Snider v. Pa. DOC
| Decision Date | 08 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION NO. 15-951 |
| Citation | 505 F.Supp.3d 360 |
| Parties | Joel SNIDER v. PENNSYLVANIA DOC, et al. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania |
Joel Snider, Houtzdale, PA, pro se.
Lindsey A. Bedell, Nicole J. Boland, Office of Attorney General Civil Litigation Section, Harrisburg, PA, for Pennsylvania DOC, Torrence State Hospital, Secretary Wetzel, Warden Mooney, Warden Harry, Warden Gilmore, Sgt. Romig, CO Longenderfer, CO McKeehan, CO Nichtman, Brenda Jeremiah, Cherie Fallon, Dorina Varner, Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania, SCI-Waymart, SCI-Somerset, Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office, Deborah Aluord, Trish Kelley, Anthony Luscavage, Michael Miller, Dan Caro, Debra Rand, Eric Stracco, Jay Gardner, E. Valko, Frederick Waine, Tracy Shrieve, John Burt, Kelley Falcione, Hex Kerns-Barr, Susan Cowan, Officer Crawford, Officer Morton, Officer Byrne, Officer Killeen, Sergeant Rivera, Sergent Cleaver, Lieutenant Kuzar, Major Horner, Officer King, Officer Collins, Officer Sanders, Officer Adamson, Officer Jones, Lieutenant Stickla, Tracy Shawley.
Robin A. Read, McNerney, Page, Vanderlin and Hall, Williamsport, PA, for Union County, Warden Shaffer, Pennsylvania Snyder County, Shawn Cooper, Union County Prison Board.
Cassidy L. Neal, Matis Baum O'Connor, P.C., Pittsburgh, PA, for Karen Kaskie, Dr. Pullmueller, Dr. Martinez, Dr. Pushkalai Pillai, Jennifer Herrold.
Martha J. Gale, Administrative Office of PA Courts, Philadelphia, PA, for Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania.
Robert Allen Mix, Lee, Green & Reiter, Inc., Bellefonte, PA, for Clinton County Correctional Facility, Jacqueline Motter, Wayne Bechdel, Ronald Notte, Michael Shearer, Joshua Richards, Tyler Walker, Darby Hughes.
KEARNEY, District Judge Consistent with years of academic, medical, and sociological criticism of the criminal justice system's treatment of mentally ill and intellectually impaired prisoners including the Department of Justice's 2014 review of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, our Court of Appeals has now issued three opinions in the last two years confirming these vulnerable persons’ constitutional and statutory rights while incarcerated. We appreciate corrections officers are not medical professionals; society elected decades ago to spend public funds to imprison many mentally ill persons rather than place them in alternate forms of custody. As shown in cases now awaiting trial in Spring 2021, the criminal justice system placed some mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement as discipline which may only further their illness. The system allegedly reacts with excessive discipline in prison because the mentally ill cannot conform to prison strictures and then compounds the harm with some measure of resigned apathy from the overwhelmed state courts which cannot find suitable places for rehabilitation and care. These prisoners may not afford lawyers and there is no right to counsel in these civil rights/conditions-of-confinement cases. And so they sit in jail with mental illness and no ability, other than their often rambling pro se filings, to shed light on the criminal justice system's alleged deficiencies.
Joel Snider pro se pleads facts consistent with the harm found by our Court of Appeals and described by medical professionals for years. Joel Snider is serving a thirty to sixty-year sentence in Pennsylvania prison after pleading guilty but mentally ill to murder and burglary in Pennsylvania state court. Mr. Snider began challenging both his plea and his prison treatment shortly after his plea and sentence. We today scrutinize one of his cases alleging several state actors’ mistreatment of him as an allegedly mentally ill person. Mr. Snider pro se pleads years of alleged mistreatment in almost diary-fashion beginning with his claiming mental illness leading to murder. He alleges nine groups of over sixty state actors discriminated against him during his incarceration under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act; created "an ongoing hostile environment of cruel and unusual conditions" and deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment; denied him "meaningful court access" in state and federal courts and retaliated against him for "attempted court access" in state and federal courts; obstructed his ability to directly appeal his criminal state court conviction; used excessive force, destroyed his religious materials; fabricated evidence to justify transferring him between correctional facilities in violation of the First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments; and intentionally inflicted emotional distress under Pennsylvania law. Mr. Snider asks we declare all these state actors violated his rights and award him damages in an unspecified amount. He also seeks injunctive relief "to address ongoing retaliation, obstruction, defamation, exclusion, and failure to accommodate" and a "name-clearing hearing."
We address the sufficiency of Mr. Snider's pro se claims through the prism of rather limited motions to dismiss filed by the nine groups of state actors and consistent with our screening obligations for cases proceeding without paying filing fees.1 We waited months for Mr. Snider to respond given his repeated requests for more time and the effects of COVID-19 mitigation upon pro se parties in state prisons. He responded to some motions but not others.2
After working our way through his often confusing fact recitals and with many state actors electing to challenge his claims based only on procedural grounds like Rule 20, we find Mr. Snider pleads claims against some but not all responsible entities under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act (together, "Disabilities Act"), against some but not all responsible persons under the civil rights laws, and for intentional infliction of emotional distress against two corrections officers. We proceed into discovery on claims against:
Without counsel, Mr. Snider over pleaded his claims in one lawsuit. He is unable to obtain discovery yet. He fails to plead claims against the other state actors or medical professionals. We dismiss all other named parties and claims without prejudice to possibly plead facts supporting his presently untenable claims based on discovery.3
Table of Contents
A. Mr. Snider files his first federal action in May 2013 while a pretrial detainee ...379
B. Mr. Snider files this action on May 7, 2015 ...380
C. Mr. Snider's 2015 motion for post-conviction relief in state court ...380
D. Mr. Snider's April and September 2018 federal actions ...381
A. Treatment of Mr. Snider as a pretrial detainee from July 2010 to August 2014 ...383
B. Post-conviction treatment of Mr. Snider from August 8, 2014 to August 2016 ...389
A. Mr. Snider may proceed on Eighth Amendment excessive force claims against Corrections Officers McKeehan and Nichtman ...422
B. Mr. Snider may proceed on his First Amendment right to exercise his religion claim against Officers McKeehan, Nichtman, and Sergeant Romig ...423
C. Mr. Snider may proceed on his First Amendment retaliation claim against individual prison officials and employees as defined ...424
D. Mr. Snider may proceed on his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment claims against Secretary Wetzel, Superintendent Mooney, Deputy Superintendent Luscavage, Deputy Superintendent Miller, Superintendents Harry and Gilmore, Chief Grievance...
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