Trenary v. Gonsalves
| Decision Date | 23 March 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 79426-4,79426-4 |
| Court | Washington Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Snohomish County Sheriff Ty TRENARY, Appellant, v. Timothy GONSALVES and Christopher McMullen, Respondents. |
Sean Donald Reay Snohomish County Prosecutor 3000 Rockefeller Ave Everett, WA, 98201-4046, for Appellant(s).
Washington Appellate Project, Nancy P. Collins, Washington Appellate Project, 1511 Third Avenue, Suite 610, Seattle, WA, 98101, for Respondent(s).
PUBLISHED OPINION
Andrus, J. ¶1 Snohomish County Superior Court issued a writ of mandamus prohibiting the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office from using restraints on Timothy Gonsalves and Christopher McMullen at any non-jury criminal hearings. The Sheriff appeals, arguing that mandamus was inappropriate because corrections transport deputies do not have a mandatory legal duty to remove a defendant’s restraints absent a court order and because Gonsalves and McMullen had adequate legal remedies outside of mandamus. We agree and reverse the trial court’s writ of mandamus.
FACTS
¶2 On December 12, 2018, Timothy Gonsalves, an in-custody defendant being held in the Snohomish County Jail pending two separate trials, filed a petition for a writ of mandamus against the Snohomish County Sheriff, Ty Trenary, and his deputy officers (hereinafter "Sheriff") to "[c]ease placing physical restraints on this pretrial detainee or any similar[ly] situated citizen when present in the courthouse for judicial hearings, absent a hearing and judicial order that a particular individual presents specific security risks which requires the use of said physical restraints." That same month, Gonsalves amended the petition to add Christopher McMullen, another in-custody defendant, as an additional petitioner.
¶3 Gonsalves and McMullen alleged below that the Sheriff maintains a blanket policy of shackling all in-custody defendants during transport to court hearings, while awaiting court hearings, and during those proceedings without conducting individualized assessments of a particular defendant’s dangerousness or flight risk. They alleged that Snohomish County Superior Court conducts omnibus and trial call hearings in Department 304, during which in-custody defendants in the courtroom must remain in restraints unless a court orders them to be removed. They further alleged that "it is the practice in Snohomish County Superior Court" to transport in-custody defendants to criminal motions hearings, plea hearings, trial call hearings, and sentencing hearings in restraints and to leave those restraints in place during these hearings.
¶4 Gonsalves and McMullen did not challenge any practice of the Snohomish County Superior Court. Instead, they sought a writ only against the Sheriff, claiming that the Sheriff and those under his command were violating their due process rights and those of all detainees by shackling them "absent a compelling showing following [a] hearing."
¶5 The Sheriff objected to the use of the mandamus procedure to address the issues raised by Gonsalves and McMullen. To support this objection, the Sheriff presented declarations from the elected Sheriff, Ty Trenary; Jamie Kane, the Major at the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office Corrections Bureau (Bureau), which operates the Snohomish County Jail; and Anthony Aston, the Chief of the Bureau. They described the following procedures and practices within the jail and the courthouse:
¶6 The Sheriff is responsible for a number of duties and functions in the county, including police patrol, criminal and traffic investigations, search and rescue operations, and management and operation of the county jail. The daily population of the jail averages approximately 900 individuals. The Bureau has developed and implemented written policies for the transport and restraint of in-custody defendants to and during court hearings. The policy considers the movement of any in-custody defendant to be a high risk activity. The custodial staff assigned to transport in-custody defendants follow routine practices and procedures for assembling and transporting these individuals to court.
¶7 First, in-custody defendants scheduled to appear for a court hearing are assembled in a "transport holding" area within the jail. The area, comprised of multiple occupant and single occupant cells, allows custodial staff to segregate people by gender and security level. If an in-custody defendant is housed in a maximum security area within the jail, they are placed in wrist and waist restraints prior to leaving their housing unit before they reach the transport holding area. All other in-custody defendants are placed in waist and wrist restraints
in the transport holding area before leaving the jail.
¶8 Corrections deputies then escort the in-custody defendants through a tunnel from the jail to the courthouse. They walk into the courthouse basement, at which time custody deputies place each in-custody defendant into leg restraints. The corrections deputies then escort the group of restrained defendants into public elevators to holding cells on the second or third floors of the courthouse, or into an unsecure area at the back of Department 304. A corrections deputy then conducts security sweeps of the courtrooms and verifies the location and time of each defendant’s hearing. The current courthouse configuration does not provide for secure transport to each courtroom. The deputies navigate public areas and elevators to reach each courtroom.
¶9 In the past, deputies escorted defendants from the holding area in the courthouse to their respective courtrooms in full waist, wrist, and leg restraints. For jury trials, the defendants would be handcuffed behind their backs and escorted into the courtroom where the handcuffs were removed before the jury entered. Historically, the deputies escorted defendants to court in waist, wrist, and leg restraints for all non-jury trial court hearings and left the restraints in place during the hearings. If there were multiple defendants with hearings scheduled in the same courtroom, the deputies brought them all to that courtroom at the same time and staged them in the jury box until each one’s hearing began.
¶10 Before Gonsalves and McMullen filed this lawsuit, the Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office arranged a meeting with the Snohomish County Public Defenders Association, judges from superior and district court, and staff from the Bureau to discuss the use of restraints during transport of in-custody defendants from the county jail to courtrooms and during court proceedings. As a result of this meeting, the Sheriff temporarily agreed to change its policy:
Corrections currently is prepared to present inmates for their court hearings out of restraints. This does not apply to transport of inmates from the Jail to the courthouse or maintaining inmates in the courthouse before and after hearings.
Under this agreement, for criminal hearings in courtrooms other than Department 304, deputies brought defendants into a courtroom one at a time. Unless a court ordered otherwise, the deputies removed the restraints before the judge took the bench. Once the hearing concluded, deputies placed restraints back on the defendant and escorted that defendant back to the holding area. This process repeated until all defendants scheduled to appear for a hearing had completed their court appearance.
¶11 For the criminal hearings in Department 304, deputies staged all defendants in the back of the courtroom in waist, wrist, and leg restraints. The deputies removed each defendant’s restraints before their appearance and placed them back on after each defendant’s hearing concluded.
¶12 Although the Sheriff and Bureau representatives agreed to this procedure, they nevertheless believed that it decreased courthouse safety and impacted the deputies’ ability to maintain control of defendants. They also testified that it stressed the operational functions of the jail because additional deputies were necessary to monitor defendants during court proceedings. One concern expressed by the jail managers is the fact that the deputies transporting defendants do not work in the housing units with the defendants and, as a result, do not know each individual’s baseline behaviors and personalities. The transport deputies must be vigilant to a defendant who, under stress from the court proceedings, may act out unexpectedly. And the restraints are used as a way to keep the defendants safe from each other, as there may be co-defendants present in the courtroom at the same time. Finally, the Sheriff and Bureau management are concerned about the safety of the courtroom staff who may be unaware of risks presented by the presence of a defendant’s friends, family, or enemies in the courtroom audience.
¶13 The trial court conducted a hearing on the petition on December 28, 2018. The record indicates that neither Gonsalves nor McMullen presented any evidence before or at the hearing. At the conclusion of this hearing, the court granted the writ of mandamus. The trial court reasoned that under Washington law, "a prisoner is entitled to be brought into the presence of the court free from restraints." It stated that the Sheriff had a legal duty not to violate this right and that it was a violation of this duty not to remove restraints when a defendant was in "the presence of the court." Gonsalves and McMullen were "in the presence of the court" when "court is in session," and "[c]ourt is in session when the judge is on the bench and the proceedings are on the record." The trial court also found that Gonsalves and McMullen lacked an adequate legal remedy, making mandamus appropriate.
¶14 The trial court, however, declined to prohibit the Sheriff from transporting all defendants from the jail to the courtroom in restraints, and it limited the writ to Gonsalves and McMullen, rejecting their argument that it should apply to similarly situated individuals. The writ states:
BY ORDER OF...
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