Santos v. White

Case: 20-30048 Document: 00516096581 Page: 1 Date Filed: 11/17/2021
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
November 17, 2021
No. 20-30048
Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
Darvin Castro Santos,
Plaintiff—Appellant,
versus
Craig White, Major; John Wells, Captain;
Allen Verret, Colonel; Ashley Martell, Lieutenant,
Defendants—Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Louisiana
No. 3:16-CV-598
Before Smith, Stewart, and Willett, Circuit Judges.
Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge:
Darvin Santos, an inmate at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in
Louisiana, sued prison officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, asserting that they
had used excessive force against him in violation of his constitutional rights.
The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants, deter-
mining that Santos’s claims were barred by Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477(1994). In doing so, the court relied on prison disciplinary reports that con-
tradicted Santos’s allegations.
Santos appeals both the district court’s determination based on Heck
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No. 20-30048
and its consideration of the disciplinary reports, which he claims are hearsay.
For the reasons given below, we affirm the district court’s decision to admit
the reports but vacate and remand for further proceedings with regard to the
application of Heck.
I.
Santos was walking to his cell when, he alleges, he witnessed six prison
officers beating another inmate. Santos intervened, imploring the officers to
stop the beating. The officers, including Colonel Allen Verret, Major Craig
White, and Lieutenant Ashley Martell, told him to mind his business before
ultimately turning their attention to him as the focus of their beating. He
claims that he was knocked to the ground, hit, kicked, choked, handcuffed
and dragged in a manner that caused his head to hit poles in the walkway. He
was then placed in a shower cell, where Captain John Wells sprayed him in
the face with a chemical agent, ordered him to strip naked, and sprayed him
again with the chemical agent in the genitals and anus. After prohibiting
Santos from taking a shower to wash off the chemical, the officers ordered
him to put on his jumpsuit and escorted him to another area, where Wells cut
Santos with a knife and threatened to kill him. Santos was ultimately trans-
ferred to a medical center where, he alleges, he was denied any real medical
attention.
This version of events is contradicted by the findings of prison officials
who investigated. According to their narrative, Santos approached the offi-
cers in a threatening manner and then physically attacked them. Despite ini-
tially being restrained, he remained uncooperative and violent, at one point
striking Wells hard enough to break his dentures. His actions necessitated
the use of a chemical agent to gain compliance, though after it was used he
ceased resisting. Based on the incident, a prison disciplinary board concluded
that Santos was guilty of nine violations: three “Defiance” violations, four
“Aggravated Disobedience” violations, one “Property Destruction” viola-
2
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tion, and one “Unauthorized Area” violation. He was disciplined accord-
ingly, including by the forfeiture of 180 days of good-time credit.
II.
Having exhausted his administrative remedies within the prison
system, Santos sued White, Wells, Verret, and Martell under § 1983, claim-
ing that they had subjected him to corporal punishment and excessive force
while seizing and detaining him, thus violating his Fourth, Eighth, and Four-
teenth Amendment rights. He sought money damages.
The defendants moved for summary judgment, averring that the
incompatibility between Santos’s claims and the findings of the disciplinary
board meant that the suit was barred by Heck. Santos opposed the motion
and moved to strike the investigative and disciplinary reports as hearsay.
Granting summary judgment for the defendants, the court first con-
cluded that, because Santos’s disciplinary violations resulted in the loss of
good-time credits, those findings were “convictions” for purposes of the
Heck bar. It considered the contradictions between Santos’s allegations and
the reports that had accompanied his disciplinary sanctions and concluded
that a ruling in Santos’s favor “would directly challenge the validity of his
convictions.” Heck thus barred the consideration of Santos’s claims in a
§ 1983 suit.
The district court also denied Santos’s motion to strike the prison
officers’ reports. The court reasoned that those reports were not offered for
the truth of their contents but rather to provide a record of the disciplinary
board’s findings.
III.
On appeal, Santos challenges the summary judgment with regard to
his Eighth Amendment claims. He contends that his claims are not barred
by Heck and that the court erred by not excluding the prison disciplinary
3
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reports as hearsay. Summary judgment is a determination of law that we
review de novo. Austin v. Kroger Tex., L.P., 864 F.3d 326, 328 (5th Cir. 2017)
(per curiam). In doing so, we view all facts in the light most favorable to the
non-moving party, here Santos, and draw all reasonable inferences in his
favor. Coleman v. Hous. Indep. Sch. Dist., 113 F.3d 528, 533 (5th Cir. 1997).
We conclude that the district court was correct in its decision to consider the
disciplinary reports, but we vacate and remand its determination that San-
tos’s claims were Heck-barred.
IV.
The application of Heck to § 1983 claims by prisoners is a subject that
we examine today in No. 20-30218, Gray v. White, and a fuller discussion can
be found in Part IV of that opinion. Here, we only briefly summarize the
governing law before applying it to Santos’s claims.
Section 1983 creates a cause of action against individuals who, under
color of state law, deprive the plaintiff of his constitutional rights. To decide
an Eighth Amendment claim based on excessive force, a court must deter-
mine “whether force was applied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore
discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.” Hudson v. McMil-
lan, 503 U.S. 1, 7 (1992). But under Heck, a prisoner may not “seek[] dam-
ages in a § 1983 suit” if “a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily
imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence.” Heck, 512 U.S. at 487.
The fundamental rationale behind the Heck bar is that “[c]hallenges to the
validity of any confinement or to particulars affecting its duration are the
province of habeas corpus,” whereas “requests for relief turning on circum-
stances of confinement may be presented in a § 1983 action.” Muhammad v.
Close, 540 U.S. 749, 750 (2004) (per curiam) (emphasis added).
Because Heck applies to the duration of confinement, it applies not
just to criminal convictions but also to prison disciplinary rulings that “re-
sult[] in a change to the prisoner’s sentence, including the loss of good-time
4
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credits.” Clarke v. Stalder, 154 F.3d 186, 189 (5th Cir. 1998) (en banc). Heck
therefore bars claims that would, if accepted, “negate” a prison disciplinary
finding that had resulted in the loss of good-time credits. Bourne v. Gunnels,
921 F.3d 484, 491 (5th Cir. 2019).
Meanwhile, Heck is not “implicated by a prisoner’s challenge that
threatens no consequence for his conviction or the duration of his sentence.”
Muhammad, 540 U.S. at 751. Rather, a claim is barred only if granting it
“requires negation of an element of the criminal offense or proof of a fact that
is inherently inconsistent with one underlying the criminal conviction.” Bush
v. Strain, 513 F.3d 492, 497 (5th Cir. 2008). The resulting inquiry is “fact-
intensive” and dependent on the precise nature of the disciplinary offense.
Aucoin v. Cupil, 958 F.3d 379, 382 (5th Cir.) (quoting Bush, 513 F.3d at 497),
cert. denied, 141 S. Ct. 567 (2020).
It is unclear, from the record, whether any of Santos’s claims are
barred by Heck. In his disciplinary proceeding, Santos was found guilty of
nine rules violations: three “Defiance” violations, four “Aggravated Dis-
obedience” violations, one “Property Destruction” violation, and one “Un-
authorized Area” violation. Though the disciplinary reports list factual find-
ings, the elements required to find a prisoner guilty of those violations do not
appear anywhere in the record. It is thus impossible to determine which facts
were necessary to the disciplinary board’s conclusions. It may be that the ele-
ments of, for instance, aggravated disobedience would be logically incompati-
ble with some of Santos’s claims of excessive force, but the record does not
currently permit that inference.
Furthermore, not all of the disciplinary board’s findings implicate
Heck. The board imposed a forfeiture of 180 days of good time for one count
each of aggravated disobedience, defiance, and property destruction, all aris-
ing from Santos’s assault on Wells in the Fox-6 D-Tier area of the prison; his
other violations, including all of those in the shower, resulted in sanctions
5
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such as loss of canteen and phone privileges. Disciplinary sanctions of that
type bear on the “circumstances of confinement,” rather than on that con-
finement’s “validity” or “duration,” and are thus not barred by Heck.
Muhammad, 540 U.S. at 750. Moreover, the disciplinary board imposed no
sanctions at all on Santos for actions after the administration of the chemical
agent in the shower, and it noted that he “complied with orders” after that
point. Thus, Heck does not bar Santos’s claims from that point onward.
It is not sufficient to deem Santos’s claims to be “intertwined” with
his loss of good-time credits. Rather, in applying Heck, a court must bar only
those claims that are “necessarily at odds with” the disciplinary rulings, and
only with those rulings that resulted in the loss of good time credits. Aucoin,
958 F.3d at 383. The defendants have thus not met their burden for summary
judgment on the current record. Whether the board’s findings related to the
assault on Wells bar the corresponding claims by Santos must be determined
by a fact-specific analysis informed by the elements necessary to establish
those violations.
V.
Santos also appeals the ruling on the defendants’ exhibits, contending
that they were inadmissible hearsay. To be considered on summary judg-
ment, materials must be of a type that can be “presented in a form that would
be admissible in evidence.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(2); see also LSR Consult-
ing, LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 835 F.3d 530, 534 (5th Cir. 2016). Evi-
dentiary rulings by trial courts are affirmed unless they constitute abuses of
discretion. See, e.g., United States v. Pruett, 681 F.3d 232, 243 (5th Cir. 2012)
(per curiam).
A statement is hearsay if it is not made while testifying and a party
“offer[s it] in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted” in the
statement. Fed. R. Evid. 801(c). The reports submitted by the defendants
were offered to demonstrate that the disciplinary board had found Santos
6
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guilty of various offenses, not to prove the truth of the matter, that is, that he
actually had committed the offenses. As with criminal convictions, the Heck
bar does not, in theory, assume that the prison disciplinary board’s determin-
ations were true, but only that they cannot be challenged through § 1983. Cf.
Heck, 512 U.S. at 487 (noting that § 1983 may be used to challenge a con-
viction or sentence that “has already been invalidated”). The district court
did not err in considering the exhibits.
***
In sum, although the district court was correct in considering the doc-
uments, Santos’s claims cannot be dismissed as Heck-barred without further
development of the record to determine which of his allegations would be
necessarily incompatible with the prison board’s ruling that deprived him of
good time credits. In light of these conclusions, the summary judgment is
VACATED and REMANDED. We place no limitation on the matters
that the court can address and decide on remand. Nor do we suggest how the
court should rule on which claims are precluded by Heck.
7
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Don R. Willett, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment.
This case involves an all-too-common set of facts: Appellant (a
prisoner) claims that Appellees (prison officers) spontaneously and
unlawfully abused him. Appellees, on the other hand, insist they used lawful
force to control Appellant’s misbehavior. Though the majority opinion
reaches the correct conclusion—the district court erred in its unqualified
dismissal under Heck—I write to emphasize two points of departure.
I
First, my colleagues punt on Heck when a hand-off is warranted.
Could the record have more information? Absolutely. Do we need more? No.
Heck does not categorically compel an element-by-element inquiry, and the
majority opinion needlessly complicates things by concluding that the record
precludes analysis.
This case is Aucoin redux. 1 Appellant maintains he was subject to
unprovoked, unlawful violence at every stage of the encounter. 2 But if true,
he “cannot be guilty of [the offenses for which he lost good-time credit]—in
direct conflict with his disciplinary conviction.” 3 So we need not dwell on the
component elements of Appellant’s conviction to determine that most of his
claims are incompatible with the disciplinary board’s findings.
Take the claims arising from the pre-shower salvo. The majority
implies that some of these claims may not be Heck barred. 4 Sure, Heck is not
“implicated by a prisoner’s challenge that threatens no consequence for . . .
1
See Aucoin v. Cupil, 958 F.3d 379 (5th Cir. 2020).
2
Cf. id. at 383 (noting plaintiff-appellant “challenge[d] the conviction by
maintaining his innocence in the events that led up to his disciplinary conviction”).
3
Id.4
Ante at 5–6.
8
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the duration of his sentence.” 5 But all of Appellant’s pre-shower claims turn
on the same narrative: He was attacked without provocation. This is
fundamentally inconsistent with the officers’ account, which prompted
Appellant’s loss of good-time credit for property destruction, aggravated
disobedience, and defiance. Most of Appellant’s suit thereby “challenges the
factual determination that underlies his conviction[s],” 6 meaning most of his
claims fail.
But most does not mean all. A portion of Appellant’s suit alleged
violence unrelated to any supposed need to gain control. Appellant pleaded
an excessive-force claim against Captain Wells for ordering him to “spread
his butt cheeks” and spraying him “in the anus with pe[p]per spray.”
Appellant also pleaded that Captain Wells threatened and cut him with a
knife after he was “no longer resisting or attempting to flee or, otherwise,
commit any crime.” These are not trivial details. Neither the incident report
nor any other summary-judgment evidence provides an iota of justification
for this alleged force. We are thus left with no circumstance where these
claims, if proven true, would conflict with Appellant’s disciplinary
conviction—let alone those portions that impacted the duration of his
confinement. 7 This is not to say that the elements underlying an
5
Muhammad v. Close, 540 U.S. 749, 750–51 (2004) (per curiam) (observing that
punishments of this type bear on the “circumstances of confinement” rather than its
“validity” or “duration”); see also, e.g., Bourne v. Gunnels, 921 F.3d 484, 491 (5th Cir.
2019).
6
Id.7
As the majority correctly observes, Appellant was found guilty of nine prison rule
violations, yet only three (property destruction, aggravated disobedience, and defiance—
each arising from the initial salvo) resulted in the loss of good-time credit. Ante at 6.
9
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administrative offense are categorically irrelevant under Heck. 8 But no case,
until today, suggests this information is an analytical prerequisite. 9
I nonetheless join the judgment because, as was the case in Aucoin,
“the district court erred in dismissing all of [Appellant’s] claims under
Heck.” 10
II
I must also depart from the majority opinion’s hearsay analysis,
though my colleagues again reach the correct conclusion. No one seriously
disputes that “[t]he reports . . . were offered to demonstrate that the
disciplinary board had found Santos guilty of various offenses, not to prove
. . . that he actually had committed the offenses.” 11 But this does little more
than invite the question presented: Why is this not hearsay?
A prison disciplinary report is an out-of-court statement, 12 and the
report here was offered by the Appellees “to provide a record of Plaintiff’s
prison disciplinary convictions” and thus “establish . . . that the Heck
doctrine bars [relief].” This, at bottom, points to the truth of the matter
asserted in the disciplinary report: Appellant was found guilty of (and
punished for) his administrative offenses. Needless to say, the disciplinary
8
See, e.g., Ballard v. Burton, 444 F.3d 391, 397–99 (5th Cir. 2006) (analyzing
elements to determine whether the plaintiff’s prior conviction was fundamentally
inconsistent with his claim of excessive force).
9
The majority’s belief otherwise casts a jaundiced eye on Aucoin, which was
decided just last year and offered nary a mention of the elements underlying the
administrative offenses at issue there. See Aucoin, 958 F.3d at 383–84. But our silence was
understandable: The appellant claimed total innocence, which was “necessarily
inconsistent with the validity of the [administrative] conviction.” Id. at 383.
10
Id. at 383–84.
11
Ante at 7.
12
See Fed. R. Evid. 801(a) (defining “statement”); cf., e.g., United States v.
Jimenez, 275 F. App’x 433, 437 n.1 (5th Cir. 2008) (“Police reports are generally excludable
as hearsay.”).
10
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report would be irrelevant if it did not accurately communicate the board’s
findings. The majority opinion nonetheless suggests that there is only one
way to offer these statements for their truth: by claiming Appellant actually
committed the offenses. I disagree. The truth asserted here is that Appellant
was found guilty and lost good-time credit—not whether this outcome was
justified.
But we mustn’t lose the forest for the trees. In the end, the majority
opinion correctly observes that evidence need not be in admissible form at
summary judgment. 13 I would thus hold that the defendants could have later
admitted the challenged evidence under any number of theories. 14 This low
bar does not compel reversal.
* * *
It is believed that Solon, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, once
observed that justice would not come to Athens until the unaggrieved were
as indignant as the oppressed. Whether this case merits indignance is not
before us. 15 But we are called to determine whether Appellant’s claim is
13
See, e.g., LSR Consulting, LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 835 F.3d 530, 534 (5th
Cir. 2016); accord Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(2).
14
Cf., e.g., Autin v. La. Dep’t of Pub. Safety & Corr., No. 20-CV-1214, 2021 WL
1210471, at *5 (E.D. La. Mar. 31, 2021) (Heck-bar case, admitting disciplinary reports as
public records); Aucoin v. Cupil, No. 16-00373-BAJ-RLB, 2018 WL 6332831, at *1 n.2
(M.D. La. Dec. 4, 2018) (Heck-bar case, judicial notice of disciplinary convictions), rev’d
and remanded on other grounds, 958 F.3d 379 (5th Cir. 2020).
15
If faced with this question, perhaps we might pause to note Captain Wells’s
apparent familiarity with the impact of Heck on civil rights claims. See, e.g., Jacobs v. Wells,
16-CV-00865-BAJ-EWD, 2019 WL 4170185, at *1 (M.D. La. Sept. 3, 2019) (granting Heck
dismissal, § 1983 claim against Captain Wells for unlawful use of chemical agents and force
resulting in a broken ankle and leg); Johnson v. Sharp, No. 05-1244-A, 2007 WL 580667, at
*2 (M.D. La. Feb. 13, 2007) (granting Heck dismissal, § 1983 claim against then-Sergeant
Wells for an unprovoked, “vicious beating”); see also, e.g., Gray v. White, __ F.4th __ (5th
Cir. 2021) (involving Captain Wells, again).
11
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beyond the reach of § 1983. It is not. Appellant has the right to present his
case to a jury, and the district court’s belief otherwise was error.
12