Casiano v. Ashley

515 F.Supp.3d 19

Keysha CASIANO, Plaintiff,

v.Raelle ASHLEY, et al., Defendants.

16-CV-6651L

United States District Court, W.D. New York.

Signed January 28, 2021

Charles Francis Burkwit, Burkwit Law Firm, PLLC, Rochester, NY, for Plaintiff.

Adam M. Clark, Michele Romance Crain, Monroe County Department of Law, Rochester, NY, for Defendants.

DECISION AND ORDER

DAVID G. LARIMER, United States District Judge

Plaintiff Keysha Casiano brings this action against five individual defendants and the County of Monroe (New York), asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and New York law. Defendants have moved for summary judgment dismissing the complaint.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND¹

On October 14, 2015, plaintiff called 911 after getting into an argument with her mother's boyfriend. Rochester Police Department officers responded to the scene and arrested plaintiff for second degree harassment. The boyfriend was also arrested. The officers took plaintiff into custody and drove her to the Monroe County Jail ("Jail").²

Defendants Raelle Ashley, Danielle Cammilleri, Paul Maccarone, and Timothy Schliff (collectively "Deputies"), all of whom were deputies with the Monroe County Sheriff's Department ("MCSD"), were on duty at the Jail that day, assigned to Central Booking. Their job responsibilities included conducting searches of inmates entering the Jail in order to detect and confiscate contraband (such as weapons or drugs), prevent escapes and disturbances, and recover missing or stolen property. Ashley and Cammilleri are women; Maccarone and Schliff are men.

When plaintiff came in, she was photographed, searched, and put through a scan machine.³ She removed her shoes and jacket to be scanned, but remained in her shirt, pants and undergarments.

Plaintiff was then pat-searched by Deputy Ashley. Defendants contend that during the pat search, plaintiff began acting suspiciously, repeatedly placing her hands down the front of her pants, as if grabbing for something. Plaintiff denies that she did so.

Following the pat search (which did not indicate the presence of any contraband), plaintiff was ordered to take a seat on the BOSS (Body Orifice Scanning System) chair, a non-intrusive scanning system. According to defendants, this displayed a positive reading, indicating that there might have been something concealed in plaintiff's clothing.

Plaintiff was then ordered to submit to a strip search. Under MCSD policies, such a search requires that the person to be searched completely disrobe, while each item of her clothing is searched and her entire body is visually inspected, including the inside of the mouth and ears only. See General Order 28-11 (Dkt. #17-13) at 1.

In preparation for the search, plaintiff was taken to a separate room ("Strip Search Room"), where she was ordered to remove her clothing. Defendants contend that plaintiff refused to obey the deputies’ commands to take off her clothes, and continued to put her hands down the front of her pants.

Defendants state that eventually they ordered plaintiff to put both hands behind her back, which she did long enough for defendant Ashley to get a handcuff on plaintiff's right wrist, at which point plaintiff began physically resisting. Plaintiff was then "wall stabilized" and then "ground stabilized" until the deputies were able to "gain compliance," finish handcuffing her, get her to her feet and take her to a cell.

Plaintiff agrees that she refused the deputies’ order to disrobe, but she alleges that she told them that she could not, because she was menstruating. When she tried to show the deputies what she was talking about, by lowering her pants, Ashley and Cammilleri grabbed her, and together with another deputy, pushed her against a wall and threw her onto the floor. Plaintiff alleges that during this altercation, she was pepper sprayed and verbally abused.

After plaintiff was handcuffed, she was taken to a jail cell, where she was strip-searched by Ashley and Cammilleri. Plaintiff alleges that in doing so, defendants "broke" her clothes, and left her lying on the floor while male deputies watched from the hallway, laughing at her. Plaintiff alleges that at one point, after her clothes were removed, one of the male deputies said, "She is having her period."

Following the search (which turned up nothing), plaintiff spent the night in the Jail, and appeared in court the next morning for her arraignment. Her claims do not involve any events that occurred following those described above.

Defendants agree that a strip search was performed, but they deny any wrongdoing on their part. Defendants admit that there was some physical interaction between the Deputies and plaintiff, and they state that shortly after the strip search, plaintiff was examined by a nurse, and was noted to have some bruising and swelling.

Defendants have submitted a DVD containing several video recordings of these events taken by Jail security cameras. One video shows Ashley and Cammilleri standing outside the doorway of the Strip Search Room for several minutes. They are seen talking to someone inside the room, presumably plaintiff, who is off camera. There is no audio on the recording.

At one point, Ashley and Cammilleri enter the room, and emerge with plaintiff, with whom they are struggling. A male deputy, who had been in an adjacent hallway, comes in, and the three deputies wrestle plaintiff to the floor, face down, handcuff her behind her back, get her to her feet, and escort her down the hallway. During this incident, another male deputy enters the room, but by the time he gets there, the situation is under control, and he does not actively participate in subduing plaintiff. Based on the incident reports submitted by the deputies afterwards, it appears that Maccarone was the first male deputy to enter, and that Schliff was the second.

After that, plaintiff was taken to a cell and searched. The DVD submitted by defendants contains a recording of the hallway leading to the cell where plaintiff was taken, but all it shows is the two male deputies standing in the hallway and occasionally looking into the cell. Whatever was happening inside the cell is not visible.

Plaintiff filed the complaint in this action on September 27, 2016. She has sued Ashley, Cammilleri, Maccarone, Schliff, Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O'Flynn, and the County of Monroe ("County"). Plaintiff has asserted five causes of action: (1) a § 1983 claim against the Deputies and the County, alleging use of excessive force, in violation of plaintiff's rights under the Fourth Amendment; (2) a § 1983 claim against the County, essentially based on so-called Monell liability; (3) battery and (4) assault claims against the Deputies and the County; and (5) a negligence claim against all the defendants.

Defendants have moved for summary judgment on all claims. In her response, plaintiff concedes that the fifth (negligence) claim should be dismissed in its entirety, that the first (excessive force) claim should be dismissed as to the County, and that the second (Monell ) claim should be dismissed. Plaintiff's response does not even mention Sheriff O'Flynn, and since it appears from the complaint that he is only included in the fifth cause of action, plaintiff implicitly concedes that there are no viable claims against O'Flynn. Thus, the only claims that are now before the Court are the excessive force claim against the Deputies, and the assault and battery claims against the Deputies and the County.

DISCUSSION

I. Excessive Force

Plaintiff's action is brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. That statute "itself creates no substantive rights; it provides only a procedure for redress for the deprivation of rights established elsewhere." Sykes v. James , 13 F.3d 515, 519 (2d Cir. 1993) (citing City of Oklahoma City v. Tuttle , 471 U.S. 808, 816, 105 S.Ct. 2427, 85 L.Ed.2d 791 (1985) ).

In this action, plaintiff alleges that defendants violated her constitutional rights by using excessive force against her at the Jail. The parties do not dispute that as an arrestee at the time of the relevant events, plaintiff was constitutionally protected from the use of excessive force by the Fourth Amendment.

The Court must nonetheless make its own independent determination of the correct legal standard. Most cases addressing § 1983 claims of excessive force involve either the use of force during an arrest, which is governed by the Fourth Amendment, or the use of force against a prisoner, which is governed by the Eighth Amendment. The standards applied to those two types of claims are significantly different from each other. In particular, a plaintiff asserting an Eighth Amendment claim must show that the defendant acted with a subjectively wrongful state of mind. See Sims v. Artuz , 230 F.3d 14, 20-21 (2d Cir. 2000).

In the case at bar, plaintiff's claims arise out of events that occurred after she was arrested, but before she was arraigned. Such claims most appropriately fit within the protections of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Szabo v. Parascandolo , No. 16-CV-3683, 2019 WL 481925, at *5 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 7, 2019) ("For post-arrest, pre-trial detainees, ... the right ‘to be free from excessive force amounting to punishment is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment’ ") (quoting United States v. Walsh , 194 F.3d 37, 47 (2d Cir. 1999) ).

The standards applicable to such a claim are largely the same as those applied to Fourth Amendment claims. Both relate to the objective reasonableness of the defendants’ use of force; there is no "subjective" element, as with Eighth Amendment claims. See Kingsley v. Hendrickson , 576 U.S. 389, 397, 135 S.Ct. 2466, 192 L.Ed.2d 416 (2015) ("the appropriate standard for a pretrial detainee's excessive force claim is solely an objective one").

The distinction is also worth noting because many Fourth Amendment decisions relating to the use of force during an arrest turn on factors that have little relevance in...