May 2017 Jail and Prisoner Law Bulletin

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Jail and Prisoner Legal Issues
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Jail and Prisoner Law Bulletin
A civil liability law publication for officers, jails, detention centers and prisons
ISSN 0739-0998 - Cite this issue as: 2017 JB May
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CONTENTS

Digest Topics

False Imprisonment

Medical Care (3 cases)

Prison and Jail Conditions: General

Prison Litigation Reform Act: Exhaustion of Remedies

Prisoner Assault: By Officers

Retaliation

Strip Searches: Prisoners (2 cases)

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Resources

Cross_References

AELE Seminars:

Public Safety Discipline and Internal Investigations

Oct. 2-5, 2017– Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas

Jail and Prisoner Legal Issues
SAVE THE DATE:

Jan. 22-25, 2018 - Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas

Click here for further information about all AELE Seminars.

MONTHLY CASE DIGEST

Some of the case digests do not have a link to the full opinion.

Most Federal District Court opinions can be accessed via PACER. Registration required. Opinions are usually free; other documents are 10¢ per page.
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False Imprisonment

****Editor's Case Alert****

A man was searched during a traffic stop and a vitamin bottle containing pills was found. Officers conducted a field test which proved negative for controlled substances. They arrested him and an evidence technician at the police station also got a negative result for controlled substances when he tested the pills but reported that one of the pills tested “positive for the probable presence of ecstasy.” He was charged with unlawful possession and a judge, relying solely on an officer’s complaint, ruled that there was probable cause to hold the detainee pending trial. A state police lab then again tested the pills and found no controlled substance, but not before the detainee had been in custody for 48 days.

The detainee sued the city and its officers more than two years after he was arrested but less than two years since the criminal case was dismissed. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected lower court rulings that a two year statute of limitations barred an unlawful arrest claim and that the pretrial detention after legal process was initiated barred a Fourth Amendment claim. The Fourth Amendment prohibits detention without probable cause. When the legal process has begun, but probable cause was not satisfied, as here where the judge’s probable cause determination was allegedly based on fabricated evidence, it does not cut off a Fourth Amendment claim. The unlawful detention claim was properly brought under the Fourth Amendment, rather than the due process clause. On remand, the appeals court was ordered to hold further proceedings on when the claim accrued, unless it found that the city waived its timeliness argument. Manuel v. Joliet, #14-9496, 197 L. Ed. 2d 312, 2017 U.S. Lexis 2021, 85 U.S.L.W. 4130.

Medical Care

An inmate repeatedly experienced and complained about chest pain, as well as pain in his neck, arms, and shoulders, together with dizziness and shortness of breath. After he was taken to a hospital emergency room, cardiologists recommended that he undergo a cardiac catheterization procedure to find out whether he needed surgery or a stent to prevent a heart attack. Correctional doctors employed by a private contractor, however, would not approve the procedure. Three grievances concerning this were denied, after which the chest pains reoccurred, and an outside cardiologist then recommended the medication Ranexa. Because that heart drug was not on the prison’s drug formulary, doctors at the prison denied him that medication, instead keeping him on another drug that made him dizzy. Chest pains over the next two and a half years resulted in multiple hospitalizations. He then received cardiac catheterization, and heart disease was ruled out. He was later provided with Ranexa. But after a six month prescription ran out, renewal was denied and his symptoms returned.

A federal appeals court upheld the rejection of claims against a physician’s assistant for failing to send the prisoner to a hospital emergency room because he could not show that this constituted deliberate indifference to a serious medical need, since he did not actually suffer a heart attack or similarly serious problem at the time in question. Because there were factual issues as to whether the plaintiff exhausted his available administrative remedies on claims against three prison physicians that they denied him a medication that had been effective to control his angina pain, further proceedings on those claims were ordered. Mattox v. Edelman, #16-1412, 2017 U.S. App. Lexis 4510, 2017 Fed. App. 59P (6th Cir.).

An inmate complained 14 times about knee instability and pain stemming from an injury suffered in a fight. The prison’s medical director recommended that the prisoner be assigned to a lower bunk and ordered an MRI test that showed a complete right anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear. A private company that provides medical care to state prisons approved orthopedic follow-up, but the prisoner received no follow-up and no physical therapy. An emergency grievance requesting surgery and complaining that his condition effectively confined him to his cell was denied. He sued doctors and the warden for alleged deliberate indifference to his injury and sought an injunction ordering surgery. A federal appeals court vacated summary judgment for the defendants, ruling that a reasonable jury could find deliberate indifference by the warden and a number of doctors under the circumstances. Diggs v. Ghosh, #16-1175, 850 F.3d 905 (7th Cir. 2017).

A detainee who was a regular heavy drinker and was suffering alcohol withdrawal was allowed to keep with him a bottle of Librium that he had with him when arrested for DUI, and to use it to treat anxiety and withdrawal. Officers checked on him every 15 minutes. By the second day, he complained of shaking from withdrawal, and was given both vitamins and Librium. A nurse ordered that he be given normal treatment for alcohol withdrawal when he again complained.

When his symptoms persisted, he was sent to a hospital, but returned to the jail when a doctor concluded that he was not experiencing delirium tremens. He was later again taken to the hospital, and found to be hypothermic, as well as having low blood pressure, suffering from dehydration, sepsis, and acute respiratory failure. He was in a medically‐induced coma for several days. A federal appeals court found no evidence of deliberate indifference and ruled that the level of medical care provided was reasonable. Collins v. Al-Shami, #15-3179, 2017 U.S. App. Lexis 4921 (7th Cir.).

Prison and Jail Conditions: General

A trial court erred when it granted summary judgment to officers who worked at a booking facility between certain dates on twenty pretrial detainees’ claims alleging that conditions of their confinement while awaiting arraignment violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment on the basis that no jury could have found that nine challenged conditions, considered together or separately, amounted to an objective constitutional deprivation.

Established standards for evaluating objective deprivations extended to all nine conditions, including overcrowding and unusable toilets, and each condition had to be measured by its severity and duration, not the resulting injury. The conditions also had to be analyzed in combination, at least where one alleged deprivation had a bearing on another. The trial court did not conduct the appropriate analysis. Darnell v. City of New York, #15-2870, 849 F.3d 17 (2nd Cir. 2017).

Prison Litigation Reform Act: Exhaustion of Remedies

An inmate claimed that correctional employees failed to prevent an assault on him by his cellmate that caused a broken ankle and also left the injury untreated for months. The trial court granted summary judgment to the defendants, ruling that the prisoner had failed to exhaust available administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. 1997e(a). A federal appeals court reversed, finding that the plaintiff had made a timely complaint to the facility’s complaint examiner and filed a second administrative complaint. Correspondence was then sent to him at the facility after he was transferred elsewhere to a mental health facility where he was forced to take psychotropic drugs. The trial court’s ruling ignored the fact that he had done the best he could under these circumstances Prisoners can’t be required to exhaust remedies that are unavailable to them, the court commented. Weiss v. Barribeau, #16-3039 2017 U.S. App. Lexis 6063 (7th Cir.).

Prisoner Assault: By Officers

Correctional officers were entitled to qualified immunity on an excessive force claim brought on behalf of the estate of an inmate who died. The prisoner was actively resisting the extraction procedure by ignoring directives to lie down on his bunk and resisting the officers’ efforts to subdue him once they entered his cell, and their testimony about the degree of his resistance was corroborated. Under the totality of these circumstances, none of their actions, either singly or in combination, amounted to an objectively unreasonable application of force. Genuine issues of fact, however, remained on the question of whether they were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs when they allegedly allowed him to scream, howl, and bang against his cell door for eight hours without attempting to talk to him or seek medical care for him. Ryan v. Armstrong, #16-1341, 850 F.3d 419 (8th Cir. 2017).

Retaliation

Disciplinary proceedings in three separate years resulted in a prisoner’s loss of 16 months of earned good-conduct credit. He unsuccessfully, but diligently, pursued administrative grievances regarding these hearings. His lawsuit challenged proceedings from two years as having been retaliatory in violation of his First Amendment rights, and that lawsuit was dismissed. He then sought habeas relief in state court, which was denied. A federal habeas petition was denied as moot when he was released from custody, and he then filed a second federal civil rights lawsuit. While screening the complaint under 28 U.S.C. 1915(e) the trial court found that the plaintiff stated claims for due process violations and for retaliation but granted the defendants summary judgment, finding that the lawsuit was barred by precedent requiring a prisoner plaintiff to pursue timely collateral relief while in custody. A federal appeals court reversed, finding that the prisoner did his best to obtain timely relief while in custody, and “precedent requires no more.” Whitfield v. Howard, #15-2649, 2017 U.S. App. Lexis 5383 (7th Cir.).

Strip Searches: Prisoners

A woman arrested for domestic battery refused to exit the vehicle transporting her to the jail. She shouted obscenities, exhibited slurred speech, and was extremely combative. She tested positive for cocaine and cannabinoids, and later claimed that she had been experiencing a “post‐traumatic stress disorder flashback.” Refusing to change into a jail uniform, two female and three male officers restrained her, placed her on her stomach, held her arms over her head, and lifted off her shirt. She responded by banging her head against the floor while shouting, “They’re going to rape me.” The officers removed her clothing, draped a jail uniform over her body, and left her in a cell. She then had a seizure and was hospitalized. She sued under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Her lawsuit claimed that the jail had a “widespread practice” of using excessive force during strip searches, and failing to reasonably accommodate people experiencing emotional distress during such searches. Other prisoners joined her lawsuit to challenge a policy requiring female detainees to wear either white underwear or no underwear at all. The strip search claims were properly rejected, as there was insufficient evidence of such a custom or practice.

Summary judgment was inappropriate as to detainees' claim that the jail's policy requiring female detainees to wear white underwear or no underwear violated the Fourteenth Amendment because the record did not show the policy was within any correctional mainstream, irregular enforcement created the potential for abuse, and the detainees alleged a credible harm to dignity interests. Mulvania v. Rock Island County Sheriff, #16-1711, 850 F.3d 849 (7th Cir.).