Navejar v. Iyiola

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit
• Writing for the Court: PER CURIAM.
• Citation: Navejar v. Iyiola, 718 F.3d 692 (7th Cir. 2013)
• Decision Date: 29 May 2013
• Docket Number: No. 12–1182.,12–1182.
• Parties: Eduardo NAVEJAR, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Akinola IYIOLA, et al., Defendants–Appellees.

718 F.3d 692

Eduardo NAVEJAR, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.Akinola IYIOLA, et al., Defendants–Appellees.

No. 12–1182.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Submitted April 19, 2013.^*

Decided May 29, 2013.

Eduardo Navejar (submitted), Pontiac, IL, pro se.

Christopher M.R. Turner, Attorney, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for Defendants–Appellees.

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and WILLIAMS and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

Eduardo Navejar, an Illinois state prisoner, brawled with a prison guard. He swears that after guards subdued and handcuffed him, they kicked, stomped, and pepper-sprayed him twice, and then they denied him adequate medical care. The district court denied his motions to recruit counsel and later entered summary judgment for the guards on his claims that they violated the Eighth Amendment. On appeal Navejar argues that the court erred by refusing to recruit counsel for him. Because the court applied the wrong legal standard to Navejar's motion, and the lack of counsel prejudiced him, we reverse.

We assume that the following factual allegations of the complaint are true and draw all possible inferences in favor of Navejar. Biblia Abierta v. Banks, 129 F.3d 899, 902 (7th Cir.1997). Navejar was imprisoned in Stateville Correctional Center in 2008. One evening while proceeding to the cafeteria, Navejar spoke to other inmates in their cells. Akinola Iyiola, a lieutenant at the prison, ordered him to get out of the cafeteria line because prison rules forbid inmates, while being transported, from stopping to speak to other inmates. Navejar disobeyed the order, became belligerent, and punched Iyiola. Other guards soon converged on the scene to assist Iyiola, and they wrestled Navejar to the ground where he was soon handcuffed.

Navejar described in an affidavit and at his deposition the force that guards used after they handcuffed and subdued him. He testified that Iyiola kicked him in the forehead near his eye, and an unidentified guard stomped his head against the ground. Next another guard, Sergeant Michael Grant, pepper-sprayed Navejar. Guards then dragged Navejar along the floor and carried him down some stairs where Iyiola sprayed more pepper spray in Navejar's face. Guards then left Navejar alone for a half-hour in a segregation cell, while he screamed in pain, before he was allowed to wash off the pepper spray.

The next morning a guard brought Navejar to Stateville's health care unit, where nurses examined him. But before a doctor could provide medical attention, Lieutenant Glen Elberson escorted Navejar out of the health care facility, explaining that he was being transferred to Pontiac Correctional Center. That afternoon at Pontiac, Navejar was examined by a physician, who concluded, after administering X-rays, that he had suffered only bruises and scratches.

Prison officials investigated the clash between Navejar and Iyiola and charged Navejar with four disciplinary violations: assaulting prison staff, creating a dangerous disturbance, insolence, and disobeying an order, all of which he denied. After a hearing, the disciplinary board found Navejar guilty. It concluded that Navejar started the physical altercation when he “suddenly swung” at Iyiola and that Iyiola was “hit on the nose and upper lip” during the ensuing fight. Among other punishments, the board revoked one year of good time credits. Navejar appealed the ruling and submitted a grievance accusing the guards of using excessive force. He lost both the appeal and the grievance.

Navejar then sued Iyiola, Grant, Elberson, and other unnamed prison guards in federal court, alleging that the guards used excessive force and were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment. See42 U.S.C. § 1983. (He also brought a claim, no longer pursued, that the discipline violated his right to due process.) During discovery, the defendants produced a few documents “as a courtesy” to Navejar. But they refused Navejar's other requests, including his request for more documents about or recordings of the altercation, citing security risks and burden.

Navejar moved four times for the recruitment of pro bono counsel. He filed two of his motions at the start of the case, another after the guards moved to dismiss his due-process claim, and a fourth after they moved for summary judgment. His motions asserted why he believed he was incapable of representing himself: he did not finish high school, he suffered from (an unspecified) mental illness, he had difficulty with English, he had repeatedly been moved from prison to prison and thus had trouble securing help for his case, and he had been denied access to the law library during prison lockdowns. Navejar's first two motions did not assert that he had sought counsel on his own; the district court never ruled on these motions. The third and fourth motions, though, explained that Navejar had contacted attorneys to represent him. The court denied these two motions.

But the court denied the latter two motions without citing Pruitt v. Mote, 503 F.3d 647 (7th Cir.2007) (en banc), and instead relied on older cases in brief minute orders. It began by applying the legal standard in Gil v. Reed, 381 F.3d 649, 656 (7th Cir.2004), in evaluating (1) whether the plaintiff appears competent “to try” the case himself, and (2) whether recruiting counsel “would provide a substantial benefit to the court or the parties, potentially affecting the outcome.” The court concluded that counsel was unnecessary in Navejar's case because he “alleged no physical or mental disability” precluding him from investigating the facts of his case and “[n]either the legal issues raised in the complaint nor the evidence that might support Plaintiff's claims are so complex or intricate that a trained attorney is necessary.”

The district court granted summary judgment for the prison guards. The court struck Navejar's statement of material facts and deemed admitted the defendants' statement, reasoning that Navejar had committed two critical errors: (1) impermissibly attempting to create a fact dispute by citing “self-serving evidence”—his affidavit where he asserted that guards beat and pepper-sprayed him after he was cuffed and subdued; and (2) adding his own factual assertions in response to the defendants' statement of facts, rather than presenting them in a separate statement, as required by N.D. Ill. L.R. 56.1(b)(3)(C). With the defendant's version of events uncontradicted, the court concluded that no reasonable jury could determine that the guards used excessive force against Navejar. Alternatively, the court reasoned, Navejar's excessive-force claim was barred by Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), because the prison disciplinary board found Navejar guilty of assaulting Iyiola. Finally, the court concluded that Navejar could not recover for deliberate indifference against Elberson because no evidence suggested that Navejar suffered from a serious medical condition or that Elberson had a culpable mental state. (The district court's treatment of deliberate indifference was clearly correct, so we say nothing further about it.)

Navejar makes only one argument on appeal: that the district court abused its discretion by failing to recruit him a lawyer. In a civil case, the court has discretion to recruit counsel to represent a litigant who is unable to afford one. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(1); Ray v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 706 F.3d 864, 866–67 (7th Cir.2013). In Pruitt we refined the standards for evaluating whether to recruit counsel. If a plaintiff makes a reasonable attempt to secure counsel, the court must examine “whether the difficulty of the case—factually and legally—exceeds the particular plaintiff's capacity as a layperson to coherently present it.” Pruitt, 503 F.3d at 655. This inquiry does not focus solely on the plaintiff's ability to try his case—it also includes other “tasks that normally attend litigation” such as “evidence gathering” and “preparing and responding to motions.” Id. When ruling on a motion to recruit counsel, the court should take account of all evidence in the record relevant to the plaintiff's capacity to litigate. Id. We will overturn the district court's decision only when the court has abused its discretion based on the evidence in the record when it ruled on the motion. Id. at 658–59. And even if the district court abuses its discretion, we will reverse only if the plaintiff shows prejudice—“a reasonable likelihood that the presence of counsel would have made a difference in the outcome of the litigation.” Id. at 659 (emphasis removed).

In its orders denying Navejar's § 1915(e)(1) motions, the court erred in three ways. First, by relying on Gil instead of Pruitt, the court believed that it should decide whether Navejar was competent to try his case. See Gil, 381 F.3d at 656. But Pruitt clarified that the proper inquiry focuses on “whether the plaintiff appears competent to litigate his own claims,” 503 F.3d at 655 (emphasis in original), with tactics like discovery and motion practice “that normally attend litigation.” Id. Second, by stating without elaboration that Navejar's claims are not “so complex or intricate that a trained attorney is necessary,” the district court resurrected boilerplate language that we disapproved of in Pruitt because it ignores the plaintiff's abilities. Id. at 649, 660. Although the court briefly referred to Navejar's competence, stating that Navejar “alleged no physical or mental disability,” the record contradicts its statement. Navejar stressed his limited education, mental illness, language difficulties, and lack of access to fellow prisoners or other resources for assistance after his transfer from Stateville. See alsoIll. Admin. CodeE tit. 20, § 701.180(a) (restricting mail correspondence between inmates in different prisons). Third, the court...