Jaimie Rager v. McMinn County

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 23a0351n.06

No. 21-5987

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

FILED

) Aug 02, 2023

JAMIE RAGER, Mother, Guardian and Next Friend ) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk

of GC, a minor, )

)

Plaintiff-Appellee,

) ON APPEAL FROM THE

) UNITED STATES DISTRICT

v.

) COURT FOR THE EASTERN

MCMINN COUNTY, TENNESSEE; JOE GUY, ) DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE

McMinn County, Tennessee, Sheriff; DERRICK )

) OPINION

SAXE, Officer,

)

Defendants-Appellants. )

Before: GUY, WHITE, and LARSEN, Circuit Judges.

LARSEN, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which GUY, J., joined in full, and

WHITE, J., joined in all but Section II.A. WHITE, J. (pp. 7–8), delivered a separate opinion

dissenting in part.

LARSEN, Circuit Judge. After his arrest, Timothy Cook was placed in a booking cell at

the McMinn County Detention Center with a previously violent, frequent flyer at the prison, Jarrod

Jones. Jones attacked Cook. Although the officers on duty responded within seconds, Cook died.

Jamie Rager is the mother of Cook’s child, GC, who is Cook’s sole heir. She brought a 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983 suit as GC’s next friend against Officer Derrick Saxe, Sheriff Joe Guy, and McMinn

County. Defendants moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion in part

and denied it in part. Pertinent to this appeal, Officer Saxe and Sheriff Guy appeal the denial of

qualified immunity, and McMinn County appeals the denial of summary judgment on Rager’s

Monell claims. For the reasons stated, we REVERSE in part and DISMISS in part for lack of

jurisdiction.

No. 21-5987, Rager v. McMinn County, et al.

I.

Tennessee police arrested Timothy Cook for driving under the influence and took him to

the McMinn County Detention Center (the Jail). Officers placed him in a holding cell (Cell One)

while they completed the booking. Jarrod Jones also was arrested that day, for theft and trespass.

He too was placed in Cell One for booking. Although there were five cells in the Jail’s booking

area, it was common for multiple detainees to be held together in Cell One, the largest cell in the

booking area. Jones had a lengthy criminal history and many prior stays at the Jail. Although

Jones was not exhibiting aggressive behavior during booking, he had been disciplined numerous

times for assaulting other inmates at the Jail. In fact, just nineteen days prior to the assault of

Cook, Jones had assaulted another inmate in Cell One. Although jail officials knew of Jones’s

assaultive tendencies, the Jail had an informal “clean-slate” policy, meaning that every inmate who

entered the Jail was treated the same, even those with past disciplinary issues, unless the inmate

demonstrated behavior, upon arrival at the Jail, showing that he needed to be segregated.

According to McMinn County Sheriff Joe Guy, he thought the policy was “just the right thing to

do” and that officers “try not to prejudge people, even though we may have some knowledge on

them.”

Shortly before 6:30 p.m., Jones began to assault Cook. Deputy Dale Murray saw Jones

punch Cook. Cook fell to the ground, and Jones stomped on him. Deputy Murray alerted Officer

Derrick Saxe to the assault. Officer Saxe was seated at the booking desk close to Cell One. He

stood up, saw the assault, grabbed the cell key, and jogged to Cell One. The officers arrived at

Cell One approximately twelve seconds after noticing the fight and entered the cell approximately

sixteen seconds after it had started. They immediately stopped the assault, but it was too late.

Cook was unresponsive, had no pulse, and was not breathing. Despite efforts to save Cook, he

later died at a local hospital.

Jamie Rager brought a § 1983 suit on behalf of Cook’s child and sole heir against Officer

Saxe, Sheriff Guy, and McMinn County. She also raised claims under Tennessee law. Defendants

moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion in part and denied it in part.

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No. 21-5987, Rager v. McMinn County, et al.

Pertinent to defendants’ appeal, the district court denied qualified immunity to Officer Saxe and

Sheriff Guy and allowed the claims against McMinn County to proceed to trial.1

II.

Denial of a defendant’s motion for summary judgment grounded on qualified immunity is

appealable “to the extent that it turns on an issue of law.” Watkins v. Healy, 986 F.3d 648, 658

(6th Cir. 2021) (citation omitted). We review de novo the denial of qualified immunity. Klein v.

Long, 275 F.3d 544, 550 (6th Cir. 2001).

A. Officer Saxe

Failure to Protect. Officer Saxe first challenges the district court’s decision to deny him

qualified immunity on Rager’s failure-to-protect claim. Because Cook was a pretrial detainee, his

claims arise under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Westmoreland v.

Butler County, 29 F.4th 721, 727 (6th Cir. 2022). “[T]o establish deliberate indifference for failure

to protect [under the Fourteenth Amendment], ‘a defendant officer must [1] act intentionally in a

manner that [2] puts the plaintiff at a substantial risk of harm, [3] without taking reasonable steps

to abate that risk, [4] and by failing to do so actually cause the plaintiff’s injuries.” Stein v. Gunkel,

43 F.4th 633, 639 (6th Cir. 2022) (quoting Westmoreland, 29 F.4th at 729).

Even if Rager can establish the first two elements, her claim fails the third. “The third

element requires more than negligence because ‘liability for negligently inflicted harm is

categorically beneath the threshold of constitutional due process.’” Id. at 639–40 (quoting

Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389, 396 (2015)). To establish the third element, Rager must

show that Officer Saxe “was more than merely negligent; the officer must have acted with reckless

disregard in the face of an unjustifiably high risk of harm.” Id. at 640 (internal quotation marks

and citation omitted).

Here, Rager cannot make such a showing. Officer Saxe had no part in placing Cook and

Jones together; they were placed in Cell One together prior to his shift. At some point, Officer

1

The district court also granted summary judgment to defendants on Rager’s claim for failure to

fund the jail and her state-law claims. Those claims are not before the court on appeal.

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No. 21-5987, Rager v. McMinn County, et al.

Saxe noticed Cook and Jones together, though he couldn’t remember when. On the day of the

incident, Jones didn’t offer any indication that he would suddenly and viciously attack Cook, such

that Officer Saxe would have understood that failing to separate them left Cook facing an

unjustifiably high risk of harm. And once Officer Saxe learned of the assault, he stopped it within

sixteen seconds. In sum, it cannot be said that Officer Saxe acted with reckless disregard in the

face of an unjustifiably high risk of harm. See id. (concluding the same where the officer likewise

had minimal involvement in placing the victim and violent inmate in the same cell and where he

was “otherwise follow[ing] jail procedures”).

Rager responds that because Officer Saxe knew of Jones’s prior violent history, he had a

duty to immediately segregate Jones from the rest of the population. But she offers no case that

would put Saxe on notice that he had to remove Jones from the cell where there was no indication

on that day that Jones was likely to attack Cook. Rager bears the burden of establishing that Saxe

is not entitled to qualified immunity. See Johnson v. Moseley, 790 F.3d 649, 653 (6th Cir. 2015)

(“Since the defendant officers have raised the qualified immunity defense, plaintiff bears the

burden of showing that defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity.”). She has not done so.

Qualified immunity “gives ample room for mistaken judgments by protecting all but the

plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224,

229 (1991) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Here, Officer Saxe was not plainly

incompetent, nor did he knowingly violate the law. As a result, he is entitled to qualified immunity

on Rager’s failure-to-protect claim.

Failure to Train. Officer Saxe next challenges the denial of qualified immunity on Rager’s

failure-to-train claim. For such a claim, Rager must establish “(1) the training or supervision was

inadequate for the tasks performed; (2) the inadequacy was the result of the municipality’s

deliberate indifference; and (3) the inadequacy was closely related to or actually caused the

injury.” Winkler v. Madison County, 893 F.3d 877, 902 (6th Cir. 2018) (citation omitted).

Rager’s failure-to-train claim against Officer Saxe fails because she has not identified any

person whom Saxe failed to train. To the extent Officer Saxe is a supervisory official, he is liable

only if his “failure to supervise, control or train the offending individual” caused the

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No. 21-5987, Rager v. McMinn County, et al.

unconstitutional conduct. Shehee v. Luttrell, 199 F.3d 295, 300 (6th Cir. 1999). According to

Rager, Officer Saxe is the “offending individual.” Id. We know of no case that holds a supervisor

liable for failing to supervise, control, or train himself. Rager’s failure-to-train claim against

Officer Saxe fails from the start, and Officer Saxe is entitled to qualified immunity.

B. Sheriff Guy

Sheriff Guy challenges the district court’s denial of qualified immunity on Rager’s claims

against him in his individual capacity for failure to protect and failure to train. Rager’s claims are

premised entirely on Sheriff Guy’s creation of the “clean slate” policy that, in Rager’s view, failed

to protect Cook from violence and precluded Sheriff Guy from properly training employees on

how to handle violent inmates. For a supervisor to be liable in his individual capacity, he must

have “either encouraged the specific incident of misconduct or in some other way directly

participated in it.” Phillips v. Roane County, 534 F.3d 531, 543 (6th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted).

That participation must go beyond being the individual behind the policy that led to the allegedly

unconstitutional conduct. See id. at 543–44; Heyerman v. County of Calhoun, 680 F.3d 642, 647

(6th Cir. 2012) (A failure to supervise and train claim based on a supervisory official’s “adherence

to or continuation of a policy . . . improperly conflate[d] a § 1983 claim of individual supervisory

liability with one of municipal liability.”); Harvey v. Campbell County, 453 F. App’x 557, 563

(6th Cir. 2011) (“To the extent plaintiffs have adduced supporting findings that McClellan or Scott

was a County policymaker on matters of training and was so deliberately indifferent to the need

for more comprehensive training as to render the training deficiency a matter of de facto County

policy, he would be liable, if at all, in his official capacity, i.e., rendering the County liable.”).

Because Rager’s claims against Sheriff Guy are premised entirely on the policy he created as the

policymaking authority for McMinn County, we must construe her claims as claims of municipal

liability. Rager offers no cases indicating to the contrary, and Sheriff Guy therefore is entitled to

summary judgment on Rager’s claims for individual liability.

III. McMinn County

McMinn County appeals the district court’s denial of summary judgment on Rager’s

Monell claim. We must assess our jurisdiction to consider the County’s appeal.

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No. 21-5987, Rager v. McMinn County, et al.

A county “is not eligible for qualified immunity, and the denial of summary judgment” on

a Monell or official-capacity claim “is not an independently appealable ‘final decision’ under 28

U.S.C. § 1291.” Lane v. City of LaFollette, 490 F.3d 410, 423 (6th Cir. 2007). Nonetheless, “an

appellate court can exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction on a § 1983 claim alleging municipal

liability where the municipality’s motion for summary judgment is ‘inextricably intertwined’ with

the qualified immunity analysis properly before the Court.” Id. An appeal is inextricably

intertwined if “the question of whether a constitutional violation occurred resolves the case against

the defendants in their individual capacities and the case against the municipality’s officers in their

official capacities.” Id. Said differently, “[a] pendent appellate claim is ‘inextricably intertwined’

with a properly reviewable claim on collateral appeal ‘only if . . . appellate resolution of the

collateral appeal necessarily resolves the pendent claim as well.” Martin v. City of Broadview

Heights, 712 F.3d 951, 963 (6th Cir. 2013) (second alteration in original) (quoting Mattox v. City

of Forest Park, 183 F.3d 515, 524 (6th Cir. 1999)).

McMinn County argues that we have jurisdiction over its appeal because “the § 1983 claim

for failure to protect against McMinn County is inextricably intertwined with the issue of

Defendant Guy’s qualified immunity.” Appellant Br. at 25. But as explained above, we must treat

Rager’s individual-capacity claims against Sheriff Guy as claims against the County because they

are based entirely on Guy’s policymaking authority. Counties are not entitled to qualified

immunity, so there is no “qualified immunity analysis properly before the Court” that would allow

us to exercise pendent jurisdiction over the Monell claims. Lane, 490 F.3d at 423. The only claims

with respect to Sherriff Guy’s conduct are Monell claims. We lack pendent jurisdiction over the

County’s appeal.

***

We REVERSE in part and DISMISS in part for lack of jurisdiction.

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No. 21-5987, Rager v. McMinn County, et al.

HELENE N. WHITE, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part. I concur in all but Section II.A. of

the majority opinion; I respectfully dissent from the reversal of the district court’s denial of

qualified immunity to Officer Saxe.

“[P]rison officials have a duty . . . to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other

prisoners.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 833 (1994). Pretrial detainees are similarly

protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. See Brawner v. Scott County, 14 F.4th 585, 591 (6th Cir.

2021). In Brawner, we held that a pretrial detainee stated a § 1983 claim that jail officials were

deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need where the jail officials “acted deliberately [and]

recklessly ‘in the face of an unjustifiably high risk of harm that is either known or so obvious that

it should be known.’” Id. at 596. In Westmoreland v. Butler County, we applied Brawner in the

context of a pretrial detainee who claimed that jail officials had failed to protect him from the risk

of violence at the hands of his fellow detainees and held that a deliberate indifference claim for a

jail official’s failure to protect a pretrial detainee is viable if the officer “[1] act[s] intentionally in

a manner that [2] puts the plaintiff at substantial risk of harm, [3] without taking reasonable steps

to abate that risk, and [4] by failing to do so actually cause[s] the plaintiff’s injuries.” 29 F.4th

721, 729 (6th Cir. 2022). Accordingly, the key question here is whether Saxe was “more than

merely negligent” and instead “acted with reckless disregard of an unjustifiably high risk of harm”

by failing to remove Cook from his holding cell with Jones. Id. at 730.

The majority describes Jones as a “previously violent, frequent flyer at the prison.” This

does not fully capture Jones’s history at the Detention Center. Jones had been incarcerated at the

Detention Center fifteen times before he assaulted and killed Cook in Holding Cell One. On

several of those occasions, he was disciplined for assaulting other inmates. Most notably, just

nineteen days before Jones killed Cook, Jones assaulted a pretrial detainee in the same holding

cell. The incident report of that assault includes details very similar to those here: the officer

working the booking counter “looked up from the prisoner register and saw Inmate Rodriguez on

the ground and Inmate Jones punching him in the face.” R.6-2, PID 93. McMinn County

categorizes inmate assault or homicide a “Class A” inmate violation, the highest offense level,

which can result in disciplinary segregation of up to thirty or sixty days per offense, administrative

segregation, an increase in an inmate’s sentence, forfeiture of good-time credits, and a referral for

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No. 21-5987, Rager v. McMinn County, et al.

criminal prosecution. R.28-5, PID 240, 258. That Jones had committed several “Class A” inmate

violations during his fifteen stays at the Detention Center suggests that his history was known by

the Detention Center staff. And, when deposed, Saxe stated that he knew “[Jones] from being

arrested before,” agreed that Jones had “caused trouble in the jail before” and noted that he was

“sure [he] was” personally involved in an incident with Jones but could not remember which

incident. R.28-1, PID 216-217.

There is ample evidence that Jones had a proclivity for violence against other inmates and

detainees that was random and unprovoked. Jones’s well-documented history of assaults against

other inmates, together with Saxe’s testimony that he was aware of Jones’s past, is sufficient to

support an inference that Saxe appreciated, or was recklessly indifferent to, the risk to Cook’s

safety when he left him in a cell with Jones. As the district court explained, “[a] reasonable jury

could find that Defendant Saxe knew of the risk Jones posed to [Cook] and he disregarded that

risk by allowing the two to remain in a dark cell together.” R.37, PID 420.1 Accordingly, I would

affirm the district court’s denial of qualified immunity to Saxe.

1

In Stein v. Gunkel, 43 F.4th 633 (6th Cir. 2022), this court held that jail officers were protected

by qualified immunity against a failure-to-protect claim brought by a pretrial detainee who was

assaulted in his cell by another detainee. Stein is distinguishable because here Saxe had actual

knowledge of Cook’s violent tendencies against other inmates and detainees at the Detention

Center, in contrast to the officers in Stein who, at best, knew only that the detainee had been

arrested in connection with outstanding assault warrants. Further, the officers in Stein were

involved in classifying the pretrial detainee; they did not have the opportunity to place him in or

remove him from the cell with his attacker.

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