Keith Williams v. Joseph Smith

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 11-1384
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KEITH A. WILLIAMS
v.
JOSEPH SMITH, Individually;
LT. EDINGER, Individually;
LT. GABRIELSON, Individually;
TWO CORRECTION OFFICERS, Individually;
MR. MURRAY
Joseph Smith, Ken Gabrielson, Matt Edinger and Jason Murray,
Appellants
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On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 1-07-cv-01382)
District Judge: Honorable Christopher C. Conner
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Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
November 14, 2012
Before: SCIRICA, FISHER and JORDAN, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: December 21, 2012)
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OPINION OF THE COURT
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FISHER, Circuit Judge.
Appellants are prison employees accused of violating Keith A. Williams’s Eighth
Amendment rights by failing to protect him from violence at the hands of other prisoners.
The prison officials appeal from the District Court’s denial of their motion for summary
judgment on qualified immunity grounds. Before reaching the merits of that question, we
first consider whether we have jurisdiction over this appeal. The District Court denied
the prison officials’ motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds
because it concluded that there were remaining issues of material fact to be decided.
Because the appeal ultimately asks us to consider whether the District Court was in error
about which facts were genuinely at issue – rather than a question of law – we cannot
hear this case under the collateral order doctrine. We will therefore dismiss this appeal
for want of jurisdiction.
I.
We write principally for the parties, who are familiar with the factual context and
legal history of this case. Therefore, we will set forth only those facts necessary to our
analysis.
Williams brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that prison staff members
Matthew Edinger, Kenneth Gabrielson, and Jason Murray, as well as Warden Joseph
Smith, violated his constitutional rights when they failed to protect him from attacks by
fellow inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Williams
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believes that these attacks stemmed from pervasive prison violence involving New York-
and Washington, D.C.-affiliated gangs. In 2005, a member of the D.C. gang attacked
Williams. As a result, Williams was moved to a special housing unit. Williams sent a
form to Gabrielson, who controlled housing assignments in the special unit, requesting an
individual cell because he feared for his life due to gang activity.
Ten days later, Williams was attacked by two other gang members. They
assaulted Williams in an outdoor recreation cage after he allegedly called them names. A
guard stopped the attack. Edinger, a gang specialist, then escorted Williams to get
medical care. Williams believed he was attacked because the assailants were gang
members. The attackers told prison officials that the assault was the result of personal
animosity. The prison then permanently separated Williams from the assailants.
Williams later told Gabrielson that he feared additional gang-related retaliation
and assault; Gabrielson responded that Williams was being “paranoid.” Williams also
contacted his attorney with his concerns, and the attorney informed Warden Smith of
Williams’s fears by mail. Smith does not recall receiving the letter and took no action
based on the information.
Williams was then housed with Robert Fulton, a member of a New York gang
with a history of violence. Fulton attacked Williams inside their shared cell. When
Murray went to Williams’s cell to distribute breakfast, he heard the sound of a scuffle and
saw Fulton placing Williams in a headlock and cutting Williams’s face with a blade.
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Murray ordered immediate separation and radioed for backup. While Murray waited for
other guards to arrive, the attack continued for ten to fifteen seconds. When backup
reached his location, Murray entered the cell and took Williams to an urgent care room
for treatment. Williams states that Murray warned him not to “snitch” about the incident.
Gabrielson believed that the incident was part of a gang initiation ritual. Williams denied
that he was being initiated into any gang.
Williams filed this action in the District Court for the Middle District of
Pennsylvania, alleging that Edinger, Murray, Gabrielson, and Warden Smith violated his
Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The prison
officials moved for summary judgment, asserting qualified immunity. The District Court
denied the motion, and this appeal followed.
II.
The District Court had subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
Williams contests this Court’s appellate jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 over
the denial of summary judgment, arguing that the District Court’s order is not final within
the meaning of § 1291 because the District Court found that genuine issues of material
fact needed to be resolved before it could determine whether qualified immunity was
available. See Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 313 (1995).
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III.
Appellants ask this Court to end the case against them by concluding that they are
entitled to qualified immunity. Before reaching that issue, we must first determine
whether we have jurisdiction to hear this appeal. We generally have appellate
jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 only over final orders. Cohen v. Beneficial Indus.
Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546 (1949) (“So long as the matter remains open, unfinished
or inconclusive, there may be no intrusion by appeal.”). We hear interlocutory appeals,
such as appeals from denials of summary judgment, only when those decisions would
“finally determine claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the
action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to
require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.” Id.
Thus, we consider appeals of collateral orders only when those orders would
“(1) conclusively determine the disputed question, (2) resolve an important issue
completely separate from the merits of the action, and (3) be effectively unreviewable on
appeal from a final judgment.” Eddy v. V.I. Water & Power Auth., 256 F.3d 204, 208 (3d
Cir. 2001).
“To the extent that they turn on an issue of law, decisions denying public officials
qualified immunity are considered final under the collateral order doctrine. . .” Grant v.
City of Pittsburgh, 98 F.3d 116, 119-20 (3d Cir. 1996). Government officials would lose
this immunity from suit if courts allowed cases to proceed to trial erroneously. Mitchell
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v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526 (1985). The rationale for qualified immunity favors early
resolution, as post-trial review fails to offer protection from suit – not just liability.
Johnson, 515 U.S. at 312. But vindication of this policy cannot require appellate courts
to hear cases based on under-developed records or to usurp the factfinder’s responsibility
for making credibility determinations. See id. at 316. Therefore, our jurisdiction here
depends on whether the question of qualified immunity before us is purely legal or turns
on the resolution of outstanding factual issues.
“[G]overnment officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded
from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly
established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have
known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1981) (internal quotation marks
omitted). In determining whether an official is entitled to qualified immunity, we must
answer two questions: (1) whether the facts make out a violation of a constitutional right
and (2) whether the right was clearly established at the time of the defendants’ conduct.
See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009).
In order for a right to be clearly established, “the contours of the right must be
sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing
violates that right.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987). The District
Court found – and the prison officials do not dispute – that the right to be protected
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against violence inflicted by other inmates is clearly established. See Beers-Capitol v.
Whetzel, 256 F.3d 120, 142 n.15 (3d Cir. 2001).
The qualified immunity inquiry focuses, then, on whether the employees’ conduct
constituted a violation. To establish an Eighth Amendment failure-to-protect claim,
Williams must demonstrate (1) that he was “incarcerated under conditions posing a
substantial risk of serious harm” and (2) that each prison official acted with the
“sufficiently culpable state of mind” of “deliberate indifference to [his] safety.” See
Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). In assessing this question on summary
judgment, all inferences should be drawn in the light most favorable to the non-moving
party. Barton v. Curtis, 497 F.3d 331, 334 (3d Cir. 2007).
The District Court concluded that “the record demonstrates that there are issues of
material fact with regard to the claim of whether defendants failed to protect Williams
from members of the D.C. gangs and N.Y. gangs which preclude the entry of summary
judgment.” Granting Williams the inferences to which he is entitled, it is clear that many
outstanding questions about the states of mind of the prison officials remain to be
resolved through the fact-finding process, where the trial court will weigh and determine
the credibility of the conflicting direct and circumstantial evidence the parties have
presented. Therefore, because “[w]e have no jurisdiction . . . in an interlocutory appeal to
review a District Court’s determination that there is sufficient record evidence to support
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a set of facts under which there would be no immunity,” we will dismiss this appeal.
Schieber v. City of Phila., 320 F.3d 409, 415 (3d Cir. 2003).
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, we will dismiss this appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
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