King v. Riley

76 F.4th 259

David T. KING, individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of John Telly King, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. Warden Timothy RILEY; Associate Warden Andrea Thompson; Associate Warden Gary Lane;Major V. Jackson; Captain Yolanda Brown; Lt. Travis Pressley;Sgt. Dewaun McKan; Cpl. Matthew Whitaker; and c/o Damian Jones, Defendants - Appellees.

No. 22-6410

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit

Argued: January 27, 2023

Decided: August 4, 2023

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Rock Hill. Paige Jones Gossett, Magistrate Judge. (0:19-cv-00828-PJG)

ARGUED: Elizabeth Anne Franklin-Best, ELIZABETH FRANKLIN-BEST, P.C., Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellant. Claude Eugene Hardin, Jr., THE MCKAY FIRM, P.A., Columbia, South Carolina; Daniel C. Plyler, SMITH ROBINSON, LLC, Columbia, South Carolina; David Allan DeMasters, RILEY, POPE & LANEY, LLC, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Shanon N. Peake, SMITH ROBINSON, LLC, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees Riley, Thompson, Lane, Jackson, Brown, Garvin, Pressley, and Whitaker. Daniel R. Settana, Jr., THE MCKAY FIRM, P.A., Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee McKan.

Before WYNN, THACKER, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Richardson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Thacker joined. Judge Wynn wrote an opinion dissenting.

RICHARDSON, Circuit Judge:

John Telly King was brutally murdered by fellow inmates Jacob Philip and Denver Simmons. King's estate sued the South Carolina Department of Corrections prison guards on duty and their supervisors, alleging that they were deliberately indifferent to King's safety and medical needs and therefore responsible for his death. A magistrate judge disagreed, granting summary judgment to defendants, and King appeals. Finding no error in the judge's decision, we affirm. The prison guards on duty failed to violate a clearly established right so are entitled to qualified immunity. And King failed to allege, or raise a disputed material fact of, any individual involvement by the supervisor defendants.

I. Background

King was incarcerated in the Intermediate Care Services Unit at Kirkland Correctional Facility. That Unit houses "inmates with serious persistent mental illness who require intensive treatment . . . but [who] do not need psychiatric hospitalization." J.A. 296.

The Unit, like other units in Kirkland, used inmates as janitors, or—as the prison referred to them—"ward keepers." Ward keepers are apparently chosen based on mental-health counselors' recommendations.¹ They receive special privileges. Of note, their cell doors remained unlocked from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., allowing them to move about the Unit and have other inmates in their cell.

These privileges helped Philip and Simmons kill King. Both Philip and Simmons were ward keepers. In fact, they were head ward keepers despite both serving life sentences for double murders and having a violent prison history.² One April morning in 2017, they lured King into Simmons's unlocked cell, strangled him with an extension cord,³ and stuffed his body underneath the bed. Over the next two and a half hours, they murdered three other inmates.

While the murders were occurring, Sergeant DeWaun McKan was on duty. As part of his duties, Sergeant McKan was supposed to conduct security checks every 30 minutes. He did do this. But he had also been trained to look inside the cells when conducting those security checks. He did not do this. When he passed by Simmons's cell on that murderous morning, he did not look inside. And no officer noticed anything was wrong.

Undiscovered and uninterrupted, Philip and Simmons completed their murders. They then left the Unit, walked to the prison's administration building, and told officers there to check Simmons's cell. Those officers radioed Sergeant McKan and another officer, Damien Jones. When Sergeant McKan and Officer Jones entered the cell, they found four bodies. Sergeant McKan radioed for first responders but did not himself administer medical care. Neither did Officer Jones.

King sued Sergeant McKan, Officer Jones, their immediate supervisors, and Kirkland's warden and associate wardens under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. King alleged that defendants were deliberately indifferent to his safety and medical needs in violation of his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The parties elected to proceed before a magistrate judge, who granted summary judgment to defendants. The magistrate judge held that defendants were not deliberately indifferent and that, in any event, they were entitled to qualified immunity. King appeals this decision, and we have jurisdiction.

II. Discussion

King's estate brings three deliberate-indifference claims. First, King alleges that Sergeant McKan was deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk to King's safety because he failed to protect King by conducting proper security checks.⁴ Second, King asserts that Sergeant McKan and Officer Jones were deliberately indifferent to King's medical needs by calling for medical personnel without checking for a pulse or performing CPR on King when they discovered his body. Third, King claims that Warden Riley, Associate Warden Thompson, Associate Warden Lane, and Major Jackson were deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk to King's safety under a theory of supervisory liability.⁵

We first discuss the deliberate-indifference standard. Prison officials violate the Eighth Amendment's cruel-and-unusual-punishment clause when they are deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk to an inmate's safety or medical needs. See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994); Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976). A deliberate-indifference claim has an objective and subjective element. Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834-37, 114 S.Ct. 1970; Pfaller v. Amonette, 55 F.4th 436, 445 (4th Cir. 2022). The objective prong requires the inmate to demonstrate a "substantial risk of serious harm." Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834, 114 S.Ct. 1970. The subjective prong requires the inmate to show that the prison official knew about this substantial risk and recognized that their response to that risk was inadequate. Parrish ex rel. Lee v. Cleveland, 372 F.3d 294, 303 (4th Cir. 2004). That means, even with knowledge of the risk, an official who "responded reasonably to the risk" cannot be found liable under the Eighth Amendment. Farmer, 511 U.S. at 844, 114 S.Ct. 1970.

A. Failure-to-Protect Claim

We begin with King's claim that Sergeant McKan was deliberately indifferent to King's safety by failing to conduct proper security checks. At bottom, King argues that Sergeant McKan should be held liable because he walked past Simmons's cell without looking inside despite knowing King faced a substantial risk of inmate violence. But because there is no clearly established constitutional right to properly conducted security checks, McKan is entitled to qualified immunity, and cannot be held liable on this claim.

When a government official is sued in their individual capacity, they are protected by qualified immunity "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known."⁶ Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). To overcome qualified immunity, a plaintiff must typically show (1) that the government official violated a statutory or constitutional right and (2) that right was clearly established at the time of the challenged conduct. See Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011).

That said, the Fourth Circuit has carved out a class of deliberate-indifference claims to treat differently. Acknowledging that qualified immunity does not protect officials who knowingly disregard the law, see Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986), we have reasoned that officials who are aware that their conduct is constitutionally deficient cannot rely on the clearly established prong, Pfaller, 55 F.4th at 446-47 (citing Thorpe v. Clarke, 37 F.4th 926, 933-40 (4th Cir. 2022)). We have said that, sometimes, context makes the violation "obvious" and case law is thus not needed to establish this awareness. See id. at 447 (quoting Thorpe, 37 F.4th at 934). So when a defendant knows her conduct does not pass constitutional muster, we do not look to see if she violated clearly established precedent. Thorpe, 37 F.4th at 939-40. Instead, we ask only if her actions violated the Eight Amendment. See Pfaller, 55 F.4th at 446. But, if she did not know her actions violated the Eighth Amendment, she is entitled to the same two-pronged, qualified-immunity approach as every other government official. Id. at 448 ("In such a case, the 'clearly established' prong continues to perform work independent of the 'constitutional-violation' prong.").

Sergeant McKan is entitled to the two-prong approach. To see why, consider the substantial risk of harm he is alleged to have known about: inmate-on-inmate violence. According to King, Sergeant McKan's conduct is constitutionally deficient because although he took steps to mitigate that risk—for example, performing security checks every thirty minutes—he did not look in the cells on those checks. Yet the Constitution does not "obvious[ly]" require he look in the cells to mitigate the risk of inmate-on-inmate violence. See id. at 447 (quoting Thorpe, 37 F.4th at 934). So context did not make him aware of a knowing violation of the law. See id. We thus cannot say that McKan did not "need case law to tell him" that his conduct was constitutionally deficient. Id. at 446.

Turning to the applicable two-prong approach, we may address the prongs in whatever order we choose. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009). H...