Savard v. Rhode Island

• Decision Date: 04 August 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-1568.,02-1568.
• Citation: 338 F.3d 23
• Parties: Angela SAVARD, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. State of RHODE ISLAND, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

338 F.3d 23

Angela SAVARD, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. State of RHODE ISLAND, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 02-1568.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard November 6, 2002.

Decided August 4, 2003.

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Gregory A. Belzley, with whom Dinsmore & Shohl LLP and Thomas W. Kelly were on brief, for appellants.

Rebecca Tedford Partington, Deputy Chief, Civil Division, with whom Patrick C. Lynch, Attorney General, was on brief, for appellees.

Before BOUDIN, Chief Judge, COFFIN and BOWNES, Senior Circuit Judges, TORRUELLA, SELYA, LYNCH, LIPEZ and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.

JUDGMENT AND OPINIONS EN BANC

This appeal having been considered by the court en banc, the judgment of the district court is affirmed by an equally divided court. The opinions that follow reflect the views of the participating judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge (with whom BOUDIN, Chief Judge, and LYNCH and HOWARD, Circuit Judges, join).

The plaintiffs, all of whom were arrested in Rhode Island for non-violent, non-drug-related misdemeanors, were subjected to unconstitutional searches of their persons incident to their detention at the Adult Correctional Institutions (the ACI). These searches, conducted pursuant to a longstanding institutional policy, encompassed both strip searches (i.e., visual inspections of the naked body) and visual body cavity searches (i.e., inspections of the anal and genital areas).¹ After the courts struck down the strip search policy, the plaintiffs sued the State of Rhode Island and a number of prison officials for damages sustained as a result of the illegal intrusions.

The plaintiffs' suit invoked 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2000). Because the State is immune from suits for damages under section 1983, see Will v. Mich. Dep't of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 71, 109 S.Ct. 2304, 105 L.Ed.2d 45 (1989); Johnson v. Rodriguez, 943 F.2d 104, 108-09 (1st Cir.1991), the controversy before us focuses on the liability vel non of the individual defendants. After some preliminary skirmishing, the district court entered summary judgment in favor of those defendants on the basis of qualified immunity. A panel of this court reversed that ruling, but the full court subsequently granted rehearing en banc and (as is customary in such instances) ordered the panel opinion withdrawn. The court now divides equally and thus affirms the district court's ruling. The judges who subscribe to this opinion believe that affirmance is fully warranted: upon a broad review of the preexisting law and its application to the unusual situation at the ACI, we conclude that, when the underlying events occurred, prudent prison officials reasonably could have believed that Rhode Island's strip search policy was constitutional.

I. BACKGROUND

In reviewing a grant of summary judgment, we rehearse the facts in the light most sympathetic to the non-moving parties (here, the plaintiffs), indulging all reasonable inferences in their favor. See, e.g., Suarez v. Pueblo Int'l, Inc., 229 F.3d 49, 53 (1st Cir.2000). Here, however, that praxis has little bearing, for the facts upon which our decision turns are largely undisputed.

Unlike other states, Rhode Island has no regional or county detention facilities. It operates only a single, all-purpose penitentiary: the ACI. Centrally located in Cranston, Rhode Island, the ACI comprises seven separate maximum security facilities. Two of those units — one for women and the other for men — receive all persons committed to the custody of the Department of Corrections regardless of the nature of their offenses. At the times material hereto, these intake facilities housed an array of prisoners ranging from newly sentenced felons to convicts under protective custody to pretrial detainees to arrestees. All of these individuals, except for detainees held in protective custody, were commingled while in various parts of the intake facilities. Detainees held in protective custody used the same areas as other inmates but at different times.

During the currency of this arrangement, Rhode Island maintained written policies that required all new entrants into the ACI, including misdemeanant arrestees, to undergo strip and body cavity searches. In 1999, Craig Roberts ran afoul of this policy. Local police, having made a routine stop of a motor vehicle in which Roberts was a passenger, learned that the Rhode Island Family Court had issued a body attachment — the functional equivalent of a writ of arrest — addressed to him. Although Roberts protested that the body attachment had been withdrawn and produced what purported to be documentation to that effect, the police detained him.

In accordance with the customary procedure, the police transported Roberts to the ACI. Upon his admission, he was twice subjected to strip and body cavity searches. These searches uncovered no drugs, weapons, or other contraband. Shortly thereafter, a sheriff verified that the body attachment had been withdrawn. Roberts was released.

Roberts was gone but not forgotten. He brought suit in the federal district court alleging that the strip searches had violated his constitutional rights. Upon cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court ruled that the strip searches had offended Roberts's rights under the Fourth Amendment and enjoined the State from continuing to enforce the written policies then in effect. Roberts v. Rhode Island, 175 F.Supp.2d 176, 183 (D.R.I.2000) (Roberts I). We affirmed. Roberts v. Rhode Island, 239 F.3d 107, 113 (1st Cir. 2001) (Roberts II).

Rhode Island abandoned the proscribed policy from and after the date of the district court's decision (March 17, 2000). Thereafter, eighteen plaintiffs — all of whom had been arrested for non-violent, non-drug-related misdemeanors and subjected to strip and body cavity searches prior to that date — brought a new action in the federal district court on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated. In their class-action complaint, the plaintiffs alleged that the searches violated their constitutional rights and sought money damages.

The suit named as defendants the State and a galaxy of prison officials. Upon the defendants' motion, the district court dismissed Roberts's claim for damages based on the doctrine of res judicata. See, e.g., Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 94, 101 S.Ct. 411, 66 L.Ed.2d 308 (1980) (stating that res judicata precludes a plaintiff from relitigating issues that were or could have been raised in an earlier action against the same defendant prescinding from the same set of operative facts); Kale v. Combined Ins. Co., 924 F.2d 1161, 1165-66 (1st Cir. 1991) (same). The court thereafter entered summary judgment against the remaining plaintiffs. The court reasoned that, prior to the decision in Roberts I, it was not clearly established that prison officials needed some particularized suspicion before strip-searching misdemeanant arrestees who were about to be introduced into the general population at a maximum security prison (and, therefore, that the defendants enjoyed the protection of qualified immunity). This appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

We review orders granting summary judgment de novo. Plumley v. S. Container, Inc., 303 F.3d 364, 369 (1st Cir.2002). Where, as here, a party's entitlement to summary judgment hinges on a claim of qualified immunity, we must balance the need to vindicate constitutional rights against the need to insulate public officials from civil litigation that might unduly inhibit the assiduous discharge of their duties. See Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 638, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). In balancing those competing needs, we employ a three-part algorithm. Suboh v. Dist. Att'y's Office, 298 F.3d 81, 90 (1st Cir.2002); Hatch v. Dep't for Children, Youth and Their Families, 274 F.3d 12, 20 (1st Cir.2001). The threshold question is whether the plaintiffs have established a constitutional violation. Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 736, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002); Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). The second question deals with fair warning; it asks whether the law was clearly established at the time of the constitutional violation. Hope, 536 U.S. at 739-41, 122 S.Ct. 2508; Anderson, 483 U.S. at 638-40, 107 S.Ct. 3034. The final question is whether a reasonable official, situated similarly to the defendant(s), would have understood that the conduct at issue contravened the clearly established law. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151.

In this case, the first part of the algorithm need not detain us. We acknowledge that strip searches are intrusive and degrading (and, therefore, should not be unreservedly available to law enforcement officers). The Roberts decisions exemplify this thinking; they hold unequivocally that the ACI's policy of strip-searching persons arrested for non-violent, non-drug-related misdemeanors, in the absence of particularized suspicion, violated the Constitution. See Roberts II, 239 F.3d at 113; Roberts I, 175 F.Supp.2d at 183. The questions on which this appeal turns, therefore, involve the second and third branches of the qualified immunity algorithm. We must determine whether the law was clearly established, prior to March 17, 2000, to the effect that prison officials need at least reasonable suspicion before subjecting misdemeanant arrestees to strip searches when introducing them into the general population of a maximum security prison, and whether a reasonable prison official, situated similarly to the defendants, would have understood at that time that the policy in place at the ACI transgressed the Constitution.

Although the bases for these determinations often overlap, the instant plaintiffs cannot prevail unless we determine both questions favorably to them. Thus, we begin our analysis with an examination of whether the law can be said to have been "clearly established" at or before the critical...