Langston v. Peters

• Citation: 100 F.3d 1235
• Decision Date: 04 December 1996
• Docket Number: No. 95-3099,95-3099
• Parties: EUGENE LANGSTON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. HOWARD PETERS, III, KEITH COOPER, DWAYNE A. CLARK, LT. ERNEST CLARK, GILBERTO ROMERO, JR., and LT. LONNIE AUSTIN, Defendants-Appellees
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Page 1235

100 F.3d 1235

EUGENE LANGSTON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. HOWARD PETERS, III, KEITH COOPER, DWAYNE A. CLARK, LT. ERNEST CLARK, GILBERTO ROMERO, JR., and LT. LONNIE AUSTIN, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 95-3099

In the United States Court of Appeals,

Seventh Circuit

Argued May 29, 1996

Decided November 6, 1996

Rehearing Denied December 4, 1996

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Arlander Keys, Magistrate Judge, No. 93 C 2607

George J. Casson (argued), O'Halloran, Kosoff, Geitner & Cook, P.C., Northbrook, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Rita M. Novak, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, Brian F. Barov (argued), Office of the Attorney General, Criminal Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before COFFEY, RIPPLE, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

MANION, Circuit Judge.

Eugene Langston was placed in protective custody after giving prison authorities information about a murder he witnessed while serving his own murder sentence at Stateville prison. Over four years later, while serving time at Joliet, Langston was placed in segregation as punishment for assaulting a correctional officer. Although Langston was in segregation, another inmate who was also serving a murder sentence was assigned to share his cell. The newly-assigned cellmate raped Langston. Langston sued numerous prison employees under sec. 1983 claiming they violated his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment by failing to protect him from being raped by another inmate, and then by providing inadequate medical treatment for the rape. The parties consented to a magistrate judge who granted defendants' motion for summary judgment, concluding that even had the rape happened as Langston claimed (and not been staged as the defendants maintained), Langston had failed to present sufficient evidence of deliberate indifference. The court also concluded that the short delay in providing medical treatment was not a violation. Langston appeals. We affirm.

I. Background

In January 1988, while serving a murder sentence at Stateville, Eugene Langston witnessed another inmate's murder. After Langston informed Stateville's warden of what he had seen, Langston was placed in protective custody. One month later, Langston was transferred from Stateville to Joliet Correctional Center, where he remained either in protective custody or in one-man cells within segregation units.

In September 1992, Langston assaulted a correctional officer at Joliet. As punishment, Langston was placed in the north segregation unit. On November 13, 1992, Eric Rayfield, another inmate also in prison for murder, was assigned to share Langston's cell in the north segregation unit. It is unclear who decided on this assignment; Langston claims that it was Dwayne A. Clark, the assistant warden at Joliet, but Clark testified that he had delegated this function to defendant Gilberto Romero, Jr., the superintendent of Joliet's segregation unit. In either event, Joliet's warden Keith Cooper and Romero undisputedly approved the assignment, after having reviewed the prison's Offender Tracking System database and a double-celling form prepared by defendant Lonnie Austin, a Joliet correctional officer. The Offender Tracking System ("OTS") provides information concerning a prisoner's sentence, his housing status, and known enemies within the prison system. The OTS did not indicate that Rayfield and Langston were known enemies. Nor does Langston suggest that they were. Austin then placed Rayfield in Langston's cell.

Langston claims that ten days later, in the early morning hours of November 23, 1992, Rayfield assaulted and raped him. Langston alleged that at approximately 7:00 a.m. he informed Lt. Ernest Clark, a correctional officer working in the segregation unit, of the alleged rape and requested medical attention, but that Lt. Clark refused to obtain any medical treatment. Approximately an hour later, a medical technician making rounds in the north segregation unit arranged for Langston to be taken to the emergency room of the Joliet Health Care unit. He arrived at the unit at 9:30 a.m. complaining of pain and rectal bleeding, and was seen by a doctor at 10:00 a.m. The treating physician, however, found no active bleeding and no rectal tear; the physician found only microscopic amounts of blood and diagnosed an external hemorrhoid.

Based on these facts, Langston filed suit pursuant to sec. 1983 against defendants Keith Cooper, Dwayne Clark, Gilberto Romero, and Lonnie Austin alleging they violated his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment by failing to protect him from Rayfield.¹ Langston also claimed that Ernest Clark violated his Eighth Amendment rights by denying him prompt medical attention for his injuries. The parties consented in writing to the entry of a final judgment by a United States magistrate judge pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sec. 636(c). The defendants then moved for summary judgment on the basis that Langston had not presented sufficient evidence of deliberate indifference to establish his claim. The magistrate judge granted summary judgment and Langston appeals.

II. Analysis

We review a grant of summary judgment de novo. Smith v. Shawnee Library Sys., 60 F.3d 317, 320 (7th Cir. 1995). Summary judgment is appropriate "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). The party moving for summary judgment must establish that no genuine issue of material fact exists and that he is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986). To prevail, the responding party must then come forward with facts "sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to the party's case, and on which the party will bear the burden of proof at trial." Id. at 322.

The Eighth Amendment, incorporated in this suit against state actors by the Fourteenth Amendment, protects against the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishment." As the Supreme Court held in Farmer v. Brennan, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 1976 (1994), under the Eighth Amendment "prison officials have a duty . . . to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners." Id. at __, 114 S.Ct. at 1976 (internal citations omitted). "Having incarcerated 'persons [with] demonstrated proclivitie[s] for antisocial criminal, and often violent, conduct,' . . . having stripped them of virtually every means of self-protection and foreclosed their access to outside aid, the government and its officials are not free to let the state of nature take its course." Id. at __, 114 S.Ct. at 1977 (internal citations omitted). See also McGill v. Duckworth, 944 F.2d 344, 347 (7th Cir.1991) (finding duty to protect prisoners from each other is "logical correlative" of the state's obligation to replace means of self-protection denied to its wards).

However, every injury suffered by one prisoner at the hands of another does not constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment." Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1977. Rather, an Eighth Amendment violation exists only if "deliberate indifference by prison officials effectively condones the attack by allowing it to happen . . . ." Haley v. Gross, 86 F.3d 630, 640 (7th Cir. 1996). Only then can "those officials . . . be held liable to the injured victim." Id. Deliberate indifference in the prison context requires: "First, the danger to the inmate must be objectively serious, posing a substantial risk of serious harm. Second, the prison official must have a sufficiently culpable state of mind-- one of 'deliberate indifference' to inmate health or safety." Haley, 86 F.3d at 640-41 (citing Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1977). The Court in Farmer emphasized the importance of "actual knowledge," "finding that because the Eighth Amendment relates only to 'punishment,' it is not enough that the official 'should have known' of a substantial risk or that a reasonable officer in the situation would have known of the risk." Id. (quoting Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1979). The Court in Farmer also emphasized that negligence is insufficient to impose liability: "[A]n official's failure to alleviate a significant risk that he should have perceived but did not, while no cause for commendation, cannot under our cases be condemned as the infliction of punishment." Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1979.

Against this backdrop, we consider Langston's case. Langston claims first that defendants violated the Eighth Amendment by assigning another inmate to share his cell. This, Langston claims, objectively created a "substantial risk of serious harm," Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1977, given that Langston had assisted prison officials in investigating a prison murder. Langston asserts that the second prong of Farmer was also satisfied because all of the defendants had "actual knowledge" that Langston was not to be placed in a double cell.

The evidence undisputedly establishes that Joliet officials had a policy not to place Langston in a cell with another inmate, on the one hand because he was in protective custody and on the other because he was in disciplinary segregation. Langston also presented evidence creating the inference that Joliet had established a policy that prisoners housed in disciplinary segregation would be single-celled, unless prison conditions necessitated double-celling. And it is unclear why Langston was double-celled since there were empty cells in the disciplinary unit. But ignoring internal prison procedures does not mean that a constitutional violation has occurred. Nor does it mean that placing any other inmate in Langston's cell created an "objectively substantial risk of serious...