Sears v. Roberts

• Citation: 922 F.3d 1199
• Decision Date: 24 April 2019
• Docket Number: No. 15-15080,15-15080
• Parties: Terry Eugene SEARS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Vernia ROBERTS, F. Dexter, David Prince, Jeffrey Hart, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

922 F.3d 1199

Terry Eugene SEARS, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.Vernia ROBERTS, F. Dexter, David Prince, Jeffrey Hart, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 15-15080

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

April 24, 2019

Jonathan R. Ference-Burke, Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, Ropes & Gray, LLP, WASHINGTON, DC, Erin Macgowan, Ropes & Gray, LLP, BOSTON, MA, Okeechobee CI Warden, Okeechobee CI - Inmate Trust Fund, OKEECHOBEE, FL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Terry Eugene Sears, Pro Se.

Edward Mark Wenger, Pam Bondi, Susan Adams Maher, Matthew F. Vitale, Attorney General's Office, TALLAHASSEE, FL, Eric M. Neiberger, Department of Elder Affairs, 4040, TALLAHASSEE, FL, for Defendant-Appellee EQUARDO RIVERO.

Pam Bondi, Susan Adams Maher, Matthew F. Vitale, Attorney General's Office, TALLAHASSEE, FL, Eric M. Neiberger, Department of Elder Affairs, 4040, TALLAHASSEE, FL, for Defendants-Appellees TINA ROBERTS and FNU ROSSER.

Caroline Johnson Levine, Kenneth Van Wilson, Office of the Attorney General, Civil Litigation, TAMPA, FL, Pam Bondi, Matthew F. Vitale, Attorney General's Office, TALLAHASSEE, FL, Eric M. Neiberger, Department of Elder Affairs, 4040, TALLAHASSEE, FL, for Defendant-Appellee VERNIA ROBERTS.

Caroline Johnson Levine, Kenneth Van Wilson, Office of the Attorney General, Civil Litigation, TAMPA, FL, Pam Bondi, Susan Adams Maher, Matthew F. Vitale, Attorney General's Office, TALLAHASSEE, FL, Eric M. Neiberger, Department of Elder Affairs, 4040, TALLAHASSEE, FL, for Defendant-Appellee F. DEXTER.

Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, MARTIN, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

ED CARNES, Chief Judge:

Terry Eugene Sears is a Florida inmate who claims that three correctional officers physically assaulted him and that one of them sprayed a chemical agent on him for 16 minutes after he was handcuffed and compliant. He also claims that three supervisory officers watched the attack without doing anything to intervene. This is Sears’ appeal from the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the correctional officers on his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 excessive force and deliberate indifference claims. The district court’s misreading of our decision in O’Bryant v. Finch, 637 F.3d 1207 (11th Cir. 2011), led it to limit the evidence from Sears that it considered and to credit the defendants’ version of events over Sears’ sworn allegations. We vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.

I.

This appeal arises from events that occurred at the Polk Correctional Institution in Polk City, Florida. Because of the procedural posture of the case, we view all the evidence in the light most favorable to Sears and will assume that the facts he alleged in his verified complaint, sworn response, and affidavit are true. See Hamilton v. Southland Christian Sch., Inc., 680 F.3d 1316, 1318 (11th Cir. 2012).

A.

On the morning of March 18, 2010, Sears was inside his prison dormitory when he was approached by Robert Dees, a correctional officer. Sears ignored Dees’ attempt to make conversation and refused his order to submit to a pat-down search. As Sears started to leave the dormitory, Dees reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. Sears "snatched away" and told Dees not to touch him. Dees again grabbed Sears and verbally threatened him, letting go only when another officer intervened.

Once free from Dees’ grip, Sears left the dormitory and went to Colonel Vernia Roberts’ office to complain about Dees. When Roberts refused to see him because he didn’t have a pass, Sears headed outside to talk to Captain Felishia Dexter, who had just exited another dormitory. While Sears was telling her about what Dees had done, Officers Dwight Smith and Steven Plough approached and said that they had received a radio call from Dees about Sears. Sears told them that Dees was just retaliating against him.

Smith and Plough tried to handcuff Sears, but Sears resisted and, in his words, "refused to allow myself to be handcuffed." At this point, Sergeant David Prince arrived on scene and began spraying Sears in the face with a chemical agent. Then Smith and Plough "slammed" Sears to the ground and handcuffed his hands behind his back. While Sears was restrained in that way, Smith began punching him in the back of his head and on the side of his face, and Plough grabbed Sears around the neck and choked him. Sears cried out that he couldn’t breathe. Through it all Prince kept spraying Sears in the face with the chemical agent.

While Sears was still lying on the ground handcuffed, Smith stood on Sears’ right leg, shackled his ankles, and repeatedly pushed his face into the dirt. Plough then punched Sears several times in the ribs and kicked him in the back. Finally, Smith and Plough lifted Sears to his feet, and Prince began spraying him in the face with a second canister of chemical agent. Sears swears that the whole physical altercation lasted for about 16 minutes. He also swears that during the entire time Dexter, Roberts, and Lieutenant Jeffrey Hart watched and did nothing to help.

After the correctional officers had finished spraying and hitting Sears, Plough and Smith escorted him to the medical building, and Roberts and Hart followed. Prince unlocked the rear door of the building and turned to Sears and sucker-punched him in the face. Sears fell to the ground and nearly lost consciousness. Prince continued to assault Sears while he was on the ground, kicking him in the buttocks and stepping on his legs. Smith then slapped Sears twice in the face, and then asked if he was alright. Sears cried out for help from Roberts, and he then attempted to shield himself from further blows by hiding his face in his hands.

When the assault finally ended, Sears was sent to the showers to wash off the chemical spray. As a result of the beating, he was left with a black-eye, blurred vision, blisters and burning sensations on his face, a busted lip, knots on his head and right knee, swelling in his wrists, ankles, and face, pain in his ribcage and abdomen, skinned knees, a broken dental plate

, and many scrapes and bruises. Later that same day, he reported that he was having a "psychological emergency" and threatened to commit suicide. He was placed in an isolation cell for a week.

B.

After the altercation, Prince and Dees filed prison disciplinary reports against Sears. Dees charged Sears with disobeying an order by refusing to submit to being handcuffed, and Prince charged him with battery or attempted battery of a correctional officer. Prince stated in his disciplinary report that Sears had refused to comply with repeated orders to submit to being handcuffed and that when Sears "snatched away" from his grip, Prince had "administered an approximate one second burst of chemical agent to Sears’ facial area." Prince also reported that once he did that, Sears "charged towards [him] and began striking [him] in the head and shoulder area with his fists" before the other officers subdued Sears and got him handcuffed and shackled.

Representing himself in the disciplinary hearings, Sears was found guilty by both disciplinary panels. He received 30 days of disciplinary confinement for disobeying orders and 60 days of confinement for the attempted battery. He was also docked 60 days of gain time, though this had no practical effect because of the sentence he was serving. Sears unsuccessfully appealed both sanctions to the prison warden.

C.

Sears filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in December 2011. He claimed that Prince had used excessive force against him in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and that Roberts, Dexter, and Hart had been deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk of serious harm when they watched the assault without intervening, also in violation of the Eighth Amendment.¹ The district court initially denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss these claims because it found that Sears’ allegations, taken as true, were sufficient to establish constitutional violations. But the court later granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, which is the order now on appeal.

In its summary judgment order, the district court reasoned that because the prison disciplinary panel had found Sears guilty of battery or attempted battery against Prince, and because that hearing satisfied due process, Sears could not challenge the panel’s factual findings in this lawsuit. The court wrote: "Sears is not permitted to dispute the facts as stated in [Prince’s disciplinary report]. Sears cannot deny the conduct in the [disciplinary report]; and cannot imply that the [disciplinary report] was false by making allegations that explicitly contradict it." The court also drew solely from the summary judgment exhibits submitted by the officers when it described in its summary judgment order what the "undisputed facts" of the case were.² As a result, the district court found that Prince’s "single application of chemical spray, along with the physical efforts of Smith and Plough[,] brought Sears into compliance," and that "[n]o other force was used or needed." Based on those findings, which it treated as "undisputed" facts, the district court granted summary judgment to all of the defendants. This is Sears’ appeal.

II.

We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment, considering all of the evidence in the light most favorable to Sears as the nonmoving party. See Hamilton, 680 F.3d at 1318. Summary judgment is proper "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). "[A]t the summary judgment stage the judge’s function is not himself to weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter but to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial." Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2511, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).

III.

Under the Eighth Amendment, force is deemed legitimate in a custodial setting if it is "applied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline"...