Wilkins v. Gaddy ( 2010 )


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  •                       Cite as: 559 U. S. ____ (2010)                  1
    Per Curiam
    SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
    JAMEY L. WILKINS v. OFFICER GADDY
    ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED
    STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
    No. 08–10914.    Decided February 22, 2010
    PER CURIAM.
    In Hudson v. McMillian, 
    503 U. S. 1
    , 4 (1992), this
    Court held that “the use of excessive physical force against
    a prisoner may constitute cruel and unusual punishment
    [even] when the inmate does not suffer serious injury.” In
    this case, the District Court dismissed a prisoner’s exces
    sive force claim based entirely on its determination that
    his injuries were “de minimis.” Because the District
    Court’s approach, affirmed on appeal, is at odds with
    Hudson’s direction to decide excessive force claims based
    on the nature of the force rather than the extent of the
    injury, the petition for certiorari is granted, and the judg
    ment is reversed.
    I
    In March 2008, petitioner Jamey Wilkins, a North
    Carolina state prisoner, filed suit in the United States
    District Court for the Western District of North Carolina
    pursuant to 
    42 U. S. C. §1983
    . Wilkins’ pro se complaint
    alleged that, on June 13, 2007, he was “maliciously and
    sadistically” assaulted “[w]ithout any provocation” by a
    corrections officer, respondent Gaddy.1 App. to Pet. for
    Cert. C–4. According to the complaint, Gaddy, apparently
    angered by Wilkins’ request for a grievance form,
    “snatched [Wilkins] off the ground and slammed him onto
    the concrete floor.” 
    Ibid.
     Gaddy “then proceeded to punch,
    kick, knee and choke [Wilkins] until another officer had to
    ——————
    1 The   materials in the record do not disclose Gaddy’s full name.
    2                    WILKINS v. GADDY
    Per Curiam
    physically remove him from [Wilkins].” 
    Ibid.
     Wilkins
    further alleged that, “[a]s a result of the excessive force
    used by [Gaddy], [he] sustained multiple physical injuries
    including a bruised heel, lower back pain, increased blood
    pressure, as well as migraine headaches and dizziness”
    and “psychological trauma and mental anguish including
    depression, panic attacks and nightmares of the assault.”
    
    Ibid.
    The District Court, on its own motion and without a
    response from Gaddy, dismissed Wilkins’ complaint for
    failure to state a claim. Citing Circuit precedent, the court
    stated that, “[i]n order to state an excessive force claim
    under the Eighth Amendment, a plaintiff must establish
    that he received more than a de minimus [sic] injury.” No.
    3:08–cv–00138 (WD NC, Apr. 16, 2008), pp. 1, 2 (citing
    Taylor v. McDuffie, 
    155 F. 3d 479
    , 483 (CA4 1998); Riley v.
    Dorton, 
    115 F. 3d 1159
    , 1166 (CA4 1997) (en banc); foot
    note omitted). According to the court, Wilkins’ alleged
    injuries were no more severe than those deemed de mini
    mis in the Circuit’s Taylor and Riley decisions. Indeed,
    the court noted, Wilkins nowhere asserted that his inju
    ries had required medical attention.
    In a motion for reconsideration, Wilkins stated that he
    was unaware that the failure to allege medical treatment
    might prejudice his claim. He asserted that he had been
    prescribed, and continued to take, medication for his
    headaches and back pain, as well as for depression. And
    he attached medical records purporting to corroborate his
    injuries and course of treatment.
    Describing reconsideration as “an extraordinary rem
    edy,” the court declined to revisit its previous ruling. No.
    3:08–cv–00138 (WD NC, Aug. 25, 2008), p. 1. The medical
    records, the court observed, indicated that some of Wil
    kins’ alleged injuries “were pre-existing conditions.” Id.,
    at 3. Wilkins had sought treatment for high blood pres
    sure and mental health issues even before the assault.
    Cite as: 559 U. S. ____ (2010)           3
    Per Curiam
    The court acknowledged that Wilkins received an X ray
    after the incident “to examine his ‘bruised heel,’ ” but it
    “note[d] that bruising is generally considered a de mini
    mus [sic] injury.” Id., at 4. The court similarly character
    ized as de minimis Wilkins’ complaints of back pain and
    headaches. The court denied Wilkins leave to amend his
    complaint. In a summary disposition, the Court of Ap
    peals affirmed “for the reasons stated by the district
    court.” No. 08–7881 (CA4, Jan. 23, 2009).
    II
    In requiring what amounts to a showing of significant
    injury in order to state an excessive force claim, the
    Fourth Circuit has strayed from the clear holding of this
    Court in Hudson. Like Wilkins, the prisoner in Hudson
    filed suit under §1983 alleging that corrections officers
    had used excessive force in violation of the Eighth
    Amendment. Evidence indicated that the officers had
    punched Hudson in the mouth, eyes, chest, and stomach
    without justification, resulting in “minor bruises and
    swelling of his face, mouth, and lip” as well as loosened
    teeth and a cracked partial dental plate. 
    503 U. S., at 4
    .
    A Magistrate Judge entered judgment in Hudson’s favor,
    but the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed,
    holding that an inmate must prove “a significant injury” in
    order to state an excessive force claim. Hudson v. McMil
    lian, 
    929 F. 2d 1014
    , 1015 (1990) (per curiam). According
    to the Court of Appeals, Hudson’s injuries, which had not
    required medical attention, were too “minor” to warrant
    relief. 
    Ibid.
    Reversing the Court of Appeals, this Court rejected the
    notion that “significant injury” is a threshold requirement
    for stating an excessive force claim. The “core judicial
    inquiry,” we held, was not whether a certain quantum of
    injury was sustained, but rather “whether force was ap
    plied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore disci
    4                    WILKINS v. GADDY
    Per Curiam
    pline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.” 
    503 U. S., at 7
    ; see also Whitley v. Albers, 
    475 U. S. 312
    , 319–
    321 (1986). “When prison officials maliciously and sadisti
    cally use force to cause harm,” the Court recognized, “con
    temporary standards of decency always are violated . . .
    whether or not significant injury is evident. Otherwise,
    the Eighth Amendment would permit any physical pun
    ishment, no matter how diabolic or inhuman, inflicting
    less than some arbitrary quantity of injury.” Hudson, 
    503 U. S., at 9
    ; see also 
    id.,
     at 13–14 (Blackmun, J., concurring
    in judgment) (“The Court today appropriately puts to rest
    a seriously misguided view that pain inflicted by an exces
    sive use of force is actionable under the Eighth Amend
    ment only when coupled with ‘significant injury,’ e.g.,
    injury that requires medical attention or leaves perma
    nent marks”).
    This is not to say that the “absence of serious injury” is
    irrelevant to the Eighth Amendment inquiry. 
    Id., at 7
    .
    “[T]he extent of injury suffered by an inmate is one factor
    that may suggest ‘whether the use of force could plausibly
    have been thought necessary’ in a particular situation.”
    
    Ibid.
     (quoting Whitley, 
    475 U. S., at 321
    ). The extent of
    injury may also provide some indication of the amount of
    force applied. As we stated in Hudson, not “every malevo
    lent touch by a prison guard gives rise to a federal cause of
    action.” 
    503 U. S., at 9
    . “The Eighth Amendment’s prohi
    bition of ‘cruel and unusual’ punishments necessarily
    excludes from constitutional recognition de minimis uses
    of physical force, provided that the use of force is not of a
    sort repugnant to the conscience of mankind.” 
    Ibid.
     (some
    internal quotation marks omitted). An inmate who com
    plains of a “push or shove” that causes no discernible
    injury almost certainly fails to state a valid excessive force
    claim. 
    Ibid.
     (quoting Johnson v. Glick, 
    481 F. 2d 1028
    ,
    1033 (CA2 1973)).
    Injury and force, however, are only imperfectly corre
    Cite as: 559 U. S. ____ (2010)            5
    Per Curiam
    lated, and it is the latter that ultimately counts. An in
    mate who is gratuitously beaten by guards does not lose
    his ability to pursue an excessive force claim merely be
    cause he has the good fortune to escape without serious
    injury. Accordingly, the Court concluded in Hudson that
    the supposedly “minor” nature of the injuries “provide[d]
    no basis for dismissal of [Hudson’s] §1983 claim” because
    “the blows directed at Hudson, which caused bruises,
    swelling, loosened teeth, and a cracked dental plate, are
    not de minimis for Eighth Amendment purposes.” 
    503 U. S., at 10
    .
    The allegations made by Wilkins in this case are quite
    similar to the facts in Hudson, and the District Court’s
    analysis closely resembles the approach Hudson dis
    avowed. Wilkins alleged that he was punched, kicked,
    kneed, choked, and body slammed “maliciously and sadis
    tically” and “[w]ithout any provocation.” Dismissing Wil
    kins’ action sua sponte, the District Court did not hold that
    this purported assault, which allegedly left Wilkins with a
    bruised heel, back pain, and other injuries requiring medi
    cal treatment, involved de minimis force. Instead, the
    court concluded that Wilkins had failed to state a claim
    because “he simply has not alleged that he suffered any
    thing more than de minimus [sic] injury.” No. 3:08–cv–
    00138 (WD NC, Apr. 16, 2008), at 2.
    In giving decisive weight to the purportedly de minimis
    nature of Wilkins’ injuries, the District Court relied on two
    Fourth Circuit cases. See Riley, 
    115 F. 3d, at
    1166–1168;
    Taylor, 
    155 F. 3d, at
    483–485. Those cases, in turn, were
    based upon the Fourth Circuit’s earlier decision in Nor
    man v. Taylor, 
    25 F. 3d 1259
     (1994) (en banc), which
    approved the practice of using injury as a proxy for force.
    According to the Fourth Circuit, Hudson “does not fore
    close and indeed is consistent with [the] view . . . that,
    absent the most extraordinary circumstances, a plaintiff
    cannot prevail on an Eighth Amendment excessive force
    6                         WILKINS v. GADDY
    Per Curiam
    claim if his injuries are de minimis.” 
    25 F. 3d, at 1263
    .
    The Fourth Circuit’s strained reading of Hudson is not
    defensible. This Court’s decision did not, as the Fourth
    Circuit would have it, merely serve to lower the injury
    threshold for excessive force claims from “significant” to
    “non-de minimis”—whatever those ill-defined terms might
    mean. Instead, the Court aimed to shift the “core judicial
    inquiry” from the extent of the injury to the nature of the
    force—specifically, whether it was nontrivial and “was
    applied . . . maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.”
    
    503 U. S., at 7
    . To conclude, as the District Court did
    here, that the absence of “some arbitrary quantity of
    injury” requires automatic dismissal of an excessive force
    claim improperly bypasses this core inquiry. 
    Id., at 9
    .2
    ——————
    2 MostCircuits to consider the issue have rejected the Fourth Cir
    cuit’s de minimis injury requirement. See, e.g., Wright v. Goord, 
    554 F. 3d 255
    , 269–270 (CA2 2009) (“[O]ur Court has reversed summary
    dismissals of Eighth Amendment claims of excessive force even where
    the plaintiff’s evidence of injury was slight . . . . [T]he absence of any
    significant injury to [the plaintiff] does not end the Eighth Amendment
    inquiry, for our standards of decency are violated even in the absence of
    such injury if the defendant’s use of force was malicious or sadistic”);
    Smith v. Mensinger, 
    293 F. 3d 641
    , 648–649 (CA3 2002) (“[T]he Eighth
    Amendment analysis must be driven by the extent of the force and the
    circumstances in which it is applied; not by the resulting injuries. . . .
    [D]e minimis injuries do not necessarily establish de minimis force”);
    Oliver v. Keller, 
    289 F. 3d 623
    , 628 (CA9 2002) (rejecting the view “that
    to support an Eighth Amendment excessive force claim a prisoner must
    have suffered from the excessive force a more than de minimis physical
    injury” (internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. LaVallee,
    
    439 F. 3d 670
    , 687 (CA10 2006) (same).
    The Fifth Circuit has sometimes used language indicating agreement
    with the Fourth Circuit’s approach. See, e.g., Gomez v. Chandler, 
    163 F. 3d 921
    , 924 (1999) (“[T]o support an Eighth Amendment excessive
    force claim a prisoner must have suffered from the excessive force a
    more than de minimis injury”). But see Brown v. Lippard, 
    472 F. 3d 384
    , 386 (2006) (“This Court has never directly held that injuries must
    reach beyond some arbitrary threshold to satisfy an excessive force
    claim”). Even in the Fifth Circuit, however, Wilkins likely would have
    Cite as: 559 U. S. ____ (2010)                     7
    Per Curiam
    In holding that the District Court erred in dismissing
    Wilkins’ complaint based on the supposedly de minimis
    nature of his injuries, we express no view on the underly
    ing merits of his excessive force claim. In order to prevail,
    Wilkins will ultimately have to prove not only that the
    assault actually occurred but also that it was carried out
    “maliciously and sadistically” rather than as part of “a
    good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline.” 
    Ibid.
    Moreover, even if Wilkins succeeds, the relatively modest
    nature of his alleged injuries will no doubt limit the dam
    ages he may recover.
    *     *     *
    The petition for certiorari and the motion for leave to
    proceed in forma pauperis are granted. The judgment of
    the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded
    for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
    It is so ordered.
    ——————
    survived dismissal for failure to state a claim because that court’s
    precedents have classified the sort of injuries alleged here as non-de
    minimis. See, e.g., 
    ibid.
     (permitting a prisoner’s Eighth Amendment
    excessive force claim to proceed to trial where evidence indicated that
    the prisoner suffered “one-centimeter abrasions on both his left knee
    and left shoulder, pain in his right knee, and tenderness around his left
    thumb,” as well as “back problems”); Gomez, 163 F. 3d, at 922 (refusing
    to grant summary judgment on de minimis injury grounds where the
    prisoner alleged “physical pain [and] bodily injuries in the form of cuts,
    scrapes, [and] contusions to the face, head, and body”).
    Cite as: 559 U. S. ____ (2010)            1
    THOMAS, J., concurring
    SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
    JAMEY L. WILKINS v. OFFICER GADDY
    ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED
    STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
    No. 08–10914.   Decided February 22, 2010
    JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom Justice Scalia joins, con
    curring in the judgment.
    I agree with the Court that the Fourth Circuit’s Eighth
    Amendment analysis is inconsistent with Hudson v.
    McMillian, 
    503 U. S. 1
     (1992). But I continue to believe
    that Hudson was wrongly decided. Erickson v. Pardus,
    
    551 U. S. 89
    , 95 (2007) (dissenting opinion); Farmer v.
    Brennan, 
    511 U. S. 825
    , 858 (1994) (opinion concurring in
    judgment); Helling v. McKinney, 
    509 U. S. 25
    , 37 (1993)
    (dissenting opinion); Hudson, supra, at 17 (dissenting
    opinion).
    “At the time the Eighth Amendment was ratified, the
    word ‘punishment’ referred to the penalty imposed for the
    commission of a crime.” Helling, 
    supra, at 38
     (THOMAS, J.,
    dissenting). The Court adhered to this understanding
    until 1976, when it declared in Estelle v. Gamble, 
    429 U. S. 97
    , that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause
    also extends to prison conditions not imposed as part of a
    criminal sentence. See generally Hudson, supra, at 18–20
    (THOMAS, J., dissenting); Farmer, 
    supra, at 861
     (THOMAS,
    J., concurring in judgment). To limit this abrupt expan
    sion of the Clause, the Court specified that its new inter
    pretation of the Eighth Amendment should not extend to
    every deprivation a prisoner suffers, but instead should
    apply “only [to] that narrow class of deprivations involving
    ‘serious’ injury inflicted by prison officials acting with a
    culpable state of mind.” Hudson, supra, at 20 (THOMAS,
    J., dissenting) (citing Estelle, 
    supra, at 106
    ); see generally
    Wilson v. Seiter, 
    501 U. S. 294
    , 298 (1991).
    2                   WILKINS v. GADDY
    THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment
    Hudson, however, discarded the requirement of serious
    injury. Building upon Estelle’s mislaid foundation, the
    Court concluded that force, rather than injury, is the
    relevant inquiry, and that a prisoner who alleges excessive
    force at the hands of prison officials and suffers nothing
    more than de minimis injury can state a claim under the
    Eighth Amendment. Hudson thus turned the Eighth
    Amendment into “a National Code of Prison Regulation,”
    
    503 U. S., at 28
     (THOMAS, J., dissenting); Farmer, 
    511 U. S., at 859
     (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment), with
    “federal judges [acting as] superintendents of prison condi
    tions nationwide,” 
    id., at 860
    . Although neither the Con
    stitution nor our precedents require this result, no party
    to this case asks us to overrule Hudson. Accordingly, I
    concur in the Court’s judgment.
    

Document Info

Docket Number: 08-10914

Judges: Thomas

Filed Date: 2/22/2010

Precedential Status: Precedential

Modified Date: 3/2/2024

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