Sinn v. Lemmon
| Decision Date | 14 December 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 18-1724,18-1724 |
| Parties | Dylan SINN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bruce LEMMON, Commissioner, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Michael K. Sutherlin, Attorney, LAW OFFICE OF MICHAEL K. SUTHERLIN, P.C., Crawfordsville, IN, Daniel L. Kent, Attorney, Mary Jane Lapointe, Attorney, LAPOINTE LAW FIRM, P.C., Indianapolis, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Aaron T. Craft, Attorney, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Indianapolis, IN, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before Flaum, Rovner, and Scudder, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff-appellant Dylan Sinn was incarcerated within the Indiana Department of Corrections ("IDOC") from June 2011 to February 2015. In 2014, while an inmate at Putnamville Correctional Facility ("Putnamville"), he suffered injuries from two separate assaults by other inmates. Sinn filed this lawsuit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against defendants-appellees, various prison officials, alleging deliberate indifference in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Sinn appeals the district court’s decision to grant judgment on the pleadings as to Putnamville Sergeant Scott Rodgers1 and Putnamville Correctional Officer Paul Hoskins, as well as the district court’s decision to grant summary judgment as to John Brush, former Putnamville Unit Manager, Stanley Knight, former Putnamville Superintendent, and Bruce Lemmon, former IDOC Commissioner. We affirm the judgments of the district court in all respects except one: we reverse and remand the district court’s grant of summary judgment as to Brush.
Sinn suffered two attacks by fellow inmates during his incarceration at Putnamville. The IDOC had transferred Sinn to the facility in 2014 after his good behavior made him eligible for a lower security level. His initial placement was an open dorm in 17 South. After moving through several other dorms, Sinn moved to 11 South in April 2014.
While imprisoned at these various dorms, Sinn witnessed daily fights between other inmates, and he noticed that guards were rarely present when fights began. The record shows that Putnamville struggled to deal with overcrowding of inmates and understaffing of guards. The facility was designed for 1,650 inmates, but it had a recorded average daily population of 2,490 state prisoners in 2013. Putnamville was also unable to fill correctional officer vacancies in a timely manner; in April 2014, there were 27 vacancies at the facility out of 350 positions. Additionally, at his deposition, Sinn said he rarely saw more than one guard at any of the dorms, except maybe once or twice a week.
Sinn felt affected by gang activity as soon as he arrived at Putnamville, but he did not report any threats until his April 2014 assaults. Sinn acknowledges that he received information from the IDOC encouraging inmates to report illegal activity, including "security threat groups" (i.e. gangs).
The first attack on Sinn occurred on April 24, 2014, and it was partially captured on video. Several inmates stole Sinn’s property box and hauled it into the bathroom to divvy up the contents. When Sinn realized what happened, he ran into the bathroom to retrieve the box, at which point several inmates attacked him by grabbing him from behind, restraining his arms, and punching him in the face several times.3 Sinn only sustained minor injuries: he "split [his] hand," "had some scrapes," and "[m]aybe [had] a busted lip or something." No guards were present at the time of the attack. After the attack, though, Correctional Officer Paul Hoskins and Sergeant Scott Rodgers arrived. They handcuffed Sinn and the two other inmates who had been attacked, took them to a back office for questioning, and reviewed the surveillance footage.
At his deposition, Sinn said he was "pretty sure" the inmates who attacked him were members of the "Vice Lords" gang, "or real good friends of them," in part because Hoskins told Sinn the attackers were Vice Lords. Sinn believed he was targeted because he was an "unaffiliated[ ] [w]hite, clean-cut, tall, nerdy guy with glasses." He believed an inmate "become[s] a pretty easy target when [he’s] unaffiliated."
After reviewing the surveillance footage, Rodgers and Hoskins decided to move Sinn and the other two inmates to new dormitories; they transferred Sinn to 18 South. Sinn complained to Rodgers and Hoskins that they were not moving the attackers, and he told them that he was still concerned for his safety because In response, Sinn says Rodgers and Hoskins told him to talk to his counselor.
Within a few hours of arriving at 18 South, Sinn said he "was met by other gang members of the same gang letting me know that it wasn’t over yet; that they were going to get me when [the] time came and when they saw fit." He did not report those threats. Instead, when he went to breakfast the next morning, April 25, he talked to Unit Manager John Brush about what had happened. Sinn had interacted with Brush before this incident and trusted him, in part because Brush had facilitated a relocation request for Sinn in the past and in part because Sinn felt Brush genuinely cared about his wellbeing.
Brush already knew about the first attack when they met that morning, according to Sinn, and he asked Sinn how he was doing. Sinn told Brush his concerns; specifically, he testified that he told Brush, Sinn did not tell Brush the specific names of any people he was concerned might attack him because he did not know any of their names at that point. He did tell Brush that he wanted to be moved to a different dorm. Brush told Sinn to send him a written request and he would "look over it as soon as he [could]."4
Per these directions, Sinn wrote Brush a letter dated April 26, 2014, describing his concerns. In this letter, Sinn does not use the specific words "gangs" or "Vice Lords" but focuses on the racial difference between the attackers (who were all black) and those attacked on April 24 (who were all white):
Sinn either placed this letter in Brush’s box or slipped it under the counselor’s door. The record does not establish exactly when Brush read Sinn’s letter. Brush does not remember receiving or reading the letter, but he conceded at his deposition that the letter "probably came to [him]." Sinn estimated that it typically took "two or three days" for a letter to be processed through the prison mail system.
Sinn also communicated his safety concerns in two other ways. He told Putnamville Sergeant Myers that he was in danger and needed protection from being assaulted again. Sinn says Myers told him to simply "deal with it." Sinn also filled out a grievance, dated April 28, which stated that he had been assaulted and robbed on April 24 in 11 South by a "number of black gang members" and the "other people involved [were] being retaliated against." However, the record does not establish who received this grievance or when they received it.
On April 30, 2014, two inmates attacked Sinn in the bathroom area of 18 South; as with the earlier assault, no officers were present. Sinn believed his attackers were gang members and that they intended to retaliate against him for defending himself in the first attack. As a result of this assault, Sinn sustained a broken nose
, jaw, and leg. Investigators identified the assailants as Chauncey Davenport and Marquette Neal; the IDOC had previously identified Davenport as a gang member. The IDOC placed Davenport and Neal in disciplinary segregation and referred the case to the internal disciplinary board as well as the Putnam County Prosecutor. Sinn was ultimately released from IDOC custody in 2015.
Sinn originally filed this action against eighteen defendants in Marion County Superior Court on May 27, 2015. Defendants removed the case to federal court on September 3, 2015. As relevant here, Sinn alleged Rodgers, Hoskins, Brush, Knight, and Lemmon all violated the Eighth Amendment by failing to protect him from gang violence at Putnamville. While Sinn alleged Rodgers, Hoskins, and Brush were individually responsible for their personal involvement in these events, he alleged that Lemmon and Knight (as Commissioner of IDOC and Superintendent of Putnamville, respectively) were individually liable because they ignored rampant overcrowding, understaffing, and gang problems at the facility.
Approximately six months after Sinn filed the complaint, all defendants except Brush moved for judgment on the pleadings pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c). On January 24, 2017, the district court granted in part and denied in part this motion. The court dismissed all official capacity claims...
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