Alfred Days v. Warden Scott Crickmar , 701 F. App'x 883 ( 2017 )

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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 17-10872
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 4:15-cv-00083-HLM
ALFRED DAYS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
WARDEN SCOTT CRICKMAR, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Georgia
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(July 18, 2017)
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Before TJOFLAT, WILLIAM PRYOR, and ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Plaintiff-Appellant Alfred Days filed an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983against Defendant-Appellees Scott Crickmar and Alisa Hammock, the warden and
deputy warden, respectively, at Hays State Prison (Hays), alleging that they
violated his Eighth Amendment rights.1 While he was incarcerated at Hays, Days
was beaten and sexually assaulted by a group of inmates. Days asserts that the
defendants were deliberately indifferent to the pleas for protective custody he made
before the attack. Days also contends that the defendants are not protected by
qualified immunity. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of
Crickmar and Hammock. Days now appeals. After careful review, we affirm.
I.2
Days was imprisoned at Hays State Prison, in the Northern District of
Georgia. His trouble began in October 2014, when he was assigned to a work
detail outside the prison. Soon after Days began his new job, inmates who were
known gang members contacted Days. They wanted him to bring contraband into
the prison when he returned from his outside work. When Days refused, the gang
members threatened him.
1
In his amended complaint, Days also sued Monica Hill, a doctor at the prison. The
allegations against Dr. Hill were previously dismissed and are not part of this appeal.
2
We take the facts from the parties’ undisputed statements of material facts.
2
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Because of the threats, Days asked a prison official, Sergeant Swinford, for
protective custody. Instead, Swinford put Days on “pending investigation” status
while he looked into the allegations. During that time, Days repeated his requests
for protective custody to various prison officials. He told Officer Dyer and
Sergeant Stokes about the threats, and he wrote multiple letters to Warden
Crickmar and Deputy Warden Hammock.
But Days never heard back from Crickmar or Hammock, and he was not
placed in protective custody. Nevertheless, Days believes Crickmar and Hammock
received his letters because after the investigation was complete, Hammock
transferred his housing to Y dorm. All parties agree that Y dorm is the safest dorm
at Hays.
Days was placed in Y dorm in early December 2014. 3 After Days arrived,
he stopped his requests for protective custody. He felt safe in Y dorm, as inmates
with histories of violence were not housed there. Indeed, Y dorm did not “have
problems with fighting, etc.” On top of that, the dorm housed older and respectful
people. And the only gang members housed there were former gang members who
needed to be housed away from the gangs. Y dorm was also offset from other
buildings and was surrounded by a locked gate.
3
The parties agreed, in their statements of undisputed facts, that Days was placed in Y
dorm in early December 2015. Since the parties otherwise agreed that the relevant events took
place in 2014, we believe this was a harmless typographical error.
3
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Around the time Days moved to Y dorm, Days was transferred to work in
the kitchen. Nobody threatened him while he worked there. Days admits he felt
safe working in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, though, on December 19, 2014, weeks after the investigation
ended, gang members physically and sexually assaulted Days in the kitchen
bathroom.
Days filed this action soon afterwards. As relevant to this appeal, he alleged
that Crickmar and Hammock violated his Eighth Amendment rights by failing to
place him in protective custody when they knew that gang members had threatened
him. Following discovery, Crickmar and Hammock moved for summary
judgment, which the district court granted after finding that the defendants were
entitled to qualified immunity. Days now appeals.
II.
We review de novo a district court’s grant of summary judgment. Melton v.
Abston, 841 F.3d 1207, 1219 (11th Cir. 2016). In so doing, we apply the same
legal standards that bound the district court and view all facts and reasonable
inferences in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Shuford v. Fid.
Nat’l Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 508 F.3d 1337, 1341 (11th Cir. 2007). We may affirm
the district court’s summary-judgment decision on any basis supported by the
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record, even if the district court did not rely on that basis. Feliciano v. City of
Miami Beach, 707 F.3d 1244, 1251-52 (citation omitted).
A district court may grant summary judgment if the moving party shows that
no genuine dispute of material fact exists and that he is entitled to judgment as a
matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A genuine dispute of material fact occurs
when the evidence could lead a reasonable factfinder to render a verdict for the
non-moving party. Melton, 841 F.3d at 1219. Factual disputes that are irrelevant
to the legal resolution of the case are not material. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby,
Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986).
To aid in efficiency, the Northern District of Georgia has enacted local rules
governing the protocol for prosecuting and opposing summary-judgment motions.4
Under Local Rule 56.1(B)(2)(a)(2), N.D. Ga., the district court considers at
summary judgment only those facts that are in the movant’s statement of
undisputed facts, or the non-movant’s response, and that are supported by a
citation to supporting evidence in the record. See id. The court must review the
citations to the record to satisfy itself that the motion is supported by evidence.
See Reese, 527 F.3d at 1269 (citation omitted).
4
Title 28, United States Code, Section 2071(a) authorizes courts to “prescribe rules for
the conduct of their business.” So long as such rules are “consistent with Acts of Congress and
rules of practice and procedure prescribed under” 28 U.S.C. § 2072, they “are effective unless
modified or abrogated by the judicial council of the relevant circuit.” Reese v. Herbert, 527 F.3d
1253, 1266 (11th Cir. 2008) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
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III.
When an inmate is at a substantial risk of serious harm, a prison official’s
deliberate indifference to that risk violates the Eighth Amendment. Farmer, 511
U.S. at 828. So prison officials have a duty to protect inmates from violence.
Rodriguez v. Sec’y for Dept. of Corr., 508 F.3d 611, 616-17 (11th Cir. 2007). But
this duty is not absolute. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834.
To hold a prison official liable for deliberate indifference, an inmate-plaintiff
must meet three requirements. Bowen v. Warden Baldwin State Prison, 826 F.3d
1312, 1320 (11th Cir. 2016). First, the plaintiff must show that he faced a
substantial risk of serious harm. Id. Second, the plaintiff must establish that the
defendants subjectively knew of the risk, but they disregarded it by failing to
respond in an objectively reasonable manner. Id. And third, the plaintiff must
show a causal connection between the defendants’ conduct and the harms to the
plaintiff. Id.Here, at a minimum, Days did not satisfy the second prong—that is, he did
not show that the defendants failed to respond in an objectively reasonable manner
to a substantial risk of harm that they knew of. True, the record establishes that
Days reported the gang threats to prison officials, and they did not put him into
protective custody.
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But according to the undisputed factual record, which is supported by
Days’s own admissions at his deposition and in response to the defendants’
statement of material facts, the prison officials (1) opened an investigation into
Days’s allegations; (2) moved Days to Y dorm, where Days himself felt safe; and
(3) transferred Days to kitchen duty, where Days also felt safe. Certainly, if Days
himself felt like these were safe places, it was not unreasonable for the defendants
to share that view, particularly in light of the characteristics of the population
housed at Y dorm and the fact that Days had not been further threatened after his
move. Nor did Days submit any evidence to suggest that the defendants had any
reason to believe that Days remained in any danger after these changes. Finally,
Days also admitted that following these changes, he did not again request
protective custody. For these reasons, Days cannot show that the defendants failed
to respond in an objectively reasonable manner to a substantial risk of harm they
knew existed.
Nor, as Days asserts, does the record reflect that it contains a material issue
of fact concerning these matters. Days takes issue first with the defendants’
statement in their statement of material facts, that it is unlikely that someone could
have gained access to him and harmed him in Y dorm. But in light of the rest of the
facts about Y dorm to which Days stipulated, this allegation is immaterial to the
issue of whether the defendants objectively reasonably believed that Days would
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be safe in Y dorm. As we have noted, Days admitted that only inmates without
histories of fighting or stabbing were housed in Y dorm; that respectful people
lived there; that Y dorm didn’t “have problems with fighting, etc.”; that he felt safe
there; that it was offset from other buildings; and that it was surrounded by a
locked gate. Against a background of no evidence suggesting that Y dorm was
unsafe, these facts, in and of themselves, establish the reasonableness of the
defendants’ response to Days’s reports of threats.
Days’s other contention that a material fact exists fares no better. Days
denies that he stopped asking for protective custody after he began working in the
kitchen. But the record tells a different story. In their statement of undisputed
material facts, Crickmar and Hammock asserted that Days stopped asking for
protective custody after he switched to the kitchen. Days made the following
concessions in his response to that statement:
26. After being placed in the Y building in early December [2014],
Days never asked for protective custody again. ADMITTED.
...
28. Shortly after being housed in the Y building, Days was assigned to
work in the kitchen serving breakfast at HSP. ADMITTED.
Because Days worked in the kitchen after he moved to Y dorm, his admission that
he never again asked for protective custody necessarily includes during the entirety
of the time he worked in the kitchen. And beyond that, the evidence Days cites to
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us in his denial does not directly refute Crickmar and Hammock’s assertion. Days
cites his own deposition, but he cites requests for protective custody that he made
while he was pending investigation, not afterwards. On this record, we are
constrained to find that Days stopped asking for protective custody after he began
working in the kitchen.
IV.
As a result, on this record, Days did not state a viable claim under § 1983.5
We therefore affirm the district court’s entry of summary judgment.
AFFIRMED.
5
For this reason, we need not conduct a qualified-immunity analysis.
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