Rose v. Saginaw County

• Decision Date: 25 January 2005
• Docket Number: No. 01-10337-BC.,01-10337-BC.
• Citation: 353 F.Supp.2d 900
• Parties: Linda ROSE, Jennifer Cradit, Sylvia Denise Braddock, Lisa Renee Brandimore, Dwayne Butterfield, Bobbie Wayne Carter, Daniel Wray Clayton, Joshua Fuller, Nicholas Anthony Giles, Willie Louis Hendricks, Tanisha Ramon Johnson, Robert Allen Kelsey, Sue Ann Letterman, Donna Lynn Quarles, Gregory Louis Schultz, Amanda Rae Shinaver, Dwayne Alann Simmons, Robin Renee Thomas, Joshua Allen Weigant, Justin Anderson, Craig Mason, and Matthew Starkweather, Plaintiffs, v. SAGINAW COUNTY, Saginaw County Sheriff's Department, Municipal Governmental Entities, Charles Brown, and Officers John Doe, and Jane Doe, (in their individual capacity), jointly and severally, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan

Page 900

353 F.Supp.2d 900

Linda ROSE, Jennifer Cradit, Sylvia Denise Braddock, Lisa Renee Brandimore, Dwayne Butterfield, Bobbie Wayne Carter, Daniel Wray Clayton, Joshua Fuller, Nicholas Anthony Giles, Willie Louis Hendricks, Tanisha Ramon Johnson, Robert Allen Kelsey, Sue Ann Letterman, Donna Lynn Quarles, Gregory Louis Schultz, Amanda Rae Shinaver, Dwayne Alann Simmons, Robin Renee Thomas, Joshua Allen Weigant, Justin Anderson, Craig Mason, and Matthew Starkweather, Plaintiffs, v. SAGINAW COUNTY, Saginaw County Sheriff's Department, Municipal Governmental Entities, Charles Brown, and Officers John Doe, and Jane Doe, (in their individual capacity), jointly and severally, Defendants.

No. 01-10337-BC.

United States District Court, E.D. Michigan, Northern Division.

January 25, 2005.

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Christopher J. Pianto, Fletcher, Wolf, Flint, MI, for Plaintiffs.

James I. DeGrazia, O'Connor, DeGrazia, Bloomfield Hills, MI, Peter C. Jensen, Currie, Kendall, Saginaw, MI, for Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART PLAINTIFFS' MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT, GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS OR FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT, AND DENYING PLAINTIFFS' MOTIONS TO AMEND COMPLAINT TO ADD PARTIES, ADD EXPERT WITNESS AND FOR A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

LAWSON, District Judge.

The plaintiffs in this case are twenty-two individuals who claim that they were subjected to an unconstitutional policy by officials at the Saginaw County jail when they were held as pretrial detainees at various times between May 1999 and December 2001. The Saginaw County sheriff instituted a policy and practice of housing uncooperative and disruptive detainees in administrative segregation cells; and jail personnel would take all of the clothing from such detainees so that they were naked for the time that they spent in administrative segregation. All of the plaintiffs were subjected to this treatment, and some of them allege that they were viewed while naked by jail personnel and inmates of the opposite gender. The defendants have filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings or alternately for summary judgment, and the plaintiffs have filed a cross motion for partial summary judgment. The Court heard arguments from counsel in open court on March 16, 2004, and the matter is now ready for decision. The plaintiffs also have filed additional procedural motions.

The Court finds that the County's policy of confining detainees without any clothing or covering whatsoever is unconstitutional; the individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity from the federal claims; all defendants are entitled to governmental immunity from the state law claims; the plaintiffs have not established facts sufficient to withstand summary judgment on their claim under the state civil rights act; and the plaintiffs' recently-filed procedural motions and motion for a preliminary injunction lack merit. The Court, therefore, will grant in part and deny in part the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, grant in part and deny in part the defendants' motion for summary judgment, and deny the plaintiffs' procedural motions and motion for a preliminary injunction.

I.

This case arises from the alleged mistreatment of twenty-seven plaintiffs while they were in custody at the Saginaw County Jail. The jail is a detention facility operated by Saginaw County to detain arrestees awaiting trial and offenders sentenced to custodial terms of one year or less. The facility holds 525 people at maximum capacity and receives between forty and sixty individuals per day from several law enforcement agencies within Saginaw County; it takes in between 12,000 and 14,000 people per year. The defendants estimate that ten percent or fewer of the detainees are female.

The plaintiffs were processed through the jail between May 22, 1999 and December 29, 2001. During this time over 30,000 people were processed through the jail. Each of the plaintiffs was in some way uncooperative or disruptive during the booking process and therefore was subjected to the jail administrator's policy of being placed in administrative segregation. The jail administrator described the policy as follows:

That if an individual, not just because they're disruptive or disorderly, if they violate the security measures of that jail, or pose harm to themselves or others, the correction officer could request from the sergeant permission to escort the person to segregation administration.

Defs.' Mot. for Summ. J., Ex. A, Dep. of William Gutzwiller at 33.

Whenever a person is placed in administrative segregation, it is the policy and practice of the Saginaw County jail personnel to remove the person's clothing and put the detainee in the segregation cell naked. A detainee's clothes are forcefully removed if he or she does not voluntarily comply with jail personnel orders to remove the clothes prior to entering the administrative segregation cell. Saginaw County deputy sheriff sergeant Gary Van Riper testified: "Clothes would be removed from a person if they did not want them taken off because that's what-the ruling from the command or the policy, however you want to look at it. I guess, stated, that they would go in there with no clothes on, yes." Defs.' Mot. for Summ. J., Ex. B, Dep. of Gary VanRiper at 21. The record evidence discloses that only a detainee who disrupts the security of the jail disrupts the orderly operation of the jail, or is assaultive towards themselves, another detainee, or staff, is placed in administrative segregation. However, the policy of removing clothes is applied to those in administrative segregation without regard to the nature of the offense for which they are detained and in the absence of any individualized suspicion of drugs, weapons, contraband, or threat of suicide. None of the plaintiffs were placed in the jail's general population or on suicide watch.

If a detainee failed to comply with orders to remove his or her clothing prior to placement in the administrative segregation cell, limited force was administered to remove the clothes. "[O]nly the force necessary to do it" was used. Ibid. Male officers would assist in the removal of a female detainee's clothes if the female detainee threatened the female officer's safety. Id. at 22 (stating that "[t]he only time a male would be present when a female was taking off her clothes is if she became violent to the point where the female officer's safety was in danger").

According to the defendants, the naked confinement policy was formulated in August 1996 following an incident that ended in the suicide of a detainee who had been placed in administrative segregation. Apparently, the detainee, dressed in a standard-issue orange jail jumpsuit, was placed in the administrative segregation cell and left unobserved and unattended for several hours. The defendants report that this detainee wedged his jail uniform into the tiny space between the cell door and the door frame and hanged himself. About three months later, another inmate purportedly vandalized one of the direct observation cells and rendered it unusable. The defendants' response to these events was the policy that called for disruptive detainees to be placed in administration cells and mandated that "any inmate placed into these cells would be placed into them without clothes." Defs.' Mot. for Summ. J., Ex. D, Defs' Ans. to Pls.' First Interrog. and Second Request for Prod. of Docs. at No. 16 (italics deleted).

The defendants' policy required a detainee to remain in administrative segregation until such time that he or she no longer posed a threat to himself or herself, others, jail staff, or the secure operations of the jail. See Defs.' Mot. for Summ. J., Ex. C, Dep. of Sheriff Brown at 49. (asserting that "[i]t's taking away the chance that that person may hurt themselves or somebody else, and once they sober up or once they become cognizant of what they're doing, you may have saved that person from tremendous injury").

The parties have submitted incident reports from the jail that recount the circumstances under which jail personnel decided to place the various plaintiffs in administrative segregation:

Linda Rose:

At the above date and time [1/27/01], female listed above was housed in 1IOC2 and began pounding and kicking the door. R/O notified S/C. S/C instructed staff to place female in 1ISC1. Officers Onweller, Worden, D. Brown and Kolb placed subject in Seg. without incident. Property taken and watchsheet placed.

Pls' Ex. 14 at 35.

Jennifer Cradit:

On July 17, 1999 at 0230 hours this S/C was in intake when the city P.D. brought in a disorderly female named Cradit, Jennifer ... Cradit was placed in observation cell # 2 after stating "fuck you" to all of the staff present in intake. While in this observation cell # 2 Inmate Cradit pounded and kicked the glass window and door.

This R/O and other staff tried to calm Inmate Cradit down to no avail. Cradit would only state that she wanted to use the phone and then would tell the whole staff to "fuck off."

Cradit then proceeded to stuff toilet paper in the toilet and flush it until it flooded over. This S/C and Deputies Brown, Kolb, and Thom entered the cell to remove the paper. This was done without incident.

Two minutes later Inmate Cradit was placing her jean shorts in the toilet and flooding the cell again. Again, these officers entered the cell to remove the shorts and to place Cradit in an administrative segregation cell as she was taking off her clothing and disrupting the jail procedures. Cradit was given every opportunity to calm down.

As these officers attempted to remove Inmate Cradit she began to resist and would not let us remove her sandals and jewelry. During this struggle Inmate Cradit attempted to bite this S/C, S/O Miller and Deputy Brown. Inmate Miller was...