Harris By and Through Harris v. Maynard, 87-2009

• Decision Date: 30 March 1988
• Docket Number: No. 87-2009,87-2009
• Citation: 843 F.2d 414
• Parties: Bret Marvin HARRIS, Deceased, By and through his natural parents and next of kin, Jim HARRIS and Jean Harris, Plaintiff/Appellee, v. Gary MAYNARD, Warden of Oklahoma State Prison at McAlester; Larry Meachum, The acting Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections of the State of Oklahoma, and Three Unnamed Correctional Officers of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections; and John Grider, Asst. Dir. Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Defendants/Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 414

843 F.2d 414

Bret Marvin HARRIS, Deceased, By and through his natural

parents and next of kin, Jim HARRIS and Jean

Harris, Plaintiff/Appellee, v. Gary MAYNARD, Warden of Oklahoma State Prison at McAlester;

Larry Meachum, The acting Director and Chief Executive

Officer of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections of the

State of Oklahoma, and Three Unnamed Correctional Officers

of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections; and John Grider,

Asst. Dir. Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Defendants/Appellants.

No. 87-2009.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

March 30, 1988.

Robert A. Nance, Asst. Atty. Gen., Deputy Chief, Federal Div. (Robert H. Henry, Atty. Gen. of Okl., with him on the briefs), Oklahoma City, Okl., for defendants/appellants.

Howard Douglas Perkins, Jr., Tulsa, Okl., for plaintiff/appellee.

Before ANDERSON and TACHA, Circuit Judges, and BRATTON, ^* District Judge.

STEPHEN H. ANDERSON, Circuit Judge.

The three named defendants in this case, Gary Maynard, Larry Meachum, and John Grider--all Oklahoma corrections officials, moved for summary judgment and protection from discovery on the basis of the pleadings and supporting affidavits. The District Court denied both motions and the defendants appeal, as permitted by Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). They invoke qualified immunity from liability under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 for the deceased plaintiff's unexplained and violent murder while an inmate in the McAlester, Oklahoma prison facility, citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982), Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S. 344, 106 S.Ct. 668, 88 L.Ed.2d 677 (1986), Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 106 S.Ct. 662, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986), and Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411. The defendants contend that they are entitled to immunity because they violated no Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment rights of the plaintiff that were "clearly established" and "of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2738. Moreover, they insist that they had no personal participation in any events that might have been associated with the risk of undue harm to which the prisoner Harris was subjected. Invoking the summary judgment rules contained in Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986), they contend that, taking all of the facts alleged in plaintiff's affidavits as true, the allegations could not survive a motion for summary judgment. We disagree and affirm the district court rulings.

As a threshold matter of law, we must first decide whether the prisoner could have suffered, at the hands of corrections officials, any deprivation of his constitutional rights under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Eighth Amendment. The most relevant and recent Supreme Court cases are Daniels, 474 U.S. 327, 106 S.Ct. 662, Davidson, 474 U.S. 344, 106 S.Ct. 668, and Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 106 S.Ct. 1078, 89 L.Ed.2d 251 (1986). Together, Daniels and Davidson establish that under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment no constitutional deprivation occurs as a result of the negligent acts of prison officials; i.e., mere negligence does not constitute a deprivation in the constitutional sense. Daniels 474 U.S. at 330-36, 106 S.Ct. at 664-67; Davidson 474 U.S. at 348, 106 S.Ct. at 670-71. Neither the Supreme Court nor this court, however, has decided whether, under the Fourteenth Amendment, a deprivation of due process occurs when a prisoner's death at the hands of other inmates can be laid to official misconduct that is grossly negligent or reckless.

The recent Eighth Amendment case of Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 106 S.Ct. 1078, 89 L.Ed.2d 251, is relevant to the question of the extent of the prisoner's due process right to life under the Fourteenth Amendment. Whitley noted that the substantive rights of a prisoner to be free from excessive and unjustified use of force were best addressed under the Eighth Amendment, stating that "[i]t is obduracy and wantonness ... that characterize the conduct prohibited by the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, whether that conduct occurs in connection with establishing conditions of confinement, ... or restoring official control...." ¹ Whitley at 319, 106 S.Ct. at 1084. Whitley held that, in the context of prison rioting, the Fourteenth Amendment's right of substantive due process affords no more protection to convicted prisoners than does the Eighth Amendment. Although declining to imply that its ruling suggested the outcome of the standard-of-care question reserved in Daniels and Davidson, the logic of the case suggests that the Fourteenth Amendment provides no less protection, at least where life is involved. Where one's very right to life is at stake, and where prison officials control the conditions of confinement, thereby reducing the prisoner's ability to protect himself, it takes no great acumen to determine that, constitutionally, prison officials may not exercise their responsibility with wanton or obdurate disregard for or deliberate indifference to the preservation of the life in their care. ² In any event, a fortiori, prison officials are not immune under the Eighth Amendment from suit for wrongful conduct that is intentional. The same is true under the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause. See, e.g., Daniels, 474 U.S. at 334, n. 3, 106 S.Ct. at 667, n. 3 (in reserving the question of "whether something less than intentional conduct, such as recklessness or 'gross negligence' is enough to trigger the protections of the Due Process clause," the Court acknowledges that intentional conduct does trigger the protections). We conclude that wanton or obdurate disregard of or deliberate indifference to the prisoner's right to life as a condition of confinement is a substantive constitutional deprivation whether it falls under the due process clause or the Eighth Amendment. ³

Even concluding that a convicted prisoner has a constitutional right to be free from wanton and obdurate misconduct of corrections officials that proximately causes the prisoner's death, we must determine if this right was "clearly established" at the time of the alleged misconduct and if a reasonable corrections official would have known of it. Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2738. Defendants ask us to rule that there was no clearly established law on this point at the time of prisoner's death in September 1985 and that, therefore, they could not be liable for constitutional violations for gross negligence or recklessness. Defendants, however, overlook the fact that under Eighth Amendment standards, which were clearly established, prison officials are not immune from suit for the wanton and unnecessary infliction of pain. Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 103, 97 S.Ct. 285, 290, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976). At this point we cannot say that the circumstances surrounding Harris' stabbing and strangulation death did not fall within the realm of violations of the cruel and unusual punishment clause as defined under the line of then existing Eighth Amendment cases. ⁴ And the prohibition against the wanton and unnecessary infliction of pain should just as well protect against a painful death as against a painful injury short of death. The pleadings and affidavits, taken as a whole, fairly raise the possibility of a violation of a clearly established right under the Eighth Amendment.

The defendants also urge that there is no showing of any personal misconduct by them and that without personal participation or an affirmative showing of a link between the alleged constitutional deprivation and their conduct they cannot be liable for constitutional violations, even if they exist. They also contend that the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, is not sufficient to survive the preponderance of the evidence standard that would be used at trial. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. 242, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). At this stage of the proceedings, in reviewing the denial of a motion for summary judgment, we view the pleadings and supporting affidavits in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. When so viewed, the record to date shows that (1) the deceased plaintiff's mother made a number of phone calls to the offices of Prison Director Gary Maynard and Corrections Department Director Larry Meachum, informing those offices of her son's need for protection from other inmates; (2) the mother spoke on the phone with Associate Corrections Department Director John Grider, conveying the same information; (3) a "separtee order" had...