Rich v. Bruce, 96-7619

• Decision Date: 13 November 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96-7619,96-7619
• Citation: 129 F.3d 336
• Parties: Gregory L. RICH, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Sergeant Michael BRUCE, Defendant-Appellant, and Sewall Smith, Warden; James Sanders; James Peguese; Lieutenant Grant; Teresa Wilson-Bogans, Corporal, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 336

129 F.3d 336

Gregory L. RICH, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Sergeant Michael BRUCE, Defendant-Appellant and Sewall Smith, Warden; James Sanders; James Peguese Lieutenant Grant; Teresa Wilson-Bogans, Corporal Defendants.

No. 96-7619.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 1, 1997.

Decided Nov. 13, 1997.

ARGUED: David Phelps Kennedy, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Paul R. Kramer, Paul Kramer, P.A., Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

Before WILKINSON, Chief Judge, and WILKINS and LUTTIG, Circuit Judges.

Reversed by published opinion. Judge LUTTIG wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge WILKINSON and Judge WILKINS joined.

OPINION

LUTTIG, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-appellee Gregory L. Rich filed this § 1983 action against defendant-appellant Michael Bruce, alleging that Bruce violated Rich's rights under the Eighth Amendment. After a bench trial, the district court found for Rich and entered judgment accordingly. For the reasons that follow, we reverse.

I.

Gregory L. Rich is an inmate at the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center. This institution, known as "SuperMax," is the most secure penal institution in Maryland, designed to house inmates with the most serious behavioral and management problems. As a supermaximum security institution, it has single cells, limited inmate movement, limited physical contact between inmates, and limited physical contact between inmates and officers. There are detailed procedures for searching and securing inmates whenever they are removed from their cells.

Because of repeated and egregious misbehavior, Rich was assigned to disciplinary segregation in what was an even more secure part of SuperMax. The inmates in disciplinary segregation are handled in accordance with stringent procedures designed to prevent inmates from coming into any contact with one another. Previous to the events giving rise to this lawsuit, there had been instances of assaults by inmates on other inmates or on prison officials; the rigorous procedures governing the facility in general, and those governing inmates in disciplinary segregation in particular, had been specifically designed, and on occasion modified, to eliminate or minimize these risks. See, e.g., J.A. at 21.

On July 23, 1992, Michael Bruce, at that time a Sergeant at SuperMax, was the supervising officer in charge of the area in which Rich was incarcerated. Bruce removed Rich from his cell and placed him in an outside recreation area. While Rich was secured there, Bruce released another inmate, Kenneth Higgins, from his cell for his recreation period in the "day room" in front of the cells. Higgins was a highly dangerous inmate, and the prison had issued a notice warning that Higgins should be considered an enemy of all the other inmates. S.A. at 14. Furthermore, because Rich had stabbed Higgins some months earlier, Higgins was considered to be Rich's enemy in particular. See S.A. at 6-7.

Forty-five minutes later, Bruce went to bring Rich back from outside recreation. Bruce walked with Rich, who was handcuffed in accordance with MCAC procedures, up the corridor leading from the outside recreation area to the cells, past the sergeant's office and the interview room, then toward the locked door ("door # 58") that separated the corridor from the day room. Bruce asserts that he intended to call Higgins to the door to tell him it was time to return to his cell, then secure Rich in the interview room, then lock Higgins in his cell, and finally return Rich to his cell. Apparently Bruce needed to take Rich through door # 58 to return him to his cell; accordingly, it was necessary for Bruce to return Higgins to his cell first to avoid bringing the inmates into contact with each other.

Presumably because of a misunderstanding, another prison official, who was located in the control room so that she could see both door # 58 and the day room, and who had control over the door by remote control, opened the door. ¹ Higgins jumped through the door with his hand over his head, holding a shank. Despite Bruce's efforts to protect Rich, Higgins was able to stab Rich. Other prison officials came to Bruce's aid, and together they restrained Higgins and gave Rich first aid. Rich required both hospitalization and surgery, and although he ultimately recovered, he has permanent scars.

Bruce, apparently frightened, filed a report of the day's events that falsely stated that he had complied with certain regulations that he had in fact broken. Later, including at trial, he admitted that this report was false. Among the regulations that Bruce violated are the following:

(1) regulations requiring that no more than one inmate be out of his cell for recreation at any given time.

(2) regulations requiring that two officers participate in taking an inmate out of his cell.

(3) regulations requiring that inmates given recreation in the day room wear handcuffs.

(4) regulations requiring that prisoners' clothes and persons be carefully searched before they leave their cells.

See generally S.A. at 2-5; 9-13. As a result of these actions, Bruce was demoted and otherwise disciplined after an internal investigation found he had acted with extreme negligence. See S.A. at 8-9.

Rich thereafter brought suit against Bruce and various other prison officials pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Although judgment was ultimately entered in favor of all other defendants, the district court concluded, after a bench trial, that Bruce had, through his actions and omissions, exhibited deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm to Rich, and that Bruce had therefore violated Rich's Eighth Amendment rights. The court awarded Rich $40,000 in compensatory damages and more than $20,000 in attorneys' fees. See J.A. at 31, 36.

II.

This case is controlled by Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). There, in rejecting an objective standard for "deliberate indifference," the Supreme Court held that,

a prison official cannot be found liable under the Eighth Amendment for denying an inmate humane conditions of confinement unless the official knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety; the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference.

Id. at 837, 114 S.Ct. at 1978 (emphasis added). While the Court made clear that "[w]hether a prison official had the requisite knowledge of a substantial risk is a question of fact subject to demonstration in the usual ways, including inference from circumstantial evidence," id. at 842, 114 S.Ct. at 1981 it made equally clear that inferences from circumstantial evidence cannot be conclusive:

Because, however, prison officials who lacked knowledge of a risk cannot be said to have inflicted punishment, it remains open to the officials to prove that they were unaware even of an obvious risk to inmate health or safety. That a trier of fact may infer knowledge from the obvious, in other words, does not mean that it must do so. Prison officials charged with deliberate indifference might show, for example, that they did not know of the underlying facts indicating a sufficiently substantial danger and that they were therefore unaware of a danger, or that they knew the underlying facts but believed (albeit unsoundly) that the risk to which the facts gave rise was insubstantial or nonexistent.

Id. at 844, 114 S.Ct. at 1982 (emphasis added).

In concluding that Bruce acted with deliberate indifference, the district court purported to apply Farmer. See, e.g., J.A. at 18. However, the district court actually found only that Bruce had actual knowledge of facts from which a reasonable person might have drawn the inference that Bruce's actions exposed Rich to a substantial risk of serious harm, not that Bruce actually drew this inference. In fact, the district court findings affirmatively establish that Bruce did not draw this inference.

The district court found, first of all, that Bruce knew that Rich was at risk from Higgins. The nature of the findings, however, make clear that the district court found only that Bruce knew, as a general matter, that Higgins was a dangerous man and an enemy of Rich:

First and foremost, there is simply no question whatsoever that Officer Bruce knew that Mr. Rich was at risk from Mr. Higgins.... Every officer assigned to that housing unit, ... and Officer Bruce specifically, had actual knowledge of the prior stabbing by Mr. Rich of Mr. Higgins, and had actual knowledge that Mr. Higgins was a very bad person who posed a grave risk of harm to everybody in that institution, inmates and officers alike, and that Mr. Rich required careful treatment and handling at all times.

J.A. at 18-19.

Second, the district court found that Bruce knew of the general risks that all the inmates posed to one another and the prison officials at SuperMax:

[Bruce] obviously knew on July 23, 1992 that he was working in the segregation unit of SuperMax, the most secure institution in the state of Maryland....

He had actual knowledge that the people in [the disciplinary segregation unit] on July 23, 1992 posed a grave risk of harm to each other and to correctional officers.

J.A. at 19.

...