Michael Cantley v. West Virginia Regional Jail , 771 F.3d 201 ( 2014 )

PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 13-7655
MICHAEL CANTLEY, and; FLOYD TETER, on behalf of themselves
and on behalf of a Class of others similarly situated,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v.
THE WEST VIRGINIA REGIONAL JAIL AND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
AUTHORITY, and; TERRY L. MILLER, both individually and in
his official capacity as Executive Director of the West
Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority
and; JOSEPH A. DELONG, both individually and in his
official capacity as Acting Executive Director of the West
Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority
and; LARRY PARSONS, both individually and in his official
capacity as Executive Director of the West Virginia
Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority,
Defendants - Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Huntington. Robert C. Chambers,
Chief District Judge. (3:09-cv-00758)
Argued: September 17, 2014 Decided: November 14, 2014
Before WILKINSON, SHEDD, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the
opinion, in which Judge Shedd and Judge Wynn joined. Judge Wynn
wrote a separate concurring opinion.
ARGUED: Elmer Robert Keach, III, LAW OFFICES OF ELMER ROBERT
KEACH III, PC, Amsterdam, New York, for Appellants. David J.
Mincer, BAILEY & WYANT, PLLC, Charleston, West Virginia, for
Appellees. ON BRIEF: D. Aaron Rihn, ROBERT PEIRCE & ASSOCIATES,
PC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Nicholas Migliaccio, WHITFIELD,
BRYSON & MASON, LLP, Washington, D.C.; Daniel Karon, GOLDMAN,
SCARLATO, KARON & PENNY, PC, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellants.
2
WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:
This case involves the visual strip-searching and delousing
of two men held in two different jails in West Virginia.
Plaintiffs Michael Cantley and Floyd Teter brought a 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983 action for damages and equitable relief against the West
Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority
(“WVRJA”) and three former and current Executive Directors of
the WVRJA. The WVRJA is the state agency tasked with overseeing
the ten regional jails, each of which receives arrestees pending
their arraignments when local courts are not immediately
available. Plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of the
strip searches and delousing procedure.
The district court granted defendants’ motion for summary
judgment and denied plaintiffs’ cross-motion for summary
judgment on the grounds that the strip searches and delousing
procedure did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Cantley v. W.
Va. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility Auth., 2013 WL 5531855 (S.D. W.
Va. Oct. 4, 2013). We now affirm, albeit on alternate grounds
with respect to plaintiff Teter. See, e.g., Ellis v. La.-Pac.
Corp., 699 F.3d 778, 786 (4th Cir. 2012) (“This court is
entitled to affirm the court's judgment on alternate grounds, if
such grounds are apparent from the record.”) (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted).
3
I.
Because the facts surrounding the visual strip searches of
the plaintiffs are materially different, we consider them each
in turn. Plaintiff Cantley was arrested in September 2008 for
violating a domestic violence protection order. He was arraigned
before a magistrate, who committed him to the Western Regional
Jail, one of ten in the WVRJA system. Upon entering the jail,
Cantley was pat-searched, given a brief medical examination,
booked, and placed in a holding cell. During the booking
process, Cantley cursed at the officers and threatened them.
Once in the holding cell, he kicked the cell door insistently
until officers put him in a restraint chair. Over the course of
an hour and a half, Cantley repeatedly attempted to get out of
the chair, at one point grabbing at a nurse’s hand and at
another threatening to strangle an officer.
After Cantley had calmed down and been released from the
chair, he was strip-searched and deloused by a single male
officer. The officer instructed Cantley to remove his clothes,
“rais[e] his scrotum, bend[] over, and cough[].” Cantley v. W.
Va. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility Auth., 2013 WL 5531855, at *5
(S.D. W. Va. Oct. 4, 2013). At no point did the officer touch
Cantley. The officer then used a spray bottle to apply delousing
solution to Cantley’s body. After showering, Cantley dressed in
a prison uniform and was escorted to a holding cell, where he
4
remained until he was moved to a cell in the general housing
area. 1
The district court held that, under Florence v. Board of
Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 132 S. Ct. 1510
(2012), the strip search of Cantley was constitutional. Cantley,
2013 WL 5531855, at *5. In the alternative, the court held that
Cantley’s behavior and his arrest for violating a domestic
violence protection order “justified . . . searching Mr. Cantley
to ensure [the officers’] personal safety and the safety of
others in the facility.” Id. at *5 n.9.
In Florence, the Supreme Court held that “every detainee
who will be admitted to the general population [of a jail] may
be required to undergo a close visual inspection while
undressed.” 132 S. Ct. at 1513. Before he was strip-searched,
Cantley appeared before a magistrate, who ordered him committed
to the jail’s general population. Florence squarely covers the
strip search of Cantley. We thus affirm the district court’s
grant of defendants’ summary judgment motion on Cantley’s strip
search claim on the grounds that the search was constitutional.
1
Cantley also alleged that on several other occasions he
was arrested and then strip-searched and deloused before
presentment. The district court held that those allegations
were insufficiently pled. Cantley, 2013 WL 5531855, at *4 n.4.
Cantley has provided us with no reason to overturn that ruling,
and we decline to do so.
5
II.
A.
Plaintiff Teter was arrested between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. on
February 19, 2010, for obstructing an officer and putting debris
in the road. He was taken to a hospital for a medical
examination, and then fingerprinted at the Preston County
Courthouse. He did not appear before a magistrate. From the
courthouse he was brought to the Tygart Valley Regional Jail at
10:15 p.m., where he was pat-searched, examined by a nurse, and
booked. After that, Teter was escorted to a shower room, where
he was strip-searched and deloused by a single male officer. The
officer instructed him to remove his clothes and “spread his
legs, lift his testicles, turn around, bend over, and spread his
cheeks.” Cantley v. W. Va. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility Auth.,
2013 WL 5531855, at *6 (S.D. W. Va. Oct. 4, 2013). At no point
did the officer touch Teter. The officer then used a garden
sprayer to apply delousing solution to the hairy areas of
Teter’s body.
After showering and dressing in a prison uniform, Teter was
placed in a holding cell, where he was joined by another
arrestee. Eventually, the two arrestees were moved to a smaller
cell in expectation of the arrival of a larger group of
detainees, who were to be placed in the larger holding cell. In
the morning, Teter was taken out of the holding cell and
6
escorted through the general population housing unit -- where
committed prisoners live -- to the video conferencing room,
where he appeared before a magistrate via video connection.
(Individuals arrested later in the day or in the evening often
do not appear before a magistrate until the next morning.) The
magistrate ordered Teter released on bond at 9:00 a.m. All told,
Teter spent almost eleven hours in Tygart Valley.
The officer who strip-searched Teter testified that pat
searches have turned up knives, brass knuckles, ammunition,
pieces of metal, lighters, cell phones, and all types of drugs.
He further testified that he has found as much contraband as the
result of strip searches as from the pat searches. Strip
searches have uncovered drugs, lighters, matches, and
cigarettes; the contraband is sometimes taped to the arrestee’s
body or hidden in a balloon in the rectum.
The holding area at Tygart Valley has six cells. Because of
overcrowding in the housing unit, however, officers generally
only have use of two of the cells for holding pre-arraignment
arrestees. As a result, officers only separate arrestees by sex
instead of by seriousness of the charges. Up to fifteen
individuals may be held in a single holding cell. At the time
Teter was arrested, Tygart Valley conducted strip searches of
every arrestee who came in, regardless of arraignment status or
seriousness of the charge. After blanket strip searches were
7
suspended in 2011, there were at least two instances of drug use
in the holding cells.
The district court found that the strip search of Teter
“struck a reasonable balance between the need to provide safety
and security at the facility and Mr. Teter’s privacy interests”
and thus held that the search was constitutional. Id. at *10.
B.
The doctrine of qualified immunity protects defendants in
§ 1983 suits from the burden of going to trial where the
“conduct [at issue] does not violate clearly established
statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person
would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818
(1982). A defendant is entitled to judgment if either “the facts
. . . [do not] make out a violation of a constitutional right”
or if the law was not “‘clearly established’ at the time of
defendant’s alleged misconduct.” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S.
223, 232 (2009). We may address either prong of this analysis
first, id. at 236, and we find it unnecessary to reach the
constitutional merits of the strip search of Teter.
The law is “clearly established” only if “‘the contours of
a right are sufficiently clear’ that every ‘reasonable official
would have understood that what he is doing violates that
right.’” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083 (2011)
(quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987))
8
(alterations omitted). We examine whether the law was clearly
established as of the time the allegedly unlawful action
occurred. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640. In making our inquiry, we
“‘ordinarily need not look beyond the decisions of the Supreme
Court, this court of appeals, and the highest court of the state
in which the case arose.’” Lefemine v. Wideman, 672 F.3d 292,
298 (4th Cir. 2012) (quoting Edwards v. City of Goldsboro, 178
F.3d 231, 251 (1999)), vacated on other grounds, 133 S. Ct. 9
(2012). Although the law does not require that there be a prior
case identical to the case at bar for the law to be clearly
established, see Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002),
“existing precedent must have placed the statutory or
constitutional question beyond debate.” Al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at
2083.
Plaintiff contends that Logan v. Shealy, 660 F.2d 1007 (4th
Cir. 1981), clearly established that the strip search of a pre-
arraignment arrestee without individualized suspicion is
unconstitutional. But this case is quite different from Logan.
Teter was strip-searched in a private room in the presence of
one officer. Logan was strip-searched in a holding room with a
transparent window; she was “exposed to the general view of
persons known to be in the vicinity.” Logan, 660 F.2d at 1014.
The district court recognized that there were significant
security justifications for searching Teter and similar
9
arrestees. Cantley, 2013 WL 5531855, at *7, *9-*10. In Logan,
there was no credible justification for the strip search. Teter
was strip-searched prior to being placed in a holding cell,
where he might interact with up to fifteen other arrestees, and
led through the housing unit to the videoconferencing room. He
ultimately spent almost eleven hours in Tygart Valley. Logan, on
the other hand, was strip-searched when she was soon to leave
the facility, and there is no mention of her interacting with
other arrestees. Logan, 660 F.2d at 1010. She spent a little
more than two-and-a-half hours in total at the detention
facility. Id. at 1009-10.
Logan did not clearly establish that it was
unconstitutional for a correctional officer to conduct a visual
strip search in a private room of an arrestee, who was to be
held until the next morning in a holding cell with possibly a
dozen or more other arrestees. Because the law was not clearly
established, the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity
for the strip search of Teter. 2
2
Because the Supreme Court issued Florence v. Board of
Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 132 S. Ct. 1510
(2012), after the search of Teter took place, that decision
does not demonstrate either that the law was clearly established
or that it was not.
10
III.
The district court held that the delousing of both Cantley
and Teter was constitutional and granted summary judgment on the
delousing claims. Cantley v. W. Va. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility
Auth., 2013 WL 5531855, at *13 (S.D. W. Va. Oct. 4, 2013). We
affirm the grant of summary judgment, but on the grounds that it
was not clearly established that the delousing policy was
unconstitutional. 3
Plaintiffs argue that Amaechi v. West, 237 F.3d 356 (4th
Cir. 2001), clearly established that the delousing of both
Cantley and Teter was an unreasonable search or seizure. We
disagree. In Amaechi, an officer physically searched Amaechi,
who had been arrested for a noise violation, in public. The male
officer “squeezed her hips, and inside her opened dress,
‘swiped’ one ungloved hand, palm up, across her bare vagina, at
which time the tip of his finger slightly penetrated Amaechi’s
genitals,” and then “knead[ed]” her buttocks with his hand.
Amaechi, 237 F.3d at 359. This sexually abusive search “took
place directly in front of the Amaechis’ townhouse, where the
other police officers, Amaechi’s husband, her five children, and
3
The Supreme Court did not expressly reach the delousing
issue in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of
Burlington, simply commenting that “[t]he danger of introducing
lice or contagious infections” into a detention facility “is
well documented.” 132 S. Ct. 1510, 1518 (2012).
11
all of her neighbors had the opportunity to observe.” Id. at
360.
The delousing of Cantley and Teter, while undoubtedly
unwelcome, cannot compare to the seriousness of the intrusion in
Amaechi. The male officer in Amaechi manhandled the naked female
plaintiff in public “without any apparent justification.” Id. at
361. By contrast, the delousing of Cantley and Teter was done in
a private room with only one officer, who was of the same sex,
and it did not entail the officer himself touching either
plaintiff. Furthermore, the jails have a significant “interest
in reducing the outbreak of lice.” Cantley, 2013 WL 5531885, at
*12. In short, at the time of the delousing, “existing precedent
[did not] place[] the statutory or constitutional question
beyond debate.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083
(2011). The defendants thus are entitled to qualified immunity
for the delousing of Cantley and Teter.
IV.
In holding that the defendants’ actions did not violate the
Constitution and granting the defendants’ motion for summary
judgment, the district court necessarily denied the plaintiffs’
prayer for injunctive and declaratory relief. Cantley v. W. Va.
Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility Auth., 2013 WL 5531855, at *13 (S.D.
W. Va. Oct. 4, 2013). Although we have affirmed the district
court’s grant of summary judgment on the alternative grounds of
12
qualified immunity, we conclude that injunctive and declaratory
relief in this case would be premature.
A plaintiff seeking injunctive relief must satisfy these
four factors: “[1] that he is likely to succeed on the merits,
[2] that he is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence
of preliminary relief, [3] that the balance of equities tips in
his favor, and [4] that an injunction is in the public
interest.” Winter v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S.
7, 20 (2008) (preliminary injunction); see eBay Inc. v.
MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388, 391 (2006) (articulating a
similar test for permanent injunctions). “[A]ll four
requirements must be satisfied.” Real Truth About Obama, Inc. v.
FEC, 575 F.3d 342, 346 (4th Cir. 2009), vacated on other
grounds, 559 U.S. 1089 (2010).
A court should not impose an injunction lightly, as it is
“an extraordinary remedy involving the exercise of a very far-
reaching power, which is to be applied only in the limited
circumstances which clearly demand it.” Centro Tepeyac v.
Montgomery Cnty., 722 F.3d 184, 188 (4th Cir. 2013) (en banc)
(citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Issuing a
declaratory judgment is similarly within the court’s discretion.
Wilton v. Seven Falls Co., 515 U.S. 277, 286-87 (1995). It is
well-settled that remedies must be tailored to violations, see,
e.g. Winter, 555 U.S. at 32-33, and injunctive relief would not
13
appear an appropriate course where, as we note infra, WVRJA’s
policies already do not permit, absent some particularized
suspicion, strip searches conducted on pre-arraignment detainees
held outside the general population.
The application of equitable power is in part a pragmatic
exercise as the standards set forth in Winter and eBay
illustrate. Before a court uses its equitable powers to enter
the field of institutional governance in this area, correctional
authorities deserve the chance to absorb the implications of
Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington,
132 S. Ct. 1510 (2012), and to take steps to ensure that their
policies conform to that decision. Although Florence may not
have reached the precise constitutional questions presented by
the case at bar, the decision altered the legal playing field
for detention facilities across the nation. Specifically, taking
the varying opinions in their totality, Florence made clear that
blanket strip searches prior to arraignment of arrestees not
designated for assignment to the detention facility’s general
population are constitutionally suspect in the absence of some
particularized justification.
Florence did, however, note that correctional officers
“must have substantial discretion to devise reasonable solutions
to the problems they face.” 132 S. Ct. at 1515 (detailing the
different difficulties that large and small detention facilities
14
may encounter). Even before Florence came down, the WVRJA had
ordered Tygart Valley to cease any blanket practice of strip-
searching and delousing pre-arraignment arrestees not designated
for the general jail or prison population. See J.A. 751-52
(internal Tygart Valley order); J.A. 1574 (e-mail order from
WVRJA to jail administrators). The WVRJA maintains that its
written policies do not allow its officers to require, without
particularized suspicion, strip searches of these arrestees.
While the distance between a front office directive and its
implementation in the field can be a long one, we think it
premature at this point to draft an equitable decree without
affording some prior opportunity for West Virginia
administrators to apply their own experience in complying with
Florence and the shifting boundaries of the law in this area.
The searches of the type conducted here are “undoubtedly
humiliating and deeply offensive to many.” Florence, 132 S. Ct.
at 1524 (Alito, J., concurring). At the same time, correctional
authorities have an unquestionably legitimate interest in
limiting the influx into their facilities of weapons and drugs,
whose chief risk is to the physical safety and well-being of
other arrestees themselves. Id. at 1519-20 (majority opinion).
The Supreme Court has struck the balance in this difficult area
by questioning whether “indiscriminate strip searching of
detainees held outside of the general population” is
15
constitutional. West v. Murphy, No. 13-2014, slip op. at 19 (4th
Cir. 2014) (Wynn, J., concurring). Conforming its policies to
the directives of the Court would seem destined for high
placement on any list of administrative priorities, and we trust
there will be no absence of diligence in the effort.
V.
For the reasons stated, we affirm the judgment of the
district court.
AFFIRMED
16
WYNN, Circuit Judge, concurring:
The majority opinion does not reach the precise question of
whether the strip search conducted on Floyd Teter was
unconstitutional, but it does cast serious doubt on the legality
of similar searches going forward. See ante at 14. In my view,
strip searching pre-arraignment detainees who are held outside
the general population of a detention facility is
unconstitutional absent reasonable suspicion. See Florence v.
Bd. of Chosen Freeholders of Cnty. of Burlington, 132 S. Ct.
1510, 1523 (2012) (Roberts, C.J., concurring); id. at 1524
(Alito, J., concurring); id. at 1525 (Breyer, J., joined by
Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting). I agree with
the majority that corrections administrators would be wise to
take into account recent changes in the legal landscape
governing strip searches when crafting policy in this area,
particularly in light of the varying opinions in Florence. See
ante at 14.
17