Lynn Hamlet v. Officer Hoxie

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[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 21-11937

____________________

LYNN HAMLET,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

MARTIN CORECTIONAL INSTITUTION,

et al.,

Defendants,

OFFICER HOXIE,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

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2 Opinion of the Court 21-11937

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 2:18-cv-14167-DMM

____________________

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, JILL PRYOR, and GRANT,

Circuit Judges.

GRANT, Circuit Judge:

Lynn Hamlet alleges mistreatment while he was an inmate

at Martin Correctional Institution. Hamlet sued the prison and

several of its officials, alleging violations of his rights under the

First, Fourteenth, and Eighth Amendments to the United States

Constitution. Our narrow task is to ask whether he has specifically

alleged facts that—if true—would violate his rights under clearly

established law. After careful review of the record and with the

benefit of oral argument, we do not believe that he has done so.

We therefore affirm the judgments of the district court.

I.

We are reviewing two orders in this appeal. The first is the

district court’s sua sponte dismissal of Hamlet’s First and

Fourteenth Amendment claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii),

which requires district courts to dismiss proceedings in forma

pauperis that fail to state a claim on which relief may be granted.

The second is the district court’s grant of summary judgment on

Hamlet’s Eighth Amendment claim against Officer Hoxie. For

both orders, we review the decision of the district court de novo,

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accepting his allegations as true for his First and Fourteenth

Amendment claims and viewing all disputed facts and reasonable

inferences in the light most favorable to Hamlet for his Eighth

Amendment claim. See Hughes v. Lott, 350 F.3d 1157, 1159–60

(11th Cir. 2003); Jurich v. Compass Marine, Inc., 764 F.3d 1302,

1304 (11th Cir. 2014). 1

II.

Hamlet is an elderly, diabetic man who was an inmate at

Martin Correctional Institution in southern Florida. As he tells it,

his troubles began with a long-running dispute with Officer K.

Shultheiss and her husband Lieutenant A. Shultheiss, both of

whom worked at the prison. He claims that the Shultheisses had

engaged in a campaign of targeted harassment against him,

including by filing a false disciplinary report. Hamlet had filed

grievances about this alleged harassment years before any of the

events giving rise to this case.

In April 2018, Hamlet had recently come out of a diabetic

coma and did not have an appetite, so he saved a small bag of rice

from the prison chow hall. When Officer K. Shultheiss discovered

that he had taken food, he claims that she called him a “bitch.”

Hamlet, in turn, “told her what ever she call me it’s back to her.”

Officer K. Shultheiss then said that Hamlet had called her a “bitch,”

wrote a disciplinary report saying that he had disrespected an

1 We also construe Hamlet’s pleadings liberally because he was then litigating

pro se. See Hughes, 350 F.3d at 1160.

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official, and had him placed in disciplinary confinement. Hamlet

sought an administrative remedy and signed the paperwork to sue

the prison, Officer K. Shultheiss, and two other prison officials. A

few weeks later, this lawsuit was formally docketed—then limited

to a complaint about the allegedly fabricated disciplinary report.

About a week into Hamlet’s confinement, he received a

hearing about Officer K. Shultheiss’s disciplinary report—a hearing

over which Lieutenant A. Shultheiss presided. After that hearing,

Hamlet’s time in disciplinary confinement was extended. 2

The day after the hearing, Officer Hoxie escorted Hamlet to

the handicap shower, which was designed for seated showering.

While Hamlet showered, the enclosure began to fill with ankle-

deep water. Meanwhile, a potato chip bag filled with feces and

urine floated up and bumped against his ankles, which had open

wounds—a diabetes-related condition from scratching his dry skin

at night. Hamlet asked Hoxie to let him out, but Hoxie responded,

“you did it,” apparently accusing him of being the source of the

feces and urine. Hoxie briefly let Hamlet out, but then changed his

mind and shoved him back in the shower. In the end, Hoxie left

him in the shower for roughly 30 or 40 minutes. Hamlet tried to

move away from the urine and feces, but says he was ultimately

2 An exhibit offered by Hoxie establishes that Hamlet received an additional

22 days in disciplinary confinement (for a total of 30 days) as well as “30 days

loss of GT,” presumably referring to good time credits. But at the time of his

pleading, Hamlet only alleged that he was “put in confinement” without

further explanation.

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unable to prevent them from getting into his wounds. He also

claims that the problems did not end in the shower, alleging that

Hoxie also took the sheets and clean clothes from his cell and threw

them out in the hallway.

Once back in his cell, Hamlet says he still had feces in his

open wounds from the shower, but he did not tell Hoxie or anyone

else. Instead, he resorted to an attempt to clean his wounds with

his bare hands and toilet water. He did not succeed. Though

Hamlet became sick the next morning, he still did not tell anyone

that he had feces in his wounds or ask anyone for anything to help

clean himself, even though Hoxie ordered that he not be allowed

to take a shower that week.

Three days later, Hamlet filed a grievance with the Warden

about the shower incident. The grievance complained that Hoxie

had blamed Hamlet for the feces in the shower, that Hoxie had

thrown out Hamlet’s sheets, and that Hamlet had not been allowed

to shower since the incident. It made no claims that Hamlet was

sick or had feces on his body. The next day, he received medical

attention for hypoglycemia. But nothing in the records of that visit

indicates that he had wounds or feces on his body at that time.

Hamlet got progressively sicker over the next several days

and was eventually hospitalized. By then, he had lost control of his

bowels and defecated himself; he was covered in feces and urine

when he was admitted to the hospital, where he received a shower.

He was in-and-out of the hospital for some time before a bacterial

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infection required heart valve surgery; he ultimately spent months

in the hospital and suffered serious complications.

Hamlet originally filed this lawsuit to litigate Officer K.

Shultheiss’s allegedly fabricated disciplinary report. He stopped

litigating the suit while he was in the hospital, so his case was

dismissed for lack of prosecution. Once Hamlet explained his

situation, the court vacated its dismissal of the lawsuit. Magistrate

Judge Reid then found the original § 1983 complaint deficient and

ordered Hamlet to amend it. Hamlet did so, and he also expanded

the scope of the complaint to include both his allegations that

Lieutenant A. Shultheiss had improperly presided over his hearing

and his allegations that Hoxie had exposed him to the feces and

urine in the shower.

The magistrate judge construed Hamlet to be alleging

violations of his First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

She recommended that the Eighth Amendment claim against

Hoxie be allowed to proceed, but that the rest of the complaint be

dismissed without leave to amend under § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii). She

reasoned that Hamlet’s First Amendment retaliation claim was

conclusory and vague, and that his Fourteenth Amendment claim

did not identify a protected liberty interest under the Due Process

Clause. The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s

recommendations, dismissing all of Hamlet’s claims without leave

to amend except for the Eighth Amendment claim against Hoxie.

After discovery, the district court granted Hoxie’s motion

for summary judgment on the Eighth Amendment claim. The

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court rejected Hamlet’s arguments on the merits, determining

that—even if everything Hamlet alleged were true—Hamlet had

not suffered objectively extreme conditions of confinement. The

court also found that Hamlet had alleged no facts showing that

Hoxie was subjectively aware that he faced any risk of infection

from the shower. Hamlet appealed and obtained pro bono

counsel.

III.

We begin with Hamlet’s Eighth Amendment Claim against

Officer Hoxie. We agree with the district court’s grant of summary

judgment. Hoxie is entitled to qualified immunity because his

alleged actions do not violate clearly established Eighth

Amendment law. 3

The Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual

punishments.” U.S. Const. amend. VIII. This prohibition applies

to the conduct of state government officials through the

Fourteenth Amendment. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S.

742, 764 & n.12 (2010). We assess Eighth Amendment challenges

to unconstitutional conditions of confinement with a two-prong

inquiry. Thomas v. Bryant, 614 F.3d 1288, 1303–04 (11th Cir. 2010).

3 The district court did not reach the question of qualified immunity.

But we

may affirm a grant of summary judgment “on any ground that finds support

in the record” and qualified immunity was briefed by both parties. See Lucas

v. W.W. Grainger, Inc., 257 F.3d 1249, 1256 (11th Cir. 2001) (quotation

omitted).

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The first prong is an objective inquiry into whether the conditions

are “sufficiently serious to constitute a denial of the minimal

civilized measure of life’s necessities.” Id. at 1304 (quotations

omitted). “Extreme deprivations” are required to make out a

conditions of confinement claim. Id. The second prong is a

subjective inquiry into whether “the official had a sufficiently

culpable state of mind.” Id. (quotation omitted). Only “subjective

deliberate indifference to the substantial risk of serious harm

caused by such conditions” satisfies this prong. Id. at 1307.

Qualified immunity shields government officials “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 (1982). To receive qualified immunity, the official

must first prove that he was acting within the scope of his

discretionary authority when the allegedly unlawful conduct took

place. Mobley v. Palm Beach Cnty. Sheriff Dep’t, 783 F.3d 1347,

1352 (11th Cir. 2015). Hoxie calls it “undisputed” that he was acting

within his discretionary authority, and Hamlet does not contest

this characterization.

Once an official establishes that he was acting within his

discretionary authority, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to

“demonstrate (1) that the facts show that the official violated the

plaintiff's constitutional rights and (2) that the law clearly

established those rights at the time of the alleged misconduct.” Id.

at 1352–53 (quotations omitted). If the defendant’s conduct does

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not violate clearly established law, then that alone is sufficient

grounds for a court to grant qualified immunity to the defendant.

See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 242 (2009). The law “does

not require a case directly on point for a right to be clearly

established,” but “existing precedent must have placed the

statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Rivas-

Villegas v. Cortesluna, 142 S. Ct. 4, 7–8 (2021) (quotation omitted).

Here, we consider the narrow question of whether Hamlet

alleged conduct that violated clearly established Eighth

Amendment law. He did not. Clearly established law does not

show that a relatively brief exposure to urine and feces in the

shower is an objectively extreme deprivation of the minimal

civilized measure of life’s necessities.

The case cited by Hamlet that comes closest to his

allegations is Brooks v. Warden, 800 F.3d 1295 (11th Cir. 2015). 4 In

Brooks, the plaintiff alleged that he was wearing waist-chains while

receiving medical treatment, that a guard refused to lower his

chains to allow him to use the bathroom, that he consequently

4 Hamlet also relies heavily on Bilal v. Geo Care, LLC, a case with similar facts

to Brooks where we found a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment when a

civilly confined man was forced to sit in his own excrement for three hours.

See 981 F.3d 903, 909, 915 (11th Cir. 2020). But Bilal was decided after the

alleged 2018 incident in the shower, so it is “not relevant to determining

whether the law was clearly established at the time” that Hoxie allegedly

acted. See Gaines v. Wardynski, 871 F.3d 1203, 1212 n.11 (11th Cir. 2017). In

any event, Bilal would not change our analysis.

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defecated himself, and that he was forced to sit in his own

excrement for two days while the guard mocked him and

prevented nurses from cleaning him. See 800 F.3d at 1298, 1300.

We determined that the exposure to feces in Brooks was a

“deprivation of basic sanitary conditions” that violated the Eighth

Amendment. Id. at 1304–05.

Hamlet argues that Brooks clearly establishes that any

“contact and close proximity with excrement” creates “an

objectively unreasonable risk of serious damage” to a prisoner’s

“future health” and therefore violates the Eighth Amendment. Id.

at 1303–04 (quotation omitted). But this argument misunderstands

the nature of our qualified immunity analysis. The Supreme Court

has “repeatedly told courts not to define clearly established law at

too high a level of generality.” City of Tahlequah v. Bond, 142 S.

Ct. 9, 11 (2021). We cannot remove a line of dicta from its context

and abstract it to the highest possible level. Instead, we must look

at our case law and ask if the governing rule’s “contours” are “so

well defined that it is clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct

was unlawful in the situation he confronted.” Id. at 11 (quotations

omitted).

Brooks does not clearly establish that Hamlet’s alleged

exposure to feces and urine in the shower objectively deprived

Hamlet of the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities. The

alleged exposure in the shower here was different in both degree

and kind from the extreme exposure in Brooks.

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The most obvious difference is the duration of the exposure.

Hamlet claims to have been in proximity to the bag of feces and

urine for 30 to 40 minutes—not two days. But just as importantly,

the nature of Hamlet’s exposure to feces was less extreme. In

Brooks, feces was continuously pressed against the plaintiff’s body.

See 800 F.3d at 1303–04. Here, the bag of feces and urine are

alleged to have repeatedly floated up to Hamlet’s ankles in the

shower, suggesting intermittent rather than consistent contact. 5

Furthermore, unlike the plaintiff in Brooks, Hamlet had

means to mitigate the severity of his exposure to the urine and

feces. Hamlet’s shower naturally involved access to running water.

And Hamlet was sitting on a seat in the handicap shower and

testified that he could have placed his feet on top of the seat. In this

procedural posture, we do not question Hamlet’s claim that he

nonetheless failed to avoid contact with the feces. But access to

running water and the possibility of avoiding contact with feces are

important considerations in assessing the objective extremity of the

conditions of Hamlet’s confinement, and these considerations

were not present in Brooks. Nor does Hamlet allege that Hoxie

was “[l]aughing at and ridiculing” him for being forced to remain

in contact with the feces or that Hoxie forbade others from helping

5 Hamlet’s appellate briefing argues that the feces dissolved in the water, and

that the contaminated water infected Hamlet’s wounds. But under either

explanation for how feces ended up in Hamlet’s wounds, having feces in

proximity to a person in a shower is still different from being forced to defecate

oneself and sit in the excrement.

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him—further distinctions from Brooks. See Brooks, 800 F.3d at

1307, 1303.

In short, the plaintiff in Brooks alleged that he was “forced

to lie in direct and extended contact with his own feces without any

ability to clean himself” for “a full two days” while the defendant

mocked the plaintiff and prevented him from being cleaned. Id. at

1305. Intermittent contact with feces for 30-40 minutes with access

to running water is simply a different constitutional question.

Brooks does not place that question “beyond debate.” See Rivas-

Villegas, 142 S. Ct. at 8 (quotation omitted). 6

In another effort to frame his case as more extreme than

Brooks, Hamlet tries to define his exposure to feces as lasting for

days, not minutes. He argues that he was forced to spend days (and

perhaps weeks) with feces festering in his open wounds, and that

the many days of exposure should be the relevant period for our

analysis, not just the exposure in the shower.

6 Other cases cited by Hamlet also involved longer and more direct exposure

to unsanitary conditions than this case, often accompanied by deprivation of

water and other prolonged deprivations of basic necessities. See, e.g.,

Chandler v. Baird, 926 F.2d 1057, 1063, 1066 (11th Cir. 1991) (reversing a

summary judgment finding no Eighth Amendment violation when the

plaintiff alleged that he was locked in a freezing cold cell covered in filth for

multiple days without running water); Novak v. Beto, 453 F.2d 661, 665 (5th

Cir. 1971) (describing cases with prolonged confinement in filthy cells lacking

“basic elements of hygiene,” often involving freezing cold temperatures and

a lack of toilet for an extended period).

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To be sure, framing Hamlet’s injury as several days with

feces festering in open wounds would impact our analysis of

whether his injury satisfied the first prong of the Eighth

Amendment inquiry under clearly established law. But to state an

Eighth Amendment conditions of confinement claim, Hamlet also

must show that Hoxie had “subjective deliberate indifference to

the substantial risk of serious harm.” Thomas, 614 F.3d at 1307.

Nothing in this record suggests that Hoxie—or anyone but Hamlet

himself, for that matter—even knew that he had wounds on his

ankles, much less that he had feces stuck to his wounds for days

after his shower. Hamlet admits that he did not ask Hoxie for

anything when he was led back to his cell after the shower, and he

never suggests that he told Hoxie that he had feces in his wounds.

Nor did he mention his wounds or any remaining feces on his body

in the grievance he filed with the Warden three days after the

shower. And the nurses’ report from Hamlet’s treatment for

hypoglycemia—taken the day after the alleged shower incident—

likewise did not note any wounds or feces on Hamlet’s body,

suggesting that, at the absolute minimum, any wounds or feces

were not so obvious that Hoxie would have noticed them. Under

our Eighth Amendment analysis, Hoxie could not be “subjectively

culpable” for creating conditions of which he was completely

unaware. So whether because a 30-to-40-minute exposure is not

objectively extreme under clearly established law, or because the

record does not support an inference that Hoxie was subjectively

aware of feces in Hamlet’s wounds after the shower, Hamlet’s

claim fails.

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IV.

We now turn to Hamlet’s appeal of the district court’s

§ 1915 order. Hamlet argues that the court should have allowed

two of the dismissed claims to proceed: a First Amendment

retaliation claim about the allegedly fabricated disciplinary report,

and a Fourteenth Amendment Due Process claim about Lieutenant

A. Shultheiss allegedly adjudicating his own wife’s report against

Hamlet. We are not persuaded. 7

To begin, we agree with the district court that Hamlet

alleged retaliation against his constitutionally protected filing of

grievances, but that both the original and amended complaints

were too vague and conclusory to survive a § 1915 screening.8

7 Hamlet’s appellate briefing describes the facts of the hearing mainly based

on his sworn testimony during discovery for his Eighth Amendment claim,

testimony that was given long after the district court’s § 1915 order. The

district court’s order, however, can only be analyzed based on the information

in the record at that time. Seemingly realizing that this limitation is fatal to

his case, Hamlet requested at oral argument that this Court grant him leave

to amend his complaint a second time to better plead his First and Fourteenth

Amendment claims. He has not sought post-judgment leave to amend his

complaint before the district court, and we will not consider the question in

the first instance. See, e.g., Callahan v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs.,

939 F.3d 1251, 1266 (11th Cir. 2019).

8 We note that the magistrate judge specifically instructed Hamlet that his

amended complaint would “be the operative pleading considered in this case,”

that “only the claims listed therein will be addressed by the Court,” and that

“[f]acts alleged and claims raised in plaintiff’s previous filings that are not

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With the generosity due to a pro se plaintiff, a court could

piece together allegations that the Shultheisses called Hamlet

names because he had filed complaints against them, and that

Officer K. Shultheiss falsely filed a report claiming that Hamlet

called her a “bitch.” But these are “naked assertions devoid of

further factual enhancement.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678

(2009) (brackets and quotations omitted). At no point does Hamlet

describe in any detail conduct that, if true, would show that he

“suffered adverse conduct that would likely deter a person of

ordinary firmness” from engaging in protected speech, as is

necessary to bring a retaliation claim. See Castle v. Appalachian

Tech. Coll., 631 F.3d 1194, 1197 (11th Cir. 2011).

Hamlet’s Fourteenth Amendment claim faces an even more

fundamental problem: his pleadings did not allege that his hearing

led to the deprivation of a protected liberty interest. A prisoner

only has a right to due process when “a change in the prisoner’s

conditions of confinement is so severe that it essentially exceeds

the sentence imposed by the court” or when the state removes a

consistently bestowed benefit in a way that creates atypical

hardship. Kirby v. Siegelman, 195 F.3d 1285, 1291 (11th Cir. 1999).

Disciplinary confinement does not per se implicate a protected

liberty interest if it “does not present a dramatic departure from the

basic conditions” of the sentence. Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472,

specifically repleaded in the amended complaint will be considered abandoned

and voluntarily dismissed.” But the complaints are deficient whether read

together or in isolation.

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485–86 (1995) (holding that 30 days in disciplinary segregation did

not trigger any due process rights).

Hamlet’s complaint alleges that he was “put in

confinement” after his hearing. But that is all; he alleges nothing

about the conditions or duration of his confinement that would rise

above the bar in Sandin and entitle him to due process. That alone

resolves his Due Process claim.

* * *

Hamlet has not adequately alleged a violation of clearly

established law. We AFFIRM the judgments of the district court.