Christiansen v. Inman

98 F. App'x 521
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedApril 19, 2004
DocketNos. 00-1704, 00-3066
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 98 F. App'x 521 (Christiansen v. Inman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Christiansen v. Inman, 98 F. App'x 521 (7th Cir. 2004).

Opinion

ORDER

Illinois inmate Mark Christiansen alleged in this pro se lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that defendants John Inman and Beau Purtle, both guards at Menard Correctional Center, beat him, banged his head against the wall, and ripped his clothing during a June 1995 encounter, and then afterwards put him in an isolated holding cell. Christiansen claimed that he suffered head and neck injuries as a result of the beating. At trial a jury found in favor of the defendants. In these consolidated appeals, Christiansen challenges the adverse judgment entered on that verdict, as well as the district court’s order denying a postjudgment motion to set aside the verdict.

Christiansen raises six issues between the two appeals. First he argues that the court abused its discretion in refusing his request for appointed counsel. But the district court’s order denying Christiansen’s request demonstrates that the court assessed the difficulty of his case and determined that his claims were not particularly complex, that the relevant facts were within Christiansen’s personal knowledge, and that he appeared competent to represent himself. See Zarnes v. Rhodes, 64 F.3d 285, 288-89 (7th Cir.1995). We perceive no abuse of discretion.

Christiansen next contends that the district court erred by not enforcing its pretrial order compelling the defendants to produce a list of the inmates who may have witnessed the alleged attack. During discovery Christiansen asserted that another inmate whose name he did not know had witnessed the attack from a holding pen; Christiansen said the witness was dressed in a green jumpsuit, which would indicate that he was in the process of being moved in or out of the prison. Christian-sen had requested that the defendants provide him the names and photographs of inmates who were coming or going that day, and when the defendants did not respond, the district court issued an order compelling production. The defendants then responded that production was impossible because inmate-movement records are routinely destroyed after one year whereas Christiansen had waited until two years after the alleged attack to make his request. The defendants’ response satisfied the district court, but Christiansen continued to demand inmate-movement records, so the district court ordered defense counsel to search the prison’s files; counsel reported back that they had found nothing. District judges are in a much better position than we are to decide discovery matters, so we will overturn a discovery ruling only for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Pearson, 340 F.3d 459, 467 (7th Cir.2003); Packman v. Chi. Tribune Co., 267 F.3d 628, 646 (7th Cir. 2001). Because the district court went to great lengths to ensure that the defendants did not have the requested information in their possession, we find no error.

Third, Christiansen asserts that the district court should have struck for cause four of the six members of his jury because all four had relatives who were involved in law enforcement, one of them [524]*524“harbored some resentment for criminals” because she had recently been the victim of an unsolved burglary, and another felt “animosity” toward prisoners because her ex-husband had been confined at Menard for six months in 1986. We disagree. Empaneling a jury is a process entrusted to the trial judge, and we will not disturb the court’s handling of that process “absent an abuse of discretion.” United States v. Scott, 267 F.3d 729, 743 (7th Cir.2001). Jurors might be presumed biased in “extreme” or “extraordinary” cases, Salvato v. Ill. Dep’t of Human Rights, 155 F.3d 922, 927 (7th Cir.1998), such as when a juror is related to one of the parties or has a financial interest in the outcome, see United States v. Polichemi, 219 F.3d 698, 704 (7th Cir.2000). But that was not the situation with any of these jurors, and so the relevant inquiry was whether the four could “conscientiously and properly carry out their sworn duty to apply the law to the facts of the particular case.” See Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 86, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988) (quoting Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S. 162, 184, 106 S.Ct. 1758, 90 L.Ed.2d 137 (1986)). The district court questioned all the jurors to determine if they could be fair, and none indicated an inability to do so. And the judge specifically questioned the burglary victim and the woman whose former husband had been imprisoned at Menard, and both assured the court that their experiences would not preclude them from being fair and impartial. The district court was satisfied with their answers, as are we.

Fourth, Christiansen maintains that the district court erroneously kept him from calling four of his five rebuttal witnesses, all inmates, to impeach Inman’s and Purtle’s credibility. In a pretrial order the district court opined after evaluating the proposed testimony that allowing more than one inmate to talk about each defendant would be cumulative, and of course trial judges have discretion to exclude even relevant evidence “if its probative value is substantially outweighed by ... considerations of ... needless presentation of cumulative evidence.” Fed. R.Evid. 403; see Mihailovich v. Laatsch, 359 F.3d 892, 906 (7th Cir.2004). But at trial the court revisited Christiansen’s request for more than two rebuttal witnesses and left open the possibility: “Depending upon, you know, what the defendants say or don’t say, rebuttal evidence may or may not be relevant. We will have to address it at that time.” Following the defendants’ case, however, Christiansen called only one rebuttal witness and then rested his case without seeking to call the others or objecting that he could not. Thus, it appears that Christiansen, not the trial judge, was responsible for the decision to limit the number of inmate rebuttal witnesses.

In any event, decisions excluding evidence are reviewed for abuse of discretion only, and even an incorrect ruling cannot be grounds for reversing a jury’s verdict unless it had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence on the jury’s verdict.” Young v. James Green Mgmt., Inc., 327 F.3d 616, 621 (7th Cir.2003). We discern no such impact here.

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Bluebook (online)
98 F. App'x 521, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/christiansen-v-inman-ca7-2004.