State Bank of St. Charles v. Camic

• Decision Date: 13 July 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-2781,82-2781
• Citation: 712 F.2d 1140
• Parties: STATE BANK OF ST. CHARLES, as Administrator of the Estate of Christopher A. Ward, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. David CAMIC, Patrick Ahlgren, Donald Stimson, Dan Peterson, and The City of Aurora, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1140

712 F.2d 1140

STATE BANK OF ST. CHARLES, as Administrator of the Estate of Christopher A. Ward, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. David CAMIC, Patrick Ahlgren, Donald Stimson, Dan Peterson and The City of Aurora, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 82-2781.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 6, 1983.

Decided July 13, 1983.

Wendal W. Clancy, Clancy, McGuirk & Hulce, P.C., St. Charles, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.

Craig S. Mielke, Reid, Ochsenschlager, Murphy & Hupp, Aurora, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before PELL and ESCHBACH, Circuit Judges, and JAMESON, Senior District Judge. ^*

PELL, Circuit Judge.

The State Bank of St. Charles (Bank), suing on behalf of the estate of Christopher A. Ward (Ward), deceased, appeals from the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the City of Aurora, Illinois, and individually named Aurora police officers. The principal issue on appeal is whether questions of material fact exist relevant to the Bank's claims that the defendants violated Ward's constitutional rights by prohibiting him from making a phone call prior to their placing him into a cell and/or failing adequately to supervise Ward so as to prevent his committing suicide while he was incarcerated.

I. FACTS

A. The Parties

Ward, upon whose behalf the Bank sues, committed suicide while incarcerated in a cell at the City of Aurora, Illinois, police department on May 28, 1979. Defendants David Camic, Patrick Ahlgren, Donald Stimson, and Dan Peterson are police officers who were in the employ of the City of Aurora on the date of Ward's death. As developed below, Camic was the officer responsible for arresting Ward for driving with a suspended driver's license, following Ward's involvement in a minor traffic accident. Ahlgren was one of two officers who drove Ward from the scene of the accident to the police station and who attempted to gain from Ward the information required to complete the department's booking form. Stimson was a booking officer whose duties included conducting regular cell checks. Peterson was voluntarily dismissed from this action and is not involved in this appeal.

B. Events of May 28, 1979

Ward was involved in a minor automobile accident at approximately 6:00 P.M. In response to a call for assistance from the first officer at the scene, Camic arrived at the site of the accident approximately fifteen minutes later. He arrested Ward for driving with a suspended license, a Class A misdemeanor requiring a $100.00 bond. Because Ward was obviously intoxicated, Camic called for a vehicle to transport Ward to the police station. Ahlgren, along with officer Turnbow, arrived in a squad car. Camic, Turnbow, and Ahlgren attempted to search Ward. Ward resisted their efforts both to search him and to put him into the squad car. According to Camic, Ward attempted to strike him. Camic, in return, struck Ward in the stomach.

Ward, together with Ahlgren and Turnbow, arrived at the booking room of the Aurora Police Department (APD) sometime Lieutenant Olin, an APD supervisor, arrived in the booking area while the officers were attempting to elicit information from Ward. He witnessed Ward's lack of cooperation. Olin was also apparently told by Ahlgren that the only information they could obtain from Ward was his name and address. Olin then told Ahlgren to lock Ward in a cell. Ward again became abusive and violent, kicking Ahlgren and generally resisting while the officers removed his property, including his belt and shoe laces, and took him to a cell out of sight of the booking area.

                between 6:30 P.M. and 6:45 P.M.   The two officers sought information from Ward in order to complete the booking form.   Although eventually twenty of the twenty-five boxes on the form were completed, Ward allegedly refused to cooperate with the booking formalities.   Throughout the procedure, Ward repeatedly demanded the right to make a phone call.   Turnbow informed him that he would be permitted a call when the booking formalities were completed
                

The three officers left the cell area at approximately 6:55 P.M. After leaving the cell area, Ahlgren marked on the booking sheet that Ward had "refused" to make a phone call. According to Ahlgren, this characterization reflected his view that Ward could have made a phone call had he cooperated with the officers in completing the booking form. A notation on the form was also made that Ward was behaving in a "freaky" manner.

Stimson had gone to dinner about 6:45 P.M. He did not then know of Ward's incarceration. Stimson returned about 7:40 P.M. After assisting another officer in fingerprinting a prisoner, Stimson began a routine cell check. At 7:47 P.M., Stimson discovered Ward dead in his cell. Ward had ripped his shirt into five pieces of cloth and made a rope with which he hanged himself. At the time Stimson discovered Ward, he had been dead of strangulation approximately thirty minutes.

C. Relevant Policies and Regulations of the APD

The APD requires that a person be afforded a reasonable number of phone calls before he is confined. These calls are to be made within a "reasonable" time which is defined as meaning within the first hour after arriving at the place of custody. The APD regulations also state that cells are to be checked every hour and that every person "should be considered as a potential suicide victim."

D. Proceedings Below

The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the grounds that neither delaying Ward's phone call until he became more sober nor failing to prevent Ward's suicide constitutes a constitutional deprivation. The district judge stated: "Because the uncontested facts fail to establish any wrongdoing by the defendants beyond an isolated omission to supervise the prisoner, the claim involves simple negligence at best that does not rise to the level of a constitutional deprivation."

II. MERITS

In Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), the Supreme Court stated that:

[I]n any § 1983 action the initial inquiry must focus on whether the two essential elements to a § 1983 action are present: (1) whether the conduct complained of was committed by a person acting under color of state law; and (2) whether this conduct deprived a person of rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

Id. at 535, 101 S.Ct. at 1913. Because it is conceded that the defendants were acting under color of state law, this court's task on review focuses on the second prong of the Parratt test. We must determine whether the district judge correctly determined that no genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether Ward suffered a constitutional In determining whether genuine issues of material fact exist, only those inferences that follow reasonably from the evidence must be construed in favor of the party against whom the motion is made. E.g., Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Voigt, 700 F.2d 341, 349 (7th Cir.1983).

                deprivation at the hands of the APD. 1  The Bank alleges violations of Ward's Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.   We address in turn whether:  (1) Ward's Sixth Amendment right to counsel was abridged;  (2) the arrest and confinement of Ward that culminated in his suicide deprived him of the Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment;  and (3) Ward's Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law were violated by the APD.   Finally, we discuss whether a claim based on alleged violations of state tort law is cognizable in this action
                

A. Right to Counsel

In Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964), the Supreme Court held that the right of an accused person to consult an attorney of his choosing attaches "when the process shifts from investigatory to accusatory--when its focus is on the accused and its purpose is to elicit a confession." Id. at 492, 84 S.Ct. at 1766. In Escobedo, the police had interrogated the defendant at length about the murder of which he was accused. In the course of the interrogation, Escobedo implicated himself in the crime. Escobedo had repeatedly asked to see his attorney and had been misinformed by the police that his lawyer didn't want to see him.

Escobedo does not support the Bank's claim that Ward's Sixth Amendment right to consult an attorney was violated in the present case. As the Supreme Court has subsequently noted, the prime purpose of Escobedo was to guarantee the " 'full effectuation of the privilege against self-incrimination' " rather than to "vindicate the constitutional right to counsel as such." Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 689, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 1882, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972) (quoting Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 729, 86 S.Ct. 1772, 1778, 16 L.Ed.2d 882 (1966)). There is no contention whatsoever that the questions asked of Ward prior to his incarceration aimed to elicit a confession or otherwise cause him to incriminate himself. The questions pertained solely to the biographical data required for completion of the booking form.

Further, any argument that this routine line of questioning could be characterized as accusatory rather than investigatory, and therefore within the purview of the constitutional right to counsel, is precluded by Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972). In Kirby, the Court rejected the argument that the petitioner should have been advised of his right to counsel prior to a pre-indictment "show-up." The Court held that the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings--by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information or arraignment--is the point at which the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches. Id. at 689-90, 92 S.Ct. at 1882-83.

In this case, the alleged deprivation of counsel occurred before any adversary judicial...