Hare v. City of Corinth, Miss.

• Decision Date: 29 January 1996
• Docket Number: No. 93-7192,93-7192
• Citation: 74 F.3d 633
• Parties: Richard HARE, Natural Father and Next Friend of Haley Hare, a minor, et al., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF CORINTH, MS, A municipal corporation, et al., Defendants, Fred Johnson, etc., Billy Burns, etc., James Damons, etc., Brenda Moore, etc., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 633

74 F.3d 633

Richard HARE, Natural Father and Next Friend of Haley Hare a minor, et al., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF CORINTH, MS, A municipal corporation, et al., Defendants Fred Johnson, etc., Billy Burns, etc., James Damons, etc Brenda Moore, etc., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 93-7192.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Jan. 29, 1996.

Gary Friedman, Susan Desmond, Luther T. Munford, Angela M. McLain, Phelps Dunbar, Jackson, MS.

John Needle, Assoc. Gen. Counsel, TX. Assoc. of Counties, Robert Lemens, Austin, TX, for Texas Assoc. Counties.

Ronald Dale Michael, Timothy Angle, Langston, Langston, Michael & Bowen, Booneville, MS, for appellee.

John F. Wilkes, III, James Brady, Borne, Wilkes, Gibson, Lafayette, LA, amicus--Louisiana Municipal Assoc., on behalf of Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

Before POLITZ, Chief Judge, and KING, GARWOOD, JOLLY, HIGGINBOTHAM, DAVIS, JONES, SMITH, DUHE, WIENER, BARKSDALE, EMILIO M. GARZA, DeMOSS, BENAVIDES, STEWART, PARKER and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

GARWOOD and PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges:

Today we again visit the measures of liability under the U.S. Constitution for failing to prevent a suicide by a pretrial detainee. Tina Hare committed suicide while detained in the city jail in Corinth, Mississippi. Her husband, Richard Hare, sued municipal and individual defendants under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. The district court denied summary judgment. This appeal by individual defendants claiming qualified immunity followed. A panel of this court dismissed their appeal. We elected to hear the case en banc, and now find that the district court applied an erroneous legal standard in denying summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds. We hold that the episodic act or omission of a state jail official does not violate a pretrial detainee's due process right to medical care or protection from suicide unless the official acted or failed to act with subjective deliberate indifference to the detainee's rights, as defined in Farmer v. Brennan, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). We vacate and remand for review of the claims of qualified immunity under the correct legal standard.

I.

Richard Hare sued the City of Corinth, the city's Board of Aldermen, Corinth Mayor Edward Bishop, former Corinth Mayor Jack Holt, and Police Captain Billy Burns, Police Chief Fred Johnson, Officer Brenda Moore, and Captain James Damons in their individual and official capacities. Mr. Hare sued under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, alleging violations of the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and of Mississippi's wrongful death statute. After discovery, Burns, Johnson, Moore, and Damons moved for summary judgment asserting qualified immunity. Mr. Hare in turn moved for summary judgment. The district court granted defendants summary judgment on Mr. Hare's state-law claims, but declined to enter judgment upon the Sec. 1983 claims. It found that there were genuine issues of material fact as to whether Ms. Hare was deprived of rights protected under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court also rejected Mr. Hare's cross-motion for summary judgment.

Those individual defendants claiming qualified immunity appealed the denial of their motion for summary judgment. A panel of this court dismissed the defendants' appeal. See Hare v. City of Corinth, 22 F.3d 612 (5th Cir.1994). The panel found that Mr. Hare had alleged a violation of Ms. Hare's clearly established federal due process right to medical attention for her suicidal tendencies, and that there were genuine issues of material fact as to whether the defendants' inaction manifested deliberate indifference. The panel concluded that because the defendants' appeal presented "more than a pure question of law the denial of summary judgment [was] not appealable." Id. at 616.

On October 13, 1994, the panel substituted a revised opinion dismissing the appeal under a different analysis. Relying on Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), the panel concluded (1) that Ms. Hare had a clearly established due process right to reasonable care for her serious medical needs unless failure to supply such care was reasonably related to a legitimate governmental objective, and (2) that there were fact issues precluding summary judgment and rendering the denial of summary judgment not appealable. See Hare v. City of Corinth, 36 F.3d 412 (5th Cir.1994).

II.

Viewing the summary judgment evidence most favorably to Mr. Hare, the following transpired:

Shortly after midnight on the morning of July 14, 1989, the Booneville Police Department notified the Corinth Police Department that Ms. Hare had been arrested in Booneville on warrants for petty larceny and forgery. Officer Larry Fuqua of the Corinth Police Department immediately went to Booneville to pick up Ms. Hare, at which time the Booneville police informed Fuqua that Ms. Hare was a "heavy drug user." Fuqua took Ms. Hare to the Corinth City Jail, where she was jailed at approximately 1:45 a.m.

Ms. Hare's husband, Mr. Hare, testified in his deposition that Ms. Hare called him just after she was jailed. Mr. Hare testified that his wife had never been in jail before, and that she seemed scared and frightened. Ms. Hare told her husband that nothing could be done to secure her release until after 8:00 a.m., so he went back to sleep. Later that morning, at around 6:00 a.m., Mr. Hare contacted Ms. Hare's divorced parents, Guy Taylor and Patricia Morgan, to inform them that their daughter was in the Corinth jail and needed help. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Hare met with Ms. Hare's parents; they decided that Ms. Hare's parents would go to the jail at 8:00 a.m. to seek their daughter's release, leaving Mr. Hare at home to care for the Hares' baby daughter. When Ms. Hare's parents went to the jail at around 8:00 a.m., however, Burns told them that Ms. Hare was not ready for release, and that it would take more time to complete the investigation of their daughter. Accordingly, Burns told the parents to return home and wait for his call.

In his deposition, Burns testified that he was informed that Ms. Hare was a suspect in a check forgery case, and that he first met with Ms. Hare to interview her at approximately 10 a.m. on July 14, 1989. During this interview, Ms. Hare told Burns that she had been forging checks and cashing them to finance her dilaudid addiction. According to Burns, Ms. Hare was depressed about being in jail, and was sitting with both feet in her chair in a defensive, "fetal-type" position. Ms. Hare said that she was an unfit mother and expressed concern about how her husband would react to her predicament. Burns observed that Ms. Hare was going through withdrawal, which he understood to be a normal reaction to her drug use; he also learned at that time that Ms. Hare was scheduled to enter a drug rehabilitation program the next day, July 15, 1989, in Tupelo, Mississippi. Burns indicated that Ms. Hare's mood improved later in the interview when she learned that her bond amount would not be as high as she initially had expected.

After the interview, Burns placed Ms. Hare in a private cell and told the dispatcher, Brenda Moore, to monitor Ms. Hare in case her withdrawal symptoms required medical attention. Ms. Hare was allowed to call her parents to ask them to return to the jail to assist with her bond so that she could be released that afternoon. These plans never materialized, apparently in part because of Burns' displeasure over Ms. Hare's attempt to destroy a videotape on which the interview had been recorded. ¹ Also, in the meantime, the Corinth police had received word of additional charges on Ms. Hare. When Ms. Hare's parents arrived at the jail at around noon, Burns told them that Ms. Hare could not go home at that time.

Though Ms. Hare was not released, she was allowed to visit with her parents from around 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. During this private meeting, Ms. Hare's mother described Ms. Hare as "emotionally distraught." Burns likewise described Ms. Hare's mood as "hyper" and "frantic" while her parents were at the jail. Ms. Hare attempted to convince Burns not to hold her in jail another night and threatened to commit suicide if he did. While Burns did not consider the threat serious, Ms. Hare's father testified that he believed that she was serious, observing that she had made the suicide threat in a serious, believable tone of voice. Burns acknowledged that it was possible that Ms. Hare said to him that "her life was in his hands," but said that he could not specifically remember whether she said those words to him. In any event, Ms. Hare's threat prompted her father to seek assurance from Burns that Ms. Hare would be safe. Burns acknowledges telling Ms. Hare's father that the police would do "everything within [their] power to make sure that nothing did happen to her."

After Ms. Hare's parents left the jail, Burns returned Ms. Hare to her original cell. Burns subsequently moved her to an isolated cell nearest the camera monitors and trusty station, claiming that Police Chief Fred Johnson instructed him to do so. Johnson denies that he ever gave Burns such an instruction. Since Ms. Hare had been strip-searched previously, Burns searched her cell, took her shoes, and made sure that she did not have a belt. Burns saw a blanket on the bunk and considered the possibility that Ms. Hare might use it to harm herself, but left it there believing that she was not strong enough to tear it. Burns instructed dispatcher Moore to keep a close check on Ms. Hare and to have the trusties check on her. According to Burns, his primary concern was Ms. Hare's "withdrawal syndrome," not her suicide threat.

Moore confirms that Burns told her to keep an eye on Ms. Hare, and that he also apprised her of Ms. Hare's threat...