Whitson v. Stone County Jail

• Decision Date: 22 April 2010
• Docket Number: No. 08-1468.,08-1468.
• Parties: Penny WHITSON, Appellant, v. STONE COUNTY JAIL; Sorrick; Brown; Richard Hill; Quirt Page; Danny Hankins, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

602 F.3d 920

Penny WHITSON, Appellant, v. STONE COUNTY JAIL; Sorrick; Brown; Richard Hill; Quirt Page; Danny Hankins, Appellees.

No. 08-1468.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: November 19, 2009.

Filed: April 22, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Elizabeth Unger Carlyle, Columbus, MS, argued, for appellant.

Peter A. Lee, Baird, Lightner, Millsap & Harpool, P.C., Springfield, MO, argued (M. Douglas Harpool, on the brief), for appellees.

Before MELLOY, BEAM, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

BEAM, Circuit Judge.

Penny Whitson appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants on her pro se claim for relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that two defendants failed to protect her from a particular assault, and others failed to properly train and supervise the officers responsible for Whitson's safety.¹ Because there remains a question of fact on a determinative issue in this case, and the district court applied the wrong legal standard, we reverse and remand for further proceedings.

I. BACKGROUND

Whitson based her claim on the following facts, which we assume to be true under our standard of review: On December 15, 2005, employees from the Stone County Jail transported prisoners to the Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC). Whitson, a female prisoner, was placed in the prison van with four male prisoners and, although Whitson first attempted to enter the van and sit in the first caged area just behind the transporting officers, she was specifically instructed to sit in the second caged area together with prisoner Richard Leach. The van was very dark inside. Each section of the van was caged separately and the back caged area had two bench seats, which at the outset Leach and Whitson occupied separately. Corporal Shawna Sorrick drove the van, accompanied by Officer Brown, who sat in the front passenger seat. Sorrick and Brown played loud music and the three men in the first caged area were talking loudly. Whitson contends that during the transport Leach managed to remove his hand restraints, grab her arm, sit her on his lap, pin her against the seat in front of her, pull her pants down and rape her. Prior to that transport Whitson had no interaction with Leach. Whitson, embarrassed and humiliated, did not scream and tried to get away from Leach without informing the other inmates.

Whitson did not alert the others in the van when the rape occurred but told Sorrick at a restroom stop that she had been assaulted. Sorrick did not acknowledge Whitson's complaint. Faced with Sorrick's indifference, Whitson waited until she reached the DOC, where she again reported the rape to the authorities. After making her claim at DOC, Whitson ultimately was sent to a hospital where tests confirmed the presence of "motile sperm" in Whitson's vagina.

The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants, holding that because the attack was a complete surprise to even Whitson herself, the defendants necessarily lacked the required knowledge of a substantial risk of harm sufficient to support a claim under § 1983. And, having determined that the defendants' actions did not constitute a failure to protect, the defendants likewise did not violate plaintiff's clearly established constitutional rights and were entitled to qualified immunity. The district court did not specifically address Whitson's failure to-train/supervisory claims in its order granting summary judgment. Whitson appeals.

II. DISCUSSION

We review a grant of summary judgment de novo. Moyle v. Anderson, 571 F.3d 814, 817 (8th Cir.2009). "Summary judgment is proper when the evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party presents no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Id.

A. Constitutional Violation and Qualified Immunity

Because being subjected to violent assault is not "`part of the penalty that criminal offenders must pay for their offenses,'" Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994) (quoting Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347, 101 S.Ct. 2392, 69 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981)), "the Eighth Amendment imposes a duty on the part of prison officials to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners." Perkins v. Grimes, 161 F.3d 1127, 1129 (8th Cir.1998). Prison officials must "take reasonable measures to guarantee the safety of the inmates." Farmer, 511 U.S. at 832, 114 S.Ct. 1970 (quotation omitted). However, "it is not . . . every injury suffered by one prisoner at the hands of another that translates into constitutional liability for prison officials responsible for the victim's safety." Id. at 834, 114 S.Ct. 1970. "In order to establish an Eighth Amendment failure-to-protect claim, a plaintiff must show that the prison official was deliberately indifferent to a `substantial risk of serious harm.'" Young v. Selk, 508 F.3d 868, 872 (8th Cir.2007) (quoting Farmer, 511 U.S. at 828, 114 S.Ct. 1970). In doing so, a prisoner must satisfy two requirements, one objective and one subjective. The first requirement tests whether, viewed objectively, the deprivation of rights was sufficiently serious; i.e., whether the inmate "is incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm." Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834, 114 S.Ct. 1970. The second requirement is subjective and requires that the inmate prove that the prison official had a "sufficiently culpable state of mind." Id. (quotation omitted). In prison conditions claims, which include the failure-to-protect allegations before us, the subjective inquiry regarding an official's state of mind is one of "`deliberate indifference' to inmate health or safety." Id. (quoting Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294, 302-03, 111 S.Ct. 2321, 115 L.Ed.2d 271 (1991)). An official is deliberately indifferent if he or she actually knows of a substantial risk and fails to respond reasonably. Id. at 837, 844-45, 114 S.Ct. 1970.

The biggest quandary in this case is that both the defendants and the district court fixated on Whitson's state of mind as to whether Leach would assault her that morning—a fact that is mostly irrelevant to our analysis. For example, in its determination as to whether an Eighth Amendment violation occurred at all, the district court concluded that defendants' actions did not constitute a failure to protect because the defendants lacked the required knowledge of a substantial risk of serious harm. In doing so, the court adopted the defendants' argument that "in order to prevail in this case, plaintiff must show that she placed defendants on notice of a specific threat to her, and that they failed to take appropriate measures to protect her from the risk of attack." The district court gave decisive weight to Whitson's subjective knowledge as to whether this attack would occur, stating that because Whitson first reported the rape about an hour after it occurred, and testified that the incident was a complete surprise to her, "the defendants . . . lacked the required knowledge of a substantial risk."² But, Whitson's failure to give advance notice of the unanticipated rape is inconclusive as to the defendants' subjective knowledge. A prison official may not "escape liability for deliberate indifference by showing that, while he was aware of an obvious, substantial risk to inmate safety, he did not know that the complainant was especially likely to be assaulted by the specific prisoner who eventually committed the assault." Id. at 843, 114 S.Ct. 1970.

On appeal, defendants attempt to capitalize on the district court's untoward conclusion, arguing again that because Whitson had no prior interaction with Leach, had no idea that Leach might try to sexually assault her, and did not protest the decision to place her in the back of the van with Leach, the officers had no more reason to suspect any harm to Whitson than Whitson did herself. Stated another way, the defendants have claimed throughout these proceedings that because Whitson did not give them notice of a potential risk from Leach, they are not liable. This misstates the law.

They also point to Whitson's deposition testimony where she testified that she was not aware of any other individual who had complained about Leach's conduct and use that fact to claim "there was no history of complaints about Richard Leach, nor were there other female inmates who were allegedly raped by other male inmates during a prison transport." Interestingly, while the latter quoted statement might be relevant to an analysis, it is not a "substantive risk" circumstance supported by evidence. The only evidence in this record regarding knowledge of any kind has to do with Whitson's knowledge regarding this specific attack or the officers' after-the-fact and limited knowledge as to whether Leach and Whitson had any problems with each other at a prior time. As noted above, this evidence is virtually irrelevant to the analysis we conduct today and is insufficient to support a ruling in the defendants favor on a motion for summary judgment. Krein v. Norris, 309 F.3d 487, 491-92 (8th Cir.2002) (affirming the denial of a motion for summary judgment wherein the defendants relied upon their lack of knowledge of a "surprise attack" for dismissal of a plaintiff's deliberate indifference claim). The defendants have simply not established an absence of a genuine issue of material fact, which, as the moving party, is their burden. Moyle, 571 F.3d at 817.

Turning to a credible analysis, then, we first note that the objective inquiry as to whether the risk of assault was sufficiently serious for Eighth Amendment purposes is not before us. The district court made no finding whatever on this first element of the Eighth Amendment analysis. Given the facts advanced, however—inaccessibility of the rear cage, lack of visual contact with the victim and the aggressor by the remotely located supervisor,...