Hare v. City of Corinth, Miss.

Page 320

135 F.3d 320

Richard HARE, Natural Father and next friend of Haley Hare a minor; Richard Hare, Individually and in his official capacity as administrator of the estate of Tina Hare Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF CORINTH, MS; et al., Defendants Fred Johnson, Individually and in his official capacity Billy Clyde Burns, Captain, Individually and in his official capacity; James Damons, Captain, Individually and in his official capacity; Brenda Moore, Individually and in her official capacity, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 96-60872.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Feb. 12, 1998.

Ronald Dale Michael, Langston, Langston, Michael & Bowen, Booneville, MS, Christi Rena McCoy, Langston, Langston, Michael & Bowen, Iuka, MS, for Richard Hare.

Gary Erwin Friedman, Luther T. Munford, Rebecca Lynn Wiggins, Susan F. Desmond, Phelps Dunbar, Jackson, MS, for Defendants-Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

Before JOLLY, DAVIS and BARKSDALE, Circuit Judges.

RHESA HAWKINS BARKSDALE, Circuit Judge:

Concerning the suicide of pretrial detainee Tina Hare in July 1989, at issue in this interlocutory appeal on qualified immunity is whether, by not preventing the suicide, Appellants acted objectively unreasonably in the light of then clearly established law. On remand from a similar interlocutory appeal, decided by our en banc court, Hare v. City of Corinth, 74 F.3d 633 (5th Cir.1996) (en banc), the district court again denied qualified immunity to the individual defendants. We REVERSE.

I.

On remand, additional evidence was not presented. The parties to this appeal agree that our en banc opinion accurately states the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmovant, Richard Hare:

Shortly after midnight on the morning of July , 1989, the Booneville [Mississippi] Police Department notified the Corinth Police Department that [Tina] Hare had been arrested in Booneville on warrants for petty larceny and forgery. Officer Larry Fuqua of the Corinth Police Department immediately went to Booneville to pick up Ms. Hare, at which time the Booneville police informed Fuqua that Ms. Hare was a "heavy drug user." Fuqua took Ms. Hare to the Corinth City Jail, where she was jailed at approximately 1:45 a.m.

Ms. Hare's husband, [Richard] Hare, testified in his deposition that Ms. Hare called him just after she was jailed. Mr. Hare testified that his wife had never been in jail before, and that she seemed scared and frightened. Ms. Hare told her husband that nothing could be done to secure her release until after 8:00 a.m., so he went back to sleep. Later that morning, at around 6:00 a.m., Mr. Hare contacted Ms. Hare's divorced parents, Guy Taylor and Patricia Morgan, to inform them that their daughter was in the Corinth jail and needed help. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Hare met with Ms. Hare's parents; they decided that Ms. Hare's parents would go to the jail at 8:00 a.m. to seek their daughter's release, leaving Mr. Hare at home to care for the Hares' baby daughter. When Ms. Hare's parents went to the jail at around 8:00 a.m., however, [Captain Billy Clyde] Burns [of the Corinth Police Department] told them that Ms. Hare was not ready for release, and that it would take more time to complete the investigation of their daughter. Accordingly, Burns told the parents to return home and wait for his call.

In his deposition, Burns testified that he was informed that Ms. Hare was a suspect in a check forgery case, and that he first met with Ms. Hare to interview her at approximately 10:00 a.m. on July , 1989. During this interview, Ms. Hare told Burns that she had been forging checks and cashing them to finance her dilaudid addiction. According to Burns, Ms. Hare was depressed about being in jail, and was sitting with both feet in her chair in a defensive, "fetal-type" position. Ms. Hare said that she was an unfit mother and expressed concern about how her husband would react to her predicament. Burns observed that Ms. Hare was going through withdrawal, which he understood to be a normal reaction to her drug use; he also learned at that time that Ms. Hare was scheduled to enter a drug rehabilitation program the next day, July , 1989, in Tupelo, Mississippi. Burns indicated that Ms. Hare's mood improved later in the interview when she learned that her bond amount would not be as high as she initially had expected.

After the interview, Burns placed Ms. Hare in a private cell and told the dispatcher, Brenda Moore, to monitor Ms. Hare in case her withdrawal symptoms required medical attention. Ms. Hare was allowed to call her parents to ask them to return to the jail to assist with her bond so that she could be released that afternoon. These plans never materialized, apparently in part because of Burns' displeasure over Ms. Hare's attempt to destroy a videotape on which the interview had been recorded. Also, in the meantime, the Corinth police had received word of additional charges on Ms. Hare. When Ms. Hare's parents arrived at the jail at around noon, Burns told them that Ms. Hare could not go home at that time.

Though Ms. Hare was not released, she was allowed to visit with her parents from around 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. During this private meeting, Ms. Hare's mother described Ms. Hare as "emotionally distraught." Burns likewise described Ms. Hare's mood as "hyper" and "frantic" while her parents were at the jail. Ms. Hare attempted to convince Burns not to hold her in jail another night and threatened to commit suicide if he did. While Burns did not consider the threat serious, Ms. Hare's father testified that he believed that she was serious, observing that she had made the suicide threat in a serious, believable tone of voice. Burns acknowledged that it was possible that Ms. Hare said to him that "her life was in his hands," but said that he could not specifically remember whether she said those words to him. In any event, Ms. Hare's threat prompted her father to seek assurance from Burns that Ms. Hare would be safe. Burns acknowledges telling Ms. Hare's father that the police would do "everything within [their] power to make sure that nothing did happen to her."

After Ms. Hare's parents left the jail, Burns returned Ms. Hare to her original cell. Burns subsequently moved her to an isolated cell nearest the camera monitors and trusty station, claiming that Police Chief Fred Johnson instructed him to do so. Johnson denies that he ever gave Burns such an instruction. Since Ms. Hare had been strip-searched previously, Burns searched her cell, took her shoes, and made sure that she did not have a belt. Burns saw a blanket on the bunk and considered the possibility that Ms. Hare might use it to harm herself, but left it there believing that she was not strong enough to tear it. Burns instructed dispatcher Moore to keep a close check on Ms. Hare and to have the trusties check on her. Accordingly to Burns, his primary concern was Ms. Hare's "withdrawal syndrome," not her suicide threat.

Moore confirms that Burns told her to keep an eye on Ms. Hare, and that he also apprised her of Ms. Hare's threat to harm herself. Burns, however, believed that Moore would be on duty until 10:00 p.m., when in fact she was off duty at 5:00 p.m. Moore thus went home at 5:00 p.m., at which time Captain James Damons took over her dispatching duties. Moore claims that she informed Damons that Burns had left instructions to keep an eye on Ms. Hare, though Damons denies receiving such information.

Burns left the station some time after 3:00 p.m. At around 6:00 p.m., Burns called the jail from his home and told Damons to have the two trusties check on Ms. Hare at least every forty-five minutes. Damons promptly sent a trusty to check on Ms. Hare. When the trusty arrived at Ms. Hare's cell, he found her hanging from the bars of her cell with a noose that she had fashioned from strips of the blanket. As the trusty did not have a key to Ms. Hare's cell, he immediately notified Damons. Damons, in accordance with jail procedures, could not leave his post, so he called Burns. Ms. Hare was left there hanging, though the summary judgment evidence does not establish whether she was alive or dead when the trusty first found her. Burns told Damons to leave Ms. Hare undisturbed until the State Investigator arrived.

Hare, 74 F.3d at 636-38.

Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Richard Hare sued the City of Corinth, as well as the individual defendants bringing this appeal, alleging that, inter alia, they were deliberately indifferent to the risk of Tina Hare's suicide. The district court denied summary judgment, Hare v. City of Corinth, 814 F.Supp. 1312, 1314 (N.D.Miss.1993), and the individual defendants appealed, asserting qualified immunity.

Our court's original panel opinion held that Richard Hare had alleged a violation of the clearly established right to medical attention for suicidal tendencies, and that material fact issues remained as to whether the individual defendants were deliberately indifferent. Hare v. City of Corinth, 22 F.3d 612 (5th Cir.1994), withdrawn and superseded on rehearing by 36 F.3d 412 (5th Cir.1994), on rehearing en banc, 74 F.3d 633 (5th Cir.1996), on remand, 949 F.Supp. 456 (N.D.Miss.1996). However, that panel revised its opinion, holding: (1) that "the jail officials were under a clearly established constitutional duty to provide pretrial detainees with reasonable care for serious medical needs, unless the deficiency reasonably served a legitimate governmental objective"; and (2) that a material fact issue existed as to whether the jail officials "knew or should have known of Tina Hare's vulnerability to suicide". Hare, 36 F.3d at 415-17, on rehearing en banc, 74 F.3d 633, on remand, 949 F.Supp. 456.

Our court took this case en banc, for the following reasons stated in the resulting opinion, and held:

As our cases suggest, we have traveled a peripatetic route in...