants contend that they are entitled to absolute immunity because they acted pursuant to a court order or otherwise in a quasi-judicial capacity. Alternatively, they argue that they should receive qualified immunity because they did not violate Hamilton's Eighth Amendment rights or because their actions were objectively reasonable. We agree with the District Court that on this record the defendants are not absolutely immune on the ground that they acted pursuant to a court order. We remand, however, for the District Court to analyze under the legal tests noted below whether the defendants are entitled either to absolute immunity for acting in a quasi-judicial capacity or to qualified immunity.

FACTS¹

On August 5, 1992, Hamilton's cellmate in Delaware's Gander Hill prison attacked and injured him.² Hamilton alleges that his cellmate was able to commit this assault because the defendant prison officials acted with deliberate indifference to his safety.

Hamilton has been the victim of numerous attacks from other inmates throughout his lengthy stint in the Delaware prison system, some of which we described in a prior appeal in this case. See Hamilton v. Leavy, 117 F.3d 742, 744-45 (3d Cir.1997) (Hamilton I). For Hamilton's safety, prison officials have transferred him among various prisons both in and outside Delaware and have placed him in protective custody.

In 1986 Hamilton cooperated with a drug trafficking investigation at the Gander Hill prison that ended with the arrest of prison officials and inmates. He became known as a "snitch" and, as a result, prison officials repeatedly had to place him in protective custody. In 1990 prison officials transferred Hamilton to a Virginia prison "[b]ecause there appeared to be no safe place for Hamilton in the Delaware prisons." Id. at 745.

After the move to Virginia, however, Hamilton initiated two civil lawsuits in Delaware state courts, and he was returned in December 1991 to the Gander Hill prison to enable him to prosecute those actions effectively. He brought one of the lawsuits against state officials. Deputy Attorney General John Polk defended that case. Judge Clarence Taylor of the Delaware Superior Court, who presided over the case, held a hearing on December 13, 1991, and addressed the question where Hamilton could be housed while discovery took place.

Deputy A.G. Polk suggested to the Court that Hamilton be kept in Delaware for a "month or so." When Judge Taylor expressed concern that the Delaware prison system be able to take the "special precautions" necessary for Hamilton, Polk volunteered to check with the appropriate officials whether this was possible, and the Court granted a recess for him to do so. After the recess, Polk informed the Court that an official from the Delaware Department of Corrections Compact had "reiterated to [him] that Mr. Hamilton is in need of protective custody," but that the Department could "accommodate" Hamilton for two months at either Gander Hill or the Sussex Correctional Institution. Polk then stated that he had requested that the Department keep Hamilton at Gander Hill.³

The Court next informed Hamilton:

Let's leave it that way, then. So, you'll — you are to be detained up here at the State Gander Hill Prison for a length of time up to two months, and it will be dependent [on] what reports I get back from the Deputy Attorney General, from you and what progress is made toward resolving this thing without further trial.... Prison will have you up to two months and during that time Mr. Polk will cooperate with you and try to work out something....

The docket entry for December 13 states: "Detained at Gander Hill up to 2 months in protective custody."

Hamilton was still at the Gander Hill prison on March 5, 1992, almost three months later, when Judge Taylor sent a letter to the Deputy A.G.:

At a hearing held on December 13, 1991, you were ordered to supply petitioner Jerome Hamilton with answers to petitioner's requests for admissions by December 27, 1991....

[T]he Interstate Corrections Compact Administrator has contacted my office to see if the petitioner can be returned to the prison from which he had been transferred for the purpose of resolving this case.

You have failed to comply with my order of December 13, 1991. If Gander Hill Prison needs action, then you should take immediate action to comply with the order of December 13, 1991. Until you comply with the Order, there is no alternative but to keep petitioner Hamilton at the Gander Hill facility.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Later that month, Hamilton, still in the Gander Hill prison, filed a grievance against a correctional officer there for calling him in front of other prisoners "a good telling mother f_____g snitcher." Witnesses confirmed this incident. The Resident Grievance Resolution Committee, composed of five prison officials, recommended to the Deputy Warden that "a thorough investigation" take place because comments that a prisoner is a "snitch" have the potential to cause "a major disturbance and require[] immediate action." The Deputy Warden concluded on June 15, 1992, that the correctional officer did make the statement.

Three days later, the MDT — made up of defendants Faith Leavy, Pamela Faulkner (now Minor), and William Queener — reviewed Hamilton's file, summarized his situation in a written report, and unanimously recommended that he be placed in protective custody. After reviewing the MDT report and recommendation, the CICC, which had the authority to place Hamilton in protective custody, decided on June 24, 1992, to take "no action" on the report, which meant that Hamilton remained without additional safety precautions in the Gander Hill general prison population. The members of the CICC are also defendants in this lawsuit.

A month after the "no action" decision, inmate Steven Clayton joined the prison population at Gander Hill and sometime before August 5, 1992, became Hamilton's cellmate. That day, Clayton attacked Hamilton, fracturing his jaw and sending him to the hospital, where he had two metal plates inserted. Clayton pled guilty to the assault and stated that he attacked Hamilton because he was "a snitcher on inmates and officers" at Gander Hill.

Coincidentally, on the same day as the assault (August 5), Judge Haile Alford who had taken over Hamilton's civil case in the Delaware Superior Court when Judge Taylor retired, wrote a letter to Hamilton, informing him:

Judge Taylor ordered you held at Gander Hill until the Deputy Attorney General had attempted to resolve this matter with you without further trial. A review of the file in this case reveals that Deputy Attorney General

John Polk, after writing to the Court anticipating a settlement of this claim[,] has requested a trial date and that a Scheduling Order in this matter has been entered, setting a trial date of March 31, 1993.

The letter from the Court dated March 5, 1992, does not order that you are to be held at Gander Hill until the completion of your case. Because this case is now set down for trial, the conditions that caused you to be incarcerated at Gander Hill have changed, and there is no longer a reason in [this case] for you to remain at that specific facility.

PROCEEDINGS

Hamilton filed this § 1983 lawsuit on June 20, 1994, in the District Court for the District of Delaware against MDT members Leavy, Faulkner, and Queener, and against Frances Lewis, chair of the CICC, alleging deliberate indifference to Hamilton's safety in violation of his Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. The Court entered summary judgment in favor of the MDT defendants because they "were without authority to effectuate their own recommendation that Hamilton be placed in protective custody, [and therefore] they could not be found to have deliberately disregarded serious risks to his safety." Hamilton I, 117 F.3d at 748. The Court also granted summary judgment to defendant Lewis on the ground that no reasonable fact-finder could find that she knew that keeping Hamilton in the Gander Hill general prison population without additional safety precautions put Hamilton in substantial risk of suffering serious harm.

Hamilton appealed, and in June 1997 our Court reversed. See id. at 744. As to the MDT defendants, we noted Hamilton's argument that the MDT could have provided him with additional protection by, for instance, putting him in administrative segregation, even if the MDT did not have the authority to place him in protective custody. See id. at 748. We concluded that the "failure of the MDT defendants to take additional steps beyond the recommendation of protective custody could be viewed by a factfinder as the sort of deliberate indifference to inmate safety that the Constitution forbids." Id. at 749. As to defendant Lewis, we...