Sharp v. Weston
| Decision Date | 30 November 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-35015,ANDERSON-TAYLOR,99-35202,TAYLOR-ANDERSON,99-35015 |
| Citation | 233 F.3d 1166 |
| Parties | (9th Cir. 2000) JERRY R. SHARP; CURTIS BEARD, aka Tony Wilson; ELMER CAMPBELL; JOEL SCOTT REIMER; RONALD L. PETERSEN; JOSEPH AQUI; GILBERTO SOLIZ; HERMAN R. PASCHKE; RICHARD G. TURAY; JOHN F. HALL; PAUL BEGAY; RANDY PEDERSEN; ANTHONY GALLEGOS; DENNIS PRYOR; ROLANDO T. AGUILAR; SAMUEL WILLIAM DONAGHE, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. DAVID B. WESTON; WILLIAM DEHMER; JOHN; NORM NELSON; KIM VANDOREN; JACK SOWERS; JOHN RUSH; CRYSTAL DIXON; BRENDA NELSON; JOHN LINARD; AL NERIO; PETER HELSEL; SCOTT NEIL; JOHN DOE; JANE LANNING; JEAN SOLIZ, Director of Department of Social and Health Services; MARK J. SELING, PhD; ROBERT SMITH, PhD, Defendants-Appellants. RICHARD GARRETT TURAY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DAVID SPECIAL COMMITMENT CENTER; MARK SELING; DR. JOHN, individually and in his marital community and in his official capacity at the Special Commitment Center at Monroe, WA; NORM NELSON, individually and in his marital community and in his official capacity at the Special Commitment Center at Monroe, WA; WILLIAM DEHMER; JOAN KIRCHOFF; KAREN SULLIVAN; SCOTT NEIL; PETER HAZEL, each in their individual capacity and in their official capacity as employees of the Department of Social and Health Services; RICHARD BOSSE, in his individual capacity as an employee of the Department of Corrections; STEVE WAHL; ANDRE SIMON, Defendants-Appellants |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Sarah J. Coats (argued), Assistant Attorney General, Olympia, Washington, for the defendants-appellants.
John W. Phillips and Felix G. Luna, Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe, Seattle, Washington, for plaintiffs-appellees Jerry R. Sharp, et al.
Karen F. Jones (argued), Graham & James/Riddell Williams, Seattle, Washington, for plaintiffs-appellees Richard G. Turay, et al.
Ronald L. Petersen and Jayzack js. White Crow-reimer (Joel S. Reimer), Pro Se plaintiffs.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington William L. Dwyer, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No.CV-94-00121-WLD D.C. No. CV-91-00664-WLD
Before: Mary M. Schroeder, Robert R. Beezer, and Michael Daly Hawkins, Circuit Judges.
Appellants are the superintendent and clinical director of Washington's Special Commitment Center ("SCC") for persons civilly committed as sexually violent predators. The SCC operates on the theory, recently approved by the Supreme Court,1 that such facilities provide treatment, not punishment, for offenders who have completed their criminal sentences. The appellants seek review of a district court order which denies their request to lift an earlier injunction and details additional steps which need to be taken to provide SCC residents with constitutionally adequate mental health treatment. Appellants contend the district court failed to properly defer to the judgment of qualified mental health professionals and that the scope of the modified order exceeds the court's authority. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. S 1292(a)(1), and we affirm.
SCC resident Richard Turay initially brought this action, claiming the conditions of his confinement violated his civil rights. A trial was held in 1994, and the jury found that SCC was not providing Turay and other residents constitutionally adequate mental health treatment. Turay received nominal damages and Judge Dwyer issued an injunction requiring SCC to bring the treatment program into compliance with constitutional requirements (the "Turay Injunction"). The district court couched the initial injunction in rather general terms, and required SCC to: adopt and implement a plan for hiring and training competent therapists; implement strategies to rectify the lack of trust between the residents and staff; implement a general treatment program for residents, including involvement of spouses and family members and all other generally accepted therapy components; develop individual treatment plans for each resident to measure progress; and provide an expert in treatment of sex offenders to supervise and consult with treatment staff.
SCC was slow to comply with the Turay Injunction, so the district court appointed a special master, Dr. Janice Marques (one of the two individuals proposed by SCC), to assist SCC in compliance and to submit periodic reports to the court. Prior to issuing the order that is the subject of this appeal, the district court had received and reviewed 14 reports from the special master. The district judge had also held several evidentiary hearings on various motions by the plaintiffs for contempt and by SCC to dissolve the injunction, and personally visited SCC twice. Similar motions for contempt and dissolution prompted a new hearing in October 1998.
Meanwhile, another group of SCC residents also brought a court action seeking damages and injunctive relief relating to the confinement conditions, which was assigned to Judge Rothstein (the "Sharp" case). SCC settled the damages claims in the Sharp case, and Judge Rothstein transferred the claims for injunctive relief to Judge Dwyer for simultaneous adjudication with the reconsideration of the Turay Injunction. In October 1998, Judge Dwyer conducted a three-day evidentiary hearing on the Turay/Sharp injunctive relief issues. In November 1998, the district court issued a lengthy order, detailing the history of the cases, the court's findings of fact and conclusions of law, and requiring the SCC superintendent and clinical director to take a number of fairly specific actions to bring the facility into compliance with constitutional requirements.2 The appellants timely appealed from this order.
In reviewing denials of motions to dissolve injunctions, we do not consider the propriety of the underlying order, but limit our review to the new material presented with respect to the motion to dissolve. See Sierra On-Line, Inc. v. Phoenix Software, Inc., 739 F.2d 1415, 1418 (9th Cir. 1984). A party seeking modification or dissolution of an injunction bears the burden of establishing that a significant change in facts or law warrants revision or dissolution of the injunction. See Bellevue Manor Assocs. v. United States, 165 F.3d 1249, 1255 (9th Cir. 1999) (citing Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367 (1992)). In this case, the appellants contend there has been a significant change in facts because they have complied with the Turay Injunction and remedied the underlying constitutional violation. Thus, the district court was required to examine the existing situation at SCC to determine whether the changes in the SCC program were so significant as to warrant an end of court supervision. We review the district court's factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. See Walters v. Reno, 145 F.3d 1032, 1047 (9th Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1003 (1999). We now turn to the requirements of the Turay Injunction and the district court's factual findings regarding SCC's compliance with the injunction.
The original Turay Injunction required SCC to adopt and implement a plan for initial and ongoing training and/or hiring of competent sex offender therapists. In 1998, the district court found there was still a need for additional staff training. Between the time of the original Turay Injunction and the 1998 hearing, the SCC facility was relocated to the McNeil Island Correctional Center ("MICC"), which is operated by the Department of Corrections ("DOC"). Because of the relocation, nearly 90% of the SCC staff was replaced, so at the time of the hearing many had been working at SCC for less than 6 months. Appellees also introduced evidence of a lack of consistency from therapist to therapist in the treatment of residents or in the application of standards to evaluate residents.
The Turay Injunction required SCC to develop and maintain individual treatment plans for residents that include objective benchmarks of improvement so as to document, measure and guide an individual's progress in therapy. In 1998, the district court found that this requirement remained unsatisfied. Testimony by several expert witnesses, including one of SCC's own experts, acknowledged that SCC still did not provide residents with any type of road map that could help residents track their progress or see the potential for cure and release, or if one existed, it was not in any form that the residents could understand. The special master also testified that some individuals who had been in treatment for four years were then assigned back to an orientation program. In its 1998 order, the district court also took notice of the standards for treating sex offenders promulgated by the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers ("ATSA"), which characterizes such individual plans as critical for effective treatment.
The Turay Injunction required SCC to take steps to rectify the lack of trust between the residents and staff. In 1998, the court found that the environment at MICC was severely hampering effective treatment. Shortly after the court issued the Turay Injunction, SCC had stopped conducting strip searches of residents. However, when SCC relocated the facility to MICC, SCC adopted many DOC rules and regulations for SCC residents, including routine strip searches following every visit, monitoring of telephone calls, and restricted meal and activity schedules. At the 1998 hearing, several witnesses, including the special master and the SCC's clinical director and superintendent, testified that the prison atmosphere made it more difficult to provide mental health treatment. The SCC director testified that he found the routine strip searching to be an "abomination" which made it more difficult for him to do his job.
The Turay Injunction required SCC to implement a general treatment program for...
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