Vinning-El, Mondrea v. Long, Scott

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

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No. 06-1673

MONDREA VINNING-EL,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

SCOTT LONG, Correctional Officer,

DAVID REID, Correctional Officer,

and JOHN DOE, Sergeant and Lieutenant,

Defendants-Appellees.

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Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 03 C 514—G. Patrick Murphy, Chief Judge.

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SUBMITTED JANUARY 17, 2007Œ—DECIDED MARCH 27, 2007

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Before BAUER, RIPPLE and WOOD, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. Illinois prisoner Mondrea Vinning-El

brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming as

relevant here that guards Scott Long and David Reid

Œ

After an examination of the briefs and the record, we have

concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. Thus, the ap-

peal is submitted on the briefs and the record. See Fed. R. App.

P. 34(a)(2).

2 No. 06-1673

violated his Eighth Amendment rights by subjecting him to

inhumane conditions of confinement in the disciplinary-

segregation unit at Menard Correctional Center.1 The

district court granted summary judgment for the defen-

dants based on their defense of qualified immunity, and

Vinning-El appeals. We reverse the judgment and remand

for further proceedings.

We recite the facts in the light most favorable to Vinning-

El. After a fight with his cellmate on August 10, 2001,

Vinning-El was stripped of his clothing and placed in a

cell in the disciplinary-segregation unit. He was not

permitted to take any personal property with him. The

floor of the cell was covered with water, the sink and toilet

did not work, and the walls were smeared with blood and

feces. Vinning-El was forced to remain in the cell without

a mattress, sheets, toilet paper, towels, shoes, soap, tooth-

paste, or any personal property, for six days. (Long and

Reid contest the duration of his stay based on prison

records that indicate Vinning-El was in the cell for three

days only, but Vinning-El contends that those records are

inaccurate.) Vinning-El alleges in his verified complaint

that Long and Reid “perpetuated” the conditions.

On appeal Long and Reid now concede they were

wrong to argue—and the district court was wrong to

conclude—that reasonable prison guards could not have

known in August 2001 that the conditions in the Menard

segregation unit violated the Eighth Amendment. We agree

1

Five other inmates initially joined as plaintiffs with Vinning-

El, but the district court severed their claims. Vinning-El also

included in his complaint additional claims against other prison

employees, but the district court dismissed them at initial

screening. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A.

No. 06-1673 3

with their concession since it was clearly established

well before 2001 that the conditions Vinning-El describes,

if true, deprived him of the “minimal civilized measure of

life’s necessities.” See Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347

(1981). Any number of opinions overturning grants of

summary judgment and remanding for trial on similar

allegations confirm this proposition. See, e.g., Johnson v.

Pelker, 891 F.2d 136, 139-40 (7th Cir. 1989) (prisoner held

for three days in segregation cell allegedly smeared with

human feces and having no running water); Jackson v.

Duckworth, 955 F.2d 21, 22 (7th Cir. 1992) (prisoner held

in cell that allegedly was filthy and smelled of human

waste, lacked adequate heating, contained dirty bedding,

and had “rusted out” toilets, no toilet paper, and black

worms in the drinking water); Isby v. Clark, 100 F.3d 502,

505-06 (7th Cir. 1996) (prisoner held in segregation cell that

allegedly was “filthy, with dried blood, feces, urine and

food on the walls”); see also Gillis v. Litscher, 468 F.3d 488,

493 (7th Cir. 2006) (explaining that prisons must provide

“reasonably adequate ventilation, sanitation, bedding,

hygienic materials, and utilities” (quotation marks and

citation omitted)); Despain v. Uphoff, 264 F.3d 965, 974 (10th

Cir. 2001) (concluding that exposure to human waste,

even for 36 hours, would constitute sufficiently serious

deprivation to violate Eighth Amendment).

Long and Reid argue, nevertheless, that we should

uphold the grant of summary judgment because, in their

view, Vinning-El failed to produce evidence that they

were subjectively aware of the conditions in his cell. See

Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994) (holding that

Eighth Amendment claim is established if plaintiff proves

that defendant was deliberately indifferent to an objec-

tively serious condition). The defendants made this same

4 No. 06-1673

argument in the district court, and we may affirm the

judgment based on any ground found in the record. Hull

v. Stoughton Trailers, LLC, 445 F.3d 949, 951 (7th Cir. 2006).

Our review is de novo, and we construe all facts in the light

most favorable to Vinning-El, drawing all reasonable

inferences in his favor. Gillis, 468 F.3d at 492. We will

affirm only if there is no genuine issue of material fact

and the defendants are entitled to judgment as a matter of

law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c); Gillis, 468 F.3d at 492.

We start by noting that Vinning-El alleges that Long

and Reid were responsible for the conditions in the segre-

gation unit, and they have not denied being involved in

his detention there. Instead, they press the narrower

argument that Vinning-El never introduced evidence that

they were aware of the specific condition in his cell. This

argument, however, is unpersuasive. Deliberate indiffer-

ence can be established by inference from circumstantial

evidence, Farmer, 511 U.S. at 842, including evidence that

the risk was “so obvious that a jury may reasonably infer

actual knowledge on the part of the defendants,” Hall v.

Bennett, 379 F.3d 462, 464 (7th Cir. 2004). Given the condi-

tions Vinning-El describes—a floor covered with water, a

broken toilet, feces and blood smeared along the wall,

and no mattress to sleep on—a reasonable jury could infer

that prison guards working in the vicinity necessarily

would have known about the condition of the segregation

cells. Cf. Isby, 100 F.3d at 505-06 (noting that subjective

component of Eighth Amendment claim “in all probabil-

ity” would be satisfied, assuming that inmate’s cell in fact

had “dried blood, feces, urine and food on the walls,”

given guards’ “closeness to the situation”). Thus, we

conclude that Vinning-El presented enough evidence to

raise a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Long

and Reid were deliberately indifferent.

No. 06-1673 5

The judgment of the district court is reversed, and the

case is remanded for further proceedings.

REVERSED and REMANDED

A true Copy:

Teste:

_____________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

USCA-02-C-0072—3-27-07