“[A]cting or failing to act with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm to a prisoner is the equivalent of recklessly disregarding that risk.”
How later courts described this case
- “[A]cting or failing to act with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm to a prisoner is the equivalent of recklessly disregarding that risk.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
USCA11 Case: 20-13562 Date Filed: 04/09/2021 Page: 1 of 12
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 20-13562
Non-Argument Calendar
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 3:18-cv-00571-RV-EMT
JESSICA N. ROGERS,
as personal representative of the estate of
Jose F. Escano-Reyes and as parent and
natural guardian of Y C A minor child,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
SANTA ROSA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE, et al.,
Defendants,
JOHN GADDIS,
in his official and individual capacity,
MICHELLE BAUMAN,
in her official and individual capacity,
Defendants-Appellants.
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________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Florida
________________________
(April 9, 2021)
Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, NEWSOM and ANDERSON, Circuit
Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Deputies John Gaddis and Michelle Bauman of the Santa Rosa County
Sheriff’s Office appeal the denial of summary judgment based on qualified
immunity. Gaddis and Bauman were on duty in the county jail when detainee Jose
F. Escano-Reyes hung himself while under suicide watch. Jail policies required
jailers to physically check on suicidal inmates every 15 minutes, but a video
recording of the deputies’ work area shows that neither deputy checked on Escano-
Reyes on the morning of his death. Unobserved, Escano-Reyes twice tied his
suicide prevention smock to a metal room divider in his cell and created a ligature
into which he inserted his head ten times before asphyxiating himself. Jessica
Rogers, as Escano-Reyes’s representative, filed a third amended complaint that
alleged the deputies’ failure to check on him constituted deliberate indifference to
his psychiatric needs under the Fourteenth Amendment and negligence under state
law. The deputies do not dispute that they were negligent and have abandoned any
challenge they could have made to the denial of summary judgment on Rogers’s
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state-law claim. See Access Now, Inc. v. Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324, 1330
(11th Cir. 2004). Because the evidence creates a substantial issue whether the
deputies deliberately failed to take any action to prevent Escano-Reyes’s suicide,
we affirm the denial of qualified immunity to them on Rogers’s claim of deliberate
indifference.
I. BACKGROUND
In January 2016, officers arrested Escano-Reyes for driving without a
license and discovered that he had entered the United States illegally. Escano-
Reyes was detained at the Santa Rosa County Jail awaiting removal. He was
housed in the general population.
On April 2, 2016, Escano-Reyes told jail officials that he wanted to die and
planned to commit suicide. Officers transferred Escano-Reyes to the medical unit,
where he was placed on suicide watch. He received a suicide prevention smock to
wear in lieu of outer and undergarments.
Four days later, officials moved Escano-Reyes to a private cell in the
Admissions, Classification, and Release unit adjacent to the medical unit. Escano-
Reyes was assigned to cell one, the only cell with a metal room divider.
Cell one was located within a few feet of the booking desk, but officers
sitting at the desk did not have a clear line of sight into the cell. Consistent with jail
policy and practice, the main window on the door of cell one was covered with a
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velcro curtain. A sidelight for the cell door also was covered from the waist down
with a plastic bag. The covertures shielded officers from viewing male inmates
who were naked. To observe the inside of the cell, officers had to go to its door and
look through the uncovered sliver of the sidelight.
The unit had separate surveillance video cameras for the booking desk and
the doors into surrounding cells and for the interior of each cell. The video camera
for cell one provided a view of its bed, sink, and the room divider. The camera
transmitted to a monitor in the central control room. The booking desk did not have
a monitor to observe the inmate inside cell one.
On April 6, 2016, Escano-Reyes’s first day in cell one, he acted erratically.
He paced in his cell, spat on the floor, and made delusional statements. He
screamed repeatedly in Spanish that he needed to be killed and wanted to die. He
“mule-kicked” his cell door, and he was strapped into a restraint chair from 11:15
p.m. to 1:10 a.m. “for his safety.” The events were recorded in “incident reports.”
On April 7, 2016, before Deputies Gaddis and Bauman began their shift at
the booking desk, they were told about Escano-Reyes’s incident reports and that he
was on suicide watch. Regulations required jailers to maintain “direct
observation”—that is, “continuous visual observation 24 hours each day”—with
inmates. Fla. Model Jail Standard 1.14. The standards required that “any inmate
who is identified by correctional staff as a suicide risk shall not be housed in a
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‘single cell’ unless the inmate is observed by direct visual observation . . . 24 hours
each day” and “shall include regular, documented physical checks by corrections
officers and/or medical staff persons at intervals not to exceed 15 minutes.” Id.
Standard 5.4b. A general order, O-030II(D), also required supervising deputies to
keep a suicidal inmate “under direct continuous observation with documented
staggered 15-minute physical checks.” But the jail interpreted the order loosely to
require deputies to be near the inmate and to be “available and capable to do the 15
minute close watch checks.”
The video recording of cell one on the morning of April 7, 2016, shows that
Escano-Reyes put his head through a ligature he created ten times before hanging
himself. At 9:00 a.m., about 45 minutes after waking, Escano-Reyes removed his
suicide prevention smock and tied it around the room divider, but he immediately
untied the smock and put it back on. Eight minutes later, Escano-Reyes removed
his smock a second time and tied it around the divider. He paced around his cell
naked, gestured oddly, yelled in Spanish, and stopped occasionally to look out his
sidelight. At 9:40 a.m., Escano-Reyes put his head through a ligature he had
created with his smock, pulled his head out, and then tightened the ligature. At
10:10 a.m., he put his head through the ligature a second time and, for five
minutes, struggled to tighten the ligature around his neck. He took his head out of
the ligature, retied it, put his head back through, and drew up his legs in an attempt
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to dangle his body. He performed a similar process four more times, in the midst of
which he moved his mattress pad onto the floor in front of the ligature. In between
each attempt to hang himself, Escano-Reyes frenetically paced around his cell,
yelled, and looked out his sidelight. At 10:26 a.m., Escano-Reyes put his head in
the ligature for the last time and turned his body around several times to twist the
ligature taut and to suspend his knees above the mat. He twitched briefly. At 10:44
a.m., a janitor glanced through the sidelight of cell one and notified Bauman, who
was sitting alone at the booking desk, that Escano-Reyes was “hanging.”
The contemporaneous video recording of the booking desk shows that
Gaddis and Bauman never physically checked on Escano-Reyes. The two chatted
and talked to jail employees who circulated though the booking area. Gaddis
admitted that he falsely recorded that he physically had checked Escano-Reyes
every 15 minutes. Gaddis also admitted that he examined his personal email
account and his Facebook page.
After Rogers sued the deputies, discovery ensued during which both
deputies testified that the safety of a suicidal inmate is “the most significant” and
“most serious medical need” at the jail. The deputies admitted that they were
expected to perform “staggered” physical checks on a suicidal inmate and to
complete a “close watch form” that recorded they had observed the inmate every
15 minutes. The deputies admitted that they did not coordinate who or when they
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would check on Escano-Reyes. A representative of the jail testified that when
suicidal inmates yell, supervised deputies are expected to investigate the cause of
the inmate’s distress. The deputies testified that, on the morning of his death.
Escano-Reyes shouted “continuously” for an hour or more, but neither knew the
subject of his tirade because neither spoke Spanish.
Gaddis testified that there was a “very real possibility” Escano-Reyes would
attempt suicide and “common sense” dictated he should have been observed every
15 minutes. The deputy described his “normal practice” as physically checking
suicidal inmates who he had not seen at their cell door or heard in 15 minutes. He
did not check on Escano-Reyes because he had yelled so much that morning, even
though it was “possible he could be doing something” to harm himself while
yelling. Gaddis stated that, had he physically checked Escano-Reyes, he was
“hundred percent sure [he] would have seen” Escano-Reyes “trying to tie a knot in
that suicide prevention garment” and “pacing the cell.” The deputy stated that, had
Escano-Reyes’s shouting consisted of suicidal ideations, he would have moved
Escano-Reyes to a different room, removed his garment, and strapped him into a
restraint chair. But the deputy admitted that he was not “at all curious or concerned
about what [Escano-Reyes] was saying” and that he tuned out the yelling without
“looking over [at his cell] at all.” Gaddis admitted that he had acted “deliberately,”
“knowingly,” and “disregarded” Escano-Reyes’s serious medical needs. The
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deputy also agreed with the finding of an internal investigation that his inaction
amounted to “willful neglect.”
Bauman conceded that she lacked “regard for [Escano-Reyes’s] life” and
disregarded her duty to physically check him every 15 minutes. She admitted that
she would have seen him “attempting to hang himself . . . a few times” had she
timely observed him. She also admitted that she “willfully neglected . . .
components of [her] responsibilities that morning.”
The district court ruled that Gaddis and Bauman’s argument for summary
judgment based on qualified immunity “[wa]sn’t . . . close.” The district court
stated that Rogers “easily prove[d]” that the deputies acted with deliberate
indifference because they “testified that they subjectively knew that [Escano-
Reyes] had a risk of serious harm and they admit to disregarding and ‘willfully
neglecting’ that risk, thereby violating his constitutional rights.” The district court
ruled that “the right at issue was ‘clearly established’” “[w]hether based on a
materially similar case on point,” or “the . . . exceptions” for conduct that
obviously violates a detainee’s constitutional rights.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review de novo the denial of summary judgment based on qualified
immunity. Snow v. City of Citronelle, Alabama, 420 F.3d 1262, 1268 (11th Cir.
2005). Summary judgment is appropriate when the evidence establishes that there
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is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment
as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). To make that determination, we construe
the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Snow, 420 F.3d at
1268.
III. DISCUSSION
Gaddis and Bauman argue that they are entitled to qualified immunity. The
deputies argue that the district court applied an incorrect standard to evaluate
whether they acted with deliberate indifference to Escano-Reyes’s psychiatric
needs. The deputies argue that their inaction does not constitute deliberate
indifference because Escano-Reyes had been placed “in a designated suicide watch
cell and all impediments to suicide had been removed.”
The district court applied the correct standard to evaluate the deputies’
conduct. “The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees
pretrial detainees the right to basic necessities that the Eighth Amendment
guarantees convicted persons.” Gish v. Thomas, 516 F.3d 952, 954 (11th Cir.
2008); Belcher v. City of Foley, Ala., 30 F.3d 1390, 1396 (11th Cir. 1994). So
detainees have a “right to be protected from self-inflicted injuries, including
suicide.” Belcher, 30 F.3d at 1396. An official who displays deliberate indifference
to a detainee’s taking of his own life may be liable for violating his substantive
right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Gish, 516 F.3d at 954.
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“[D]eliberate indifference entails something more than mere negligence”; “it
is satisfied by something less than acts or omissions for the very purpose of
causing harm or with knowledge that harm will result.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511
U.S. 825, 835 (1994). To be deliberately indifferent, an official must have
subjective knowledge of a risk of serious harm and “deliberately disregard a strong
likelihood rather than a mere possibility, that the self-inflicted harm will occur.”
Snow, 420 F.3d at 1268; see Gish, 516 F.3d at 954–55. “Where prison personnel
directly responsible for inmate care have knowledge that an inmate has . . .
threatened . . . suicide, their failure to take steps to prevent that inmate from
committing suicide can amount to deliberate indifference.” Greason v. Kemp, 891
F.2d 829, 835–36 (11th Cir. 1990); see Farmer, 511 U.S. at 836 (“[A]cting or
failing to act with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm to a
prisoner is the equivalent of recklessly disregarding that risk.”).
The district court did not err in determining that the evidence, taken in the
light most favorable to Rogers, could lead a jury to find that Gaddis and Bauman
knew of a strong risk that Escano-Reyes would attempt to harm himself and
deliberately took no action to prevent his suicide. The deputies knew that Escano-
Reyes was on suicide watch and had attempted to harm himself a few hours earlier.
They heard Escano-Reyes yelling, but they ignored him. The deputies never
physically checked Escano-Reyes, and Gaddis falsified records to conceal their
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inaction. A jury could find that, had the deputies monitored Escano-Reyes, they
could have prevented him from committing suicide and that their failure to perform
the task assigned to them constituted deliberate indifference.
Gaddis and Bauman argue that they entitled to qualified immunity like the
officers in Goodman v. Kimbrough, 718 F.3d 1325 (11th Cir. 2013), Gish, 516
F.3d 952, and Cagle v. Sutherland, 334 F.3d 980 (11th Cir. 2003). But the officers
in those cases performed their assigned duties, albeit carelessly. In Goodman, we
concluded that two officers tasked with monitoring inmates overnight were
unaware that their inspection of the inmates through the windows of their cells
instead of entering and examining their faces and armbands created a risk that a
67–year–old detainee suffering from dementia could be severely beaten by his
cellmate. 718 F.3d at 1329–30, 1332–33. We concluded in Gish that an officer was
not aware a suicidal arrestee would commit shoot himself using a loaded firearm in
the front seat of the patrol car when the arrestee was sitting in the rear seat in
handcuffs behind a security screen that the officer thought was locked. 516 F.3d at
953, 955. And in Cagle, we concluded that a jailer was unaware that a suicidal
detainee might harm himself after the jailer confiscated the detainee’s belt,
shoelaces, and the contents of his pockets, asked inmates in adjacent cells with
peepholes to watch the detainee, and observed him on a monitor every 15 minutes.
334 F.3d at 984, 989–90. In contrast to the officers in those cases, Gaddis and
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Bauman did nothing. The deputies ignored Escano-Reyes and the likelihood that
he would attempt to harm himself.
IV. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the denial of summary judgment to Deputies Gaddis and
Bauman.
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