Tittle v. Jefferson County Com'n

• Decision Date: 14 July 1992
• Docket Number: No. 91-7054,91-7054
• Parties: Jessie Leon TITTLE, as Administrator of the Estate of Stephen Warren Tittle, Plaintiff-Appellant, Rebecca Alexander, as Administratrix of the Estate of Tom Harrell, Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellant, v. JEFFERSON COUNTY COMMISSION, David Orange, John Katopodis, Reuben Davis, Jim Gunter, Chris McNair, Jefferson County, Giattina, Fisher & Co., Architects, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 606

966 F.2d 606

Jessie Leon TITTLE, as Administrator of the Estate of Stephen Warren Tittle, Plaintiff-Appellant Rebecca Alexander, as Administratrix of the Estate of Tom Harrell, Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellant, v. JEFFERSON COUNTY COMMISSION, David Orange, John Katopodis Reuben Davis, Jim Gunter, Chris McNair, Jefferson County, Giattina, Fisher & Co. Architects, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 91-7054.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

July 14, 1992.

Yearout, Myers & Traylor, P.C., Clarence L. McDorman, Birmingham, Ala., for R. Alexander.

Jeffrey W. Bennitt, Kizer & Bennitt, John F. Kizer, Jr., Birmingham, Ala., for Jessie Leon Tittle.

Charles S. Wagner, Jeffrey M. Sewell, Jefferson County Attorney's Office, Birmingham, Ala., for defendants-appellees.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Before KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge, GODBOLD and JOHNSON ^*, Senior Circuit Judges.

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs-Appellants Jessie Leon Tittle and Rebecca Alexander, representing the estates of Stephen Warren Tittle and Tom Harrell, respectively, ("Plaintiffs") appeal from a district court order granting the motion for summary judgment of Defendants-Appellees Jefferson County (Alabama), the Jefferson County Commission, and several individual County Commissioners who were sued in their official capacities ("Defendants"), in a suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The action alleged Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment violations for practices and policies relating to the housing, supervision, and protection of prison inmates. Plaintiffs allege that defendants violated the constitutional rights of the decedents in two ways: (1) that the County failed to train jail supervisors in how to identify prisoners with suicidal tendencies, a policy of deliberate indifference that led to the suicide of these inmates; and (2) that the County was deliberately indifferent to the need of the inmates of the Jefferson County Jail by housing prisoners in cells that they knew to be dangerously defective and probably would result in inmate suicide. The district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment on both of the plaintiffs' theories. For the reasons set out below, we AFFIRM the lower court's judgment as it relates to the claim of failure to train, REVERSE the judgment regarding the dangerously defective condition of the prison cells, and REMAND the issue to the district court for further proceedings.

I. Facts

A. Stephen Tittle

Stephen Tittle was arrested by the Birmingham Police Department in the early morning of October 25, 1988. He was charged with robbery and placed in the Jefferson County Jail. Jail personnel processed Tittle according to the standard policy, which included a brief questionnaire, filled out by the deputy on duty, containing several questions to determine if an inmate was contemplating suicide. If an inmate demonstrated suicidal tendencies, he or she was placed in the medical ward of the jail and remained under constant supervision. ¹ The district court found that the deputy sheriff on duty screened Tittle and that Tittle stated that he had never been under the care of a psychiatrist, had never attempted suicide, was not dependent on drugs or alcohol, was not using street drugs, and had no serious illness or injury. The deputy also reported that the inmate exhibited no abnormal or unusual behavior. Tittle was therefore placed with the general population of the jail.

Plaintiff Jessie Tittle (Stephen's father) submitted affidavits from Stephen Tittle's brothers, Russell and Michael, stating that Stephen appeared depressed and anxious, and that they told a deputy sheriff at the jail that they were worried about his behavior and that Stephen should be watched. Russell Tittle asserts that the deputy replied that all inmates "are watched." The deputy on duty during that time was deposed and stated that she has no knowledge of speaking with either Russell or Michael Tittle. Stephen's parents were also deposed. They stated that they had no reason to believe that Stephen was contemplating suicide and that they had no knowledge of their son Michael speaking to jail personnel about Stephen's mental state.

At 1:55 a.m. on October 28, 1988, a deputy sheriff found Tittle hanging in his one-person cell from a bar across the window of the cell, tethered by a strip of bed sheet around his neck. The guard had checked Tittle at 12:16 a.m. and the inmate had appeared to be sitting on his bunk with the lights off. When the guard returned forty-five minutes later and Tittle was in the same position, the guard realized that Tittle was hanging from the window bar. The deputy could not enter the cell because he did not possess an emergency key. Control room personnel opened the cell and cut Tittle down from the bar. Paramedics were unable to revive him and pronounced him dead. The inmate in the next cell subsequently reported having heard a gasping sound approximately four hours prior to the discovery of Tittle's body; the coroner's report confirmed Tittle's time of death as approximately four hours prior to discovery.

B. Tom Harrell

On February 10, 1989, Tom Harrell was charged with violation of the terms of his probation and placed in a cell in the Jefferson County Jail. The deputy sheriff questioned Harrell, who stated that he had never been under the care of a psychiatrist or attempted suicide, was not dependent on alcohol or drugs, was not using street drugs, was taking no medication prescribed by a physician, and had no serious medical condition. The deputy sheriff who processed Harrell indicated that the inmate exhibited no abnormal or unusual behavior. Harrell had been committed to the Jefferson County Jail on three previous occasions and jail records indicated no prior suicidal behavior, attempted suicide, or threats of suicide during any of these earlier incarcerations. Harrell was therefore placed with the general population of the jail.

Contrary to his statements to jail personnel, Harrell had previously been under psychiatric care and had attempted suicide at least once previously. Billy Cox, a friend of Harrell's, stated in an affidavit that when he visited Harrell in jail, Harrell was talking "crazy." Cox claimed that he called the jail the week Harrell killed himself, and informed an unnamed person that Harrell "had a problem and had tried to kill himself before." He added that Harrell should be watched closely because he might attempt suicide again. According to Cox, the man to whom he spoke (presumably a deputy sheriff), responded that Harrell would be all right.

A deputy sheriff found Harrell hanging from a bar across the window of his one-person jail cell on February 18, 1989 at 10:42 p.m. He had last been observed alive at 10:00 p.m. during a routine check of the cell block. The officer who first observed Harrell to be hanging from the bar did not open the cell because he did not possess an emergency key. He notified personnel from the control room, who opened the cell and cut Harrell down from the bar. Paramedics could not revive Harrell and pronounced him dead at 11:00 p.m.

C. Suicides at the Jefferson County Jail

Tittle and Harrell were not the first inmates to commit suicide at the new Jefferson County Jail, nor were they the first to hang themselves from the horizontal bar across each window. The district court found that from October 20, 1987 through December of 1989, fifty-seven suicide attempts occurred at the Jefferson County Jail, four of which were successful. Twenty-nine of the attempts were by hanging; the majority--including Tittle's and Harrell's--were made from the iron bar across the window in each cell. Harrell's suicide was the third successful suicide in six months; all of these deaths were accomplished through the use of the iron bar across the window. ²

Subsequent to the suicides at issue here, the County changed the jail's suicide prevention policy, resulting in fewer attempted suicides and fewer successes. Jefferson County has now placed an officer in charge of instruction on suicide prevention, as well as instituted more in-depth questioning of incoming inmates to determine whether they have suicidal tendencies. In 1989, after Harrell's suicide, the horizontal security bars across the cell window were covered; since that time there have been no successful suicides in the jail.

II. Procedural Background

Plaintiff Jessie Leon Tittle filed suit against the following defendants: Jefferson County; the County Commission; five individual Commissioners (sued in their official capacities); ³ and Giattina, Fisher & Co., Inc., the architectural firm that designed the Jefferson County Jail, ⁴ alleging deprivations of the rights of Stephen Tittle in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and various state claims arising from the same facts. Plaintiff Rebecca Alexander, administratrix of the Estate of Tom Harrell, filed a motion to intervene in the suit, which the district court granted.

Plaintiffs allege that the suicides were a proximate result of the practices, customs, and policies of Defendant Jefferson County and its agents (the County Commission and its individual Commissioners), and its failure adequately to train jail supervisors in the supervision and protection of the inmates of the Jefferson County Jail. The plaintiffs also allege that Jefferson County and its agents violated the rights of the decedents because they were deliberately indifferent to a dangerous defect in the decedents' cells--the horizontal bar across the cell window from which Harrell and Tittle both hanged themselves.

Defendants contend that because neither inmate manifested suicidal tendencies or threatened suicide at the time of his commitment or thereafter, there was no indication to jail personnel that any extraordinary measures were needed during decedents'...