Mckinney v. Bryant

• Decision Date: 20 August 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-11658.,09-11658.
• Citation: 614 F.3d 1288
• Parties: Jeremiah THOMAS, Michael McKinney, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Randall BRYANT, in his official capacity, Walter A. McNeil, Secretary, Department of Corrections, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

614 F.3d 1288

Jeremiah THOMAS, Michael McKinney, Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.Randall BRYANT, in his official capacity, Walter A. McNeil, Secretary, Department of Corrections, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 09-11658.

United States Court of Appeals,Eleventh Circuit.

Aug. 20, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

Craig D. Feiser, Volpe Bajalia Wickes, Jacksonville, FL, Scott Douglas Makar, Louis F. Hubener, III, Tallahassee, FL, for Defendants-Appellants.

Laurie Webb Daniel, Holland & Knight, LLP, Atlanta, GA, Cassandra Jae Capobianco, Kristen Cooley Lentz, FL Institute Legal Services, Inc., Newberry, FL, George E. Schulz, Jr., Marlysha Myrthil, Holland & Knight, L.L.P., Jacksonville, FL, Joshua Aaron Glickman, Randall C. Berg, Jr., FL Justice Institute, Inc., Miami, FL, Stephen F. Hanlon, Holland & Knight, LLP, Washington, DC, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before BLACK, HULL and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

ANDERSON, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents important questions concerning the intersection of the Eighth Amendment and the incarceration of inmates with serious mental illness. Ten inmates incarcerated at Florida State Prison (“FSP”) brought this § 1983 action against various officers and employees of the Florida Department of Corrections (“DOC”), alleging that the use of chemical agents on inmates with mental illness and other vulnerabilities violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. After the plaintiffs settled their damages claims against the individual correctional officers responsible for administering the chemical agents, the district court held a five-day bench trial on their remaining claims for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief against the two defendants allegedly responsible for the policy which authorized the use of chemical agents on inmates at FSP: Walter McNeil, Secretary of the DOC, and Randall Bryant, Warden of FSP. The district court entered judgment in favor of two of the remaining six plaintiffs, ¹ concluding that the repeated sprayings inmates Jeremiah Thomas and Michael McKinney received pursuant to the DOC's non-spontaneous use-of-force policy violated the Eighth Amendment. Specifically, the district court concluded that Thomas and McKinney demonstrated that at times in which they were sprayed with chemical agents they were unable to conform their behavior to prison standards due to their mental illnesses such that the DOC's use of force for purposes of prison discipline amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. To remedy the violation, the district court permanently enjoined the defendants, in their official capacities, from allowing the non-spontaneous use of chemical agents on Thomas or McKinney without first consulting with the DOC's trained mental health staff to evaluate their mental health status. Defendants McNeil and Bryant now appeal, challenging both the district court's finding of an Eighth Amendment violation and the propriety of its permanent injunction.

Four days before oral argument, in an unfortunate twist of events, plaintiff Thomas died in DOC custody. Pending before our court is a timely motion for substitution filed by Thomas's father, Maxime Jerome Thomas, to substitute his son's interest in this suit. See Fed. R.App. P. 43(a) (providing for substitution of a deceased party on appeal). Both parties agree that Thomas's death renders moot the declaratory and injunctive relief awarded him by the district court. “Where a case becomes moot after the district court enters judgment but before the appellate court has issued a decision, the appellate court must dismiss the appeal, vacate the district court's judgment, and remand with instructions to dismiss as moot.” Bekier v. Bekier, 248 F.3d 1051, 1055-56 (11th Cir.2001) (citing United States v. Ghandtchi, 705 F.2d 1315, 1316 (11th Cir.1983)).

However, although Thomas's death deprives us of jurisdiction to determine the merits of his Eighth Amendment claim and the district court's award of his injunctive relief, “[w]hen plaintiffs clearly succeeded in obtaining the relief sought before the district court and an intervening event rendered the case moot on appeal, plaintiffs are still ‘prevailing parties' for the purposes of attorney's fees for the district court litigation.” ² Diffenderfer v. Gomez-Colon, 587 F.3d 445, 454 (1st Cir.2009). We thus hold that Thomas may still be a “prevailing party” entitled to attorneys' fees for the costs of the district court litigation notwithstanding his untimely death and the subsequent mootness of his lawsuit pending appeal. ³ Accordingly, we vacate the district court's judgment and permanent injunction as to Thomas but grant the pending motion for substitution in order to allow the district court to resolve Thomas's motion for attorney's fees. The district court, in its discretion, may award fees to Thomas's estate if it determines that Thomas “succeeded on any significant issue in litigation which achieved some of the benefit the parties sought in bringing suit.”

Tex. State Teachers Ass'n v. Garland Indep. Sch. Dist., 489 U.S. 782, 791-92, 109 S.Ct. 1486, 1493, 103 L.Ed.2d 866 (1989) (internal citation and quotation omitted).

Our review of the instant suit is thus limited to the remaining live controversy between the defendants and plaintiff McKinney. Our task is to determine whether the district court erred in concluding that the DOC's non-spontaneous use-of-force policy, as applied to McKinney, violates the Eighth Amendment and whether its permanent injunction was both necessary to remedy the violation of McKinney's rights and also properly tailored to the identified harm. Finding no error in the district court's thorough conclusions of law and narrowly tailored injunction, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

In September 2008, after four years of litigation, the district court held a five-day bench trial on the plaintiffs' claims for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. At trial, the district court had the benefit of hearing live testimony from thirteen lay and expert witnesses, the majority of which were officers and medical and mental health experts currently or formerly employed by the DOC. ⁴ The district court also had the opportunity to view numerous exhibits, including video recordings of specific incidents in which DOC officers sprayed McKinney and other plaintiffs with chemical agents. After trial, the district court entered a 75-page order in which it made extensive findings of fact and conclusions of law based on this evidence, which is reported in Thomas v. McNeil, No. 3:04-cv-917-J-32JRK, 2009 WL 64616 (M.D.Fla. Jan. 9, 2009). The first fifty pages of that order are dedicated to factual findings.

The defendants' appellate briefs do not expressly challenge any of these findings as clearly erroneous on appeal, and the defendants conceded at oral argument that they only intend to appeal the district court's legal conclusions. ⁵ Thus, we adopt the district court's uncontested factual findings as our own. For a comprehensive summary of the facts underlying this case, as well as a detailed chronology of Michael McKinney's individual inmate record, we refer the parties and future litigants to the district court's opinion. See id. at *1-20. For purposes of this opinion, we recite only those facts essential to our disposition of this appeal, supplementing with additional facts contained in the record where necessary.

A. Florida State Prison and the DOC's Non-Spontaneous Use-of-Force Policy

At issue in this appeal is the constitutionality of the DOC's non-spontaneous use-of-force policy as applied to McKinney during his incarceration on a close-management wing of FSP. FSP is a maximum security prison in Starke, Florida, that houses a large population of inmates with serious mental illness. Id. at *2. Close management refers to the administrative segregation of those inmates who demonstrate particular difficulty complying with day-to-day prison regulations. Id. Each close-management cell is a completely enclosed nine-by-seven foot single cell, fortified with a solid steel door and containing a small window and a “food flap” for passing food, medication, and other items to the inmate. Id. The DOC's non-spontaneous use-of-force policy permits corrections officers to release chemical agents, typically pepper spray, through the food flap of these cells as a means of disciplining disruptive prisoners who refuse to comply with prison regulations. ⁶ Id. at *2-3.

Pursuant to this policy, corrections officers may administer chemical agents in three one-second bursts into the cell of a recalcitrant inmate in order to force the inmate to comply with the officer's orders and to quell the underlying disturbance. Id. at *2. Non-spontaneous force, as the name implies, is premeditated force, i.e., force that is only available as a disciplinary tool after corrections officers have complied with a series of preliminary procedures. These procedures include the requirement that an officer first confer with a direct supervisor, DOC medical personnel (though not mental health staff), and the Warden of FSP for authorization to use chemical agents in the particular instance on the specific inmate at issue. Id. at *3. In contrast, spontaneous force is available to corrections officers as an immediate means of controlling emergency disturbances such as prison riots, acts of self-mutilation, or threats of violence, which pose imminent harm to an inmate or an officer. Id. at *2 n. 10. The use of spontaneous force at FSP is not at issue in this case.

Inmates in DOC custody receive a mental health classification, ranging from S-1 to S-6, upon entry into the system. Id. at *2. An S-3 classification is the highest-needs mental health classification that the DOC confines in a regular prison setting...