Document Info

DocketNumber: 99-7484

Filed Date: 5/16/2000

Status: Non-Precedential

Modified Date: 4/18/2021

  • UNPUBLISHED
    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
    FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
    WARREN CHASE,
    Plaintiff-Appellee,
    v.
    HOWARD GRANT, Captain; SERGEANT
    JONES; E. NUTH, Warden; JOSEPH
    WILSON, Assistant Warden;
    SERGEANT BROWN; MAARUFU AULU,
    Lieutenant; ROBERT CHAMBERS,
    Captain; LINDA COCLOUGH, Sergeant;
    BRIAN J. PRICE, Corporal; HERMAN
    TOLBERT, Corporal; STEPHEN HARLEE,
    Sergeant; JAMES DUNCAN, Sergeant;
    SHERMAN STEPHENS, Corporal;
    FRANCES DIX, Corporal; ENESS
    No. 99-7484
    BROWN, Sergeant; BERNARD JONES,
    Sergeant; JAMES W. WEST,
    Lieutenant; JANICE MCNEIL, Officer;
    TIMOTHY WOODRUM, Corporal;
    WILLIAM LEWIS, Sergeant; C.
    ATKINS, Sergeant; J. DOE MILHOUS,
    Officer; OFFICER NELSON; S. LEE,
    Captain; ROBERT L. HICKS, Officer;
    OFFICER DAVIS; OFFICER MOORE;
    JOSEPH HENNEBERRY, Director;
    ARCHIE C. GEE; HENRY J. RICHARDS,
    Assistant Director; IRVING BERMAN,
    M.D.; RANDALL NERO, Ph.D.; SUSAN
    COZZOLINO,
    Defendants-Appellants.
    Appeal from the United States District Court
    for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore.
    Catherine C. Blake, District Judge.
    (CA-96-1287-CCB)
    Argued: April 3, 2000
    Decided: May 16, 2000
    Before MICHAEL and TRAXLER, Circuit Judges,
    and Roger J. MINER, Senior Circuit Judge of the
    United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
    sitting by designation.
    _________________________________________________________________
    Remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
    _________________________________________________________________
    COUNSEL
    ARGUED: Stephanie Judith Lane-Weber, Assistant Attorney Gen-
    eral, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellants. Joel Peter Williams,
    NILES, BARTON & WILMER, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
    ON BRIEF: J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General of Maryland,
    Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellants. John L. Wood, NILES, BAR-
    TON & WILMER, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
    _________________________________________________________________
    Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. See
    Local Rule 36(c).
    _________________________________________________________________
    OPINION
    PER CURIAM:
    Warren Chase, an inmate in the Maryland Correctional Adjustment
    Center ("MCAC"), filed this action against various prison officials,
    asserting, inter alia, that the Defendants violated his constitutional
    right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The Defendants
    filed a motion for summary judgment, which the district court granted
    in part and denied in part. The Defendants appeal from that portion
    2
    of the district court's order refusing to grant them summary judgment
    on their claims of qualified immunity.1 We remand to the district
    court for an analysis of the qualified immunity defense as required by
    Wilson v. Layne, 
    526 U.S. 603
    (1999).
    I.
    MCAC is a "supermaximum" facility used to house the most dan-
    gerous and disruptive prisoners. MCAC's operating procedures pro-
    vide for the use of "isolation confinement" as a last resort for
    prisoners whose behavior threatens other inmates, prison staff, or
    prison property. At the time Chase's complaints arose, MCAC had
    two areas for isolation confinement--the "pink room" and the "cadre"
    cells. The pink room, the use of which has since been discontinued,
    had steel walls, a cement floor, no running water, and no bed or other
    furnishings. The toilet consisted of a grate over a hole in the floor,
    with the flushing mechanism controlled from outside the cell. The
    cadre cells contained a bed of sorts (a cement pad without a mattress),
    a toilet, sink, and window.
    The counts of Chase's complaint relevant to this appeal relate pri-
    marily to instances where Chase was confined in the pink room or in
    a cadre cell under circumstances that Chase contends violated his
    Eighth Amendment rights. Specifically, Chase complains about: (1)
    an incident where he was placed in a cadre cell for 72 hours, wearing
    only his underwear and confined by three-piece restraints, during
    which time the restraints were not removed and he was denied the
    right to bathe, brush his teeth, exercise, and to have a medical person
    examine the placement of his restraints; (2) an incident where he was
    again clad only in his underwear, put in three-piece restraints, and
    placed in a cadre cell for 24 hours, during which time the restraints
    were not removed and the cell was extremely cold because the win-
    dow was left open; (3) an incident where he was confined in three-
    point restraints in the pink room for almost 24 hours, wearing only his
    underwear, during which time the restraints were not removed, he was
    denied access to medical treatment for the improper placement of the
    restraints, and the toilet grate and cell were covered with excrement
    _________________________________________________________________
    1 Chase has not appealed from the district court's granting of summary
    judgment against some of the claims asserted in his complaint.
    3
    from previous occupants; (4) an incident where, after being beaten by
    prison officials, Chase was placed in a cadre cell, in restraints and in
    his underwear, for 48 hours, after receiving only minimal medical
    attention; and (5) another incident where Chase was again beaten by
    prison officials before being placed in a cadre cell in restraints for
    more than 24 hours. Chase also asserted claims based upon other
    instances of the use of excessive force.
    The Defendants contended that they were entitled to summary
    judgment on the grounds of qualified immunity. The entirety of the
    district court's order relating to qualified immunity states:
    While the use of three-point restraints and isolation cells in
    themselves have not been held to violate the Eighth Amend-
    ment, excessive or unnecessary use of restraints and isola-
    tion, particularly where accompanied by a lack of basic
    necessities such as sanitation, warmth, and food, may vio-
    late the constitution. In light of the fact-specific nature of
    the inquiry, and the many disputed facts involved in the
    remaining counts, the defendants are not entitled to qualified
    immunity.
    J.A. 1366-67 (citation omitted).
    II.
    The Defendants contend that the district court erred by denying
    summary judgment on their qualified immunity defense. According to
    the Defendants, there is no case law establishing that the actions they
    took against Chase were improper. In fact, they contend that numer-
    ous unpublished decisions from other federal district courts in Mary-
    land have held that the use of MCAC's pink room, cadre cells, and
    three-point restraints, in and of themselves, are insufficient to support
    an Eighth Amendment claim. We do not reach these issues, however,
    because we conclude that we must remand the case to the district
    court for an analysis of Chase's claims under the framework set forth
    in Wilson v. Layne, 
    526 U.S. 603
    (1999).
    In Layne, the Supreme Court explained that"[a] court evaluating
    a claim of qualified immunity must first determine whether the plain-
    4
    tiff has alleged the deprivation of an actual constitutional right at all,
    and if so, proceed to determine whether that right was clearly estab-
    lished at the time of the alleged violation." 
    Id. at 609 (internal
    quota-
    tion marks omitted). In this case, however, the district court neither
    identified the constitutional right or rights at issue, nor determined
    whether the right was clearly established. While the district court
    assumed that Chase alleged violations of the Eighth Amendment, the
    court did not analyze Chase's allegations to determine whether his
    version of the facts, if true, was sufficient to support his claim that his
    constitutional rights were violated. See, e.g. , Stanley v. Hejirika, 
    134 F.3d 629
    , 634 (4th Cir. 1998) ("To prove a claim that prison officials
    violated his constitutional rights through the excessive use of force,
    an inmate must satisfy two requirements. First, he must satisfy a sub-
    jective requirement that the force used by the corrections officers
    inflicted unnecessary and wanton pain and suffering.. . . In addition
    . . . the inmate must also satisfy an objective requirement; he must
    show that correctional officers' actions, taken contextually, were
    objectively harmful enough to offend contemporary standards of
    decency." (internal quotation marks omitted)); Norman v. Taylor, 
    25 F.3d 1259
    , 1263 (4th Cir. 1994) (en banc) ("[A]bsent the most
    extraordinary circumstances, a plaintiff cannot prevail on an Eighth
    Amendment excessive force claim if his injury is de minimis."); Str-
    ickler v. Waters, 
    989 F.2d 1375
    , 1380 (4th Cir. 1993) ("[T]o ensure
    faithfulness to the Eighth Amendment's ban only of cruel and unusual
    punishments, . . . for prison conditions to rise to the level of unconsti-
    tutional punishment, there must be evidence of a serious medical and
    emotional deterioration attributable to the challenged condition." (ital-
    ics and internal quotation marks omitted)); Williams v. Griffin, 
    952 F.2d 820
    , 824 (4th Cir. 1991) ("A two-pronged showing is necessary
    to demonstrate a prima facie Eighth Amendment violation with
    respect to prison conditions: (1) a serious deprivation of a basic
    human need; and (2) deliberate indifference to prison conditions on
    the part of prison officials." (citation omitted)).
    The defense of qualified immunity is designed to"permit the reso-
    lution of many insubstantial claims on summary judgment and to
    avoid subjecting government officials either to the costs of trial or to
    the burdens of broad-reaching discovery in cases where the legal
    norms the officials are alleged to have violated were not clearly estab-
    lished at the time." Mitchell v. Forsyth, 
    472 U.S. 511
    , 526 (1985)
    5
    (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted)). By simply conclud-
    ing that there were disputed questions of fact as to the Defendants'
    claims of qualified immunity, without identifying what facts were in
    dispute and explaining how those disputed facts were relevant to its
    analysis of the Defendants' claim of qualified immunity, the district
    court's order effectively deprives the Defendants of one of the main
    purposes of the qualified immunity defense.
    We therefore remand for an analysis under Wilson v. Layne. If,
    after analyzing Chase's isolation confinement and excessive force
    claims2 under Layne, the district court concludes that there are genu-
    ine issues of material fact precluding summary judgment, the court
    shall recite in detail which facts are in dispute and shall explain the
    materiality of those disputes as to the qualified immunity defense.
    REMANDED
    _________________________________________________________________
    2 The district court's qualified immunity discussion focuses only on the
    claims involving the isolation confinement and the related use of three-
    point restraints. As to the excessive force claims, the order denied sum-
    mary judgment by concluding that there were disputed issues of material
    fact, but the order included no Wilson v. Layne analysis of the qualified
    immunity defense. Although the Defendants did not include the exces-
    sive force claims in their notice of appeal, we nonetheless conclude that
    it is proper for us to require the district court to re-examine the excessive
    force claims in the manner we have set forth above. However, in light
    of the procedural posture of this case, we decline the Defendants' invita-
    tion to consider the merits of the single remaining supervisory liability
    claim, an issue which the Defendants likewise failed to identify in their
    notice of appeal and to which they devote only a short footnote in their
    brief.
    6