Wood v. Beauclair
| Decision Date | 04 September 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 10–35300.,10–35300. |
| Citation | 692 F.3d 1041,12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 10255,2012 Daily Journal D.A.R. 12489 |
| Parties | Lance Conway WOOD, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Tom BEAUCLAIR, Director of Prisons; Keith Yordy, OPS; Steve Wolfe, OPS; Phil Foster, Warden of Idaho Correctional Institution of Orofino (ICIO); Dean Allen, Deputy Warden of ICIO; Eric MacEachern, Deputy Warden of ICIO; Shriver, Captain of ICIO; Lawanda Thomason, Lieutenant of ICIO; Ken Aldren, Sergeant of ICIO; Alis Lahie, Sergeant at ICIO; Sandra De Martin, Correctional Officer of ICIO; Atencio, Deputy Warden of Idaho State Correctional Institution; Jim Dorsey, Sergeant of ISCI; Debi Titus, Health Services Administrator of ICIO; Hill, Doctor; Whipple, Nurse of ICIO; Jon–Eric Baillie; Vern McCready, P.A., Defendants–Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Thomas G. Saunders, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Washington D.C., for the plaintiff-appellant.
Keely E. Duke, Hall, Farley, Oberrecht & Blanton, P.A., Boise, ID, for the defendants-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Idaho, B. Lynn Winmill, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. 3:04–cv–00099–WBS.
Before: BETTY B. FLETCHER and HARRY PREGERSON, Circuit Judges, and DONALD E. WALTER, District Judge.*
Plaintiff–Appellant Lance Conway Wood is a state prisoner in Idaho. Wood allegedly engaged in a romantic, but not sexual, relationship with a female prison guard, Sandra de Martin. Wood alleges that both during and after the relationship, Martin perpetrated sexual acts on him without his consent. He filed a civil rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging constitutional violations of the First, Fourth, and Eighth Amendments.
The district court granted summary judgment to defendants on Wood's Eighth Amendment claims finding that the romantic relationship between Wood and Martin was consensual and, therefore, Wood implicitlyconsented to Martin's sexual conduct. Having consented, the district court held, Wood could not state an Eighth Amendment claim. Wood appeals.
The appeal involves sexual abuse of prisoners by those supposed to protect them, the prison guards. Unfortunately, this is a serious problem in our prisons today but when prisoners seek redress for their abuse, often the state argues it has no liability because the prisoner consented to the sexual conduct.
As we explain more fully below, because of the enormous power imbalance between prisoners and prison guards, labeling a prisoner's decision to engage in sexual conduct in prison as “consent” is a dubious proposition.
Wood's complaint alleged that Martin began working as a corrections officer at the prison in 2001 and that Martin started working on the unit where Wood resided in 2002. Wood alleged that Martin had a “reputation for ... being overly friendly with the inmates.” Wood tried to stay away from Martin but she pursued him. They conversed often about personal topics. Eventually, a romantic relationship developed between them. Occasionally, they would hug, kiss, and touch each other on the arms and legs, but they did not engage in sexual contact.
A few months after their relationship began, Wood started to hear rumors that Martin had gotten married. This upset Wood as his religious beliefs did not permit him to engage in adultery.
Shortly after Wood started hearing rumors that Martin was married, he asked her about it twice but she denied it each time. He decided to confront her a third time. Wood went to Martin's office and told her:
[S]he had to be honest with me. Because I did express to her before that my feelings on adultery.... I was kind of crushed in a way because ... I believed that we were working on something ... that we had a future together.
....
I said that we needed to back off.... [W]e got to stop.
He said the reason he wanted to back away was because he wanted to investigate whether she was married.
Twenty minutes later, she entered his prison cell. He described the incident as follows:
She came in to me. I mean, she came right in to me. She told me not to worry, she wasn't married. And she put—she cupped her hand on my groin ... enough to excite me.
Wood described his response:
I pushed her away on that, literally pushed her away.... [I told her] “[t]his isn't the time.... you need to back off on this.”
Wood said that he was very hurt, largely by the fact that Martin was potentially lying to him about whether she was married.
After that incident, Wood tried to end the relationship but Martin sought him out. She subjected him to aggressive pat searches in front of other inmates on a number of occasions. Wood asked another correctional officer to help him but Martin did not stop pursuing him.
After Wood terminated the relationship, Martin again entered Wood's prison cell and touched Wood in an inappropriate way. Wood described the incident as follows:
[Wood:] She told me to get on the wall.... I was in my shorts, gym shorts, and she told me to get on the wall. This was in my house. You could plainly see, I had my T-shirt and my gym shorts on. And I said, “I don't have anything.” She started from my sleeves coming down my shirt. She didn't touch my buttocks. She reached around into my shorts and grabbed ahold of my penis and started to stroke it.
[Questioner:] How long did she do that?
[Wood:] Maybe a few seconds, you know. It was—my mind's flaring at that time.
[Questioner:] How did you end that?
[Wood:] I spun around and reached for her hand.
....
[Questioner:] Did you say anything to her?
....
[Wood:] ... I expressed, you know, my dislike for it. She did say that, “You know you want it.” I told her I didn't.
Martin continued to harass Wood. He did not want to report Martin out of fear of retaliation.
Eventually, Wood decided he had to report the harassment. He completed an inmate concern form and gave it to Sergeant Lucile Townsend. Townsend's superior, Lieutenant Lawanda Thomason questioned Wood about the allegations. The next day, Wood was transferred to a prison in Boise.
On February 27, 2004, Wood brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging the following: (1) sexual harassment by Martin in violation of the Eighth Amendment; (2) repeated body searches by Martin in violation of Wood's privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment; (3) the failure by the defendants to protect Wood from Martin in violation of the Eighth Amendment; and (4) retaliation against Wood for reporting grievances in violation of the First Amendment. On September 22, 2009, the district court issued a summary judgment order that is the subject of this appeal.
The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the first incident of sexual harassment (Martin entered Wood's prison cell and cupped his groin), the second incident (Martin entered Wood's cell, reached her hand into his gym shorts, and stroked his penis) and on Wood's failure to protect and retaliation claims. The district court permitted the Eighth and Fourth Amendment claims based on a series of aggressive, vindictive, and sexual pat searches Martin performed on Wood to proceed to trial. At trial, a jury found that Wood's allegations that Martin performed abusive pat searches did not violate Wood's Fourth or Eighth Amendment rights. Wood does not appeal the jury's verdict, but he appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment on his Eighth Amendment sexual harassment claim and failure to protect claim, and his First Amendment retaliation claim.
The panel reviews a grant or denial of summary judgment de novo. Mark H. v. Hamamoto, 620 F.3d 1090, 1096 (9th Cir.2010). “Summary judgment is to be granted only if the pleadings and supporting documents, viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, show that there is no genuine issue as to a material fact, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Legal Aid Servs. of Oregon v. Legal Servs. Corp., 608 F.3d 1084, 1093 (9th Cir.2010).
The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment in penal institutions. Whether a specific act constitutes cruel and unusual punishment is measured by “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 8, 112 S.Ct. 995, 117 L.Ed.2d 156 (1992).
Sexual harassment or abuse of an inmate by a corrections officer is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. See Schwenk v. Hartford, 204 F.3d 1187, 1197 (9th Cir.2000) (); see also Women Prisoners of the Dist. of Columbia Dep't of Corr. v. District of Columbia, 877 F.Supp. 634, 665 (D.D.C.1994) (), aff'd in part and vacated in part,93 F.3d 910 (D.C.Cir.1996).
In evaluating a prisoner's claim, courts consider whether “the officials act[ed] with a sufficiently culpable state of mind” and if the alleged wrongdoing was objectively “harmful enough” to establish a constitutional violation. Hudson, 503 U.S. at 8, 112 S.Ct. 995.
Shortly after Wood and Martin argued about whether Martin was married, she entered his prison cell and placed her hand on Wood's groin. The district court relied on an Eighth Circuit case, Freitas v. Ault, 109 F.3d 1335, 1338 (8th Cir.1997), for the proposition that “welcome and voluntary sexual interactions, no matter how inappropriate, cannot as a matter of law constitute ‘pain’ as contemplated by the Eighth...
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