19-3251-cv Edwards v. Quiros, et al.
In the United States Court of Appeals For the Second Circuit ________
AUGUST TERM, 2020
ARGUED: NOVEMBER 17, 2020 DECIDED: JANUARY 27, 2021
No. 19-3251-cv
M.A. EDWARDS, Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
WARDEN QUIROS, in his individual and official capacity, Defendant-Appellee,
COMMISSIONER ARNONE, COMPLEX WARDEN LAJOIE, DEPUTY WARDEN POWERS, in their individual and official capacities, SZABAN, Defendants. ________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. ________
Before: WALKER, KATZMANN, and WESLEY, Circuit Judges. ________ 2 19-3251-cv
Plaintiff M.A. Edwards, a Connecticut prisoner, brought this
action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that state correctional officials
violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and
unusual punishment by denying him a meaningful opportunity to
exercise for six months. Specifically, Edwards alleged the denial
occurred when prison officials required him to wear full restraints
when exercising in the prison yard. After a jury returned a verdict for
Edwards, the district court (Underhill, J.) granted Defendant Warden
Angel Quiros’s motion for judgment as a matter of law on the basis
that Quiros’s personal involvement was for too short a time to
support an Eighth Amendment claim. We conclude that the evidence
was sufficient to support the jury’s findings that (1) Edwards was
subjected to an Eighth Amendment violation, and (2) Quiros was
liable for it. We also conclude that Quiros is not protected by qualified
immunity. Accordingly, we VACATE the district court’s entry of
judgment as a matter of law and REMAND for further proceedings.
________ STEPHEN BERGSTEIN, Bergstein & Ullrich, LLP, New Paltz, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
STEVEN M. BARRY, Assistant Attorney General, Connecticut Office of the Attorney General, Hartford, CT, for Defendant-Appellee.
________ 3 19-3251-cv
JOHN M. WALKER, JR., Circuit Judge:
action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that state correctional officials
violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and
unusual punishment by denying him a meaningful opportunity to
exercise for six months. Specifically, Edwards alleged the denial
occurred when prison officials required him to wear full restraints
when exercising in the prison yard. After a jury returned a verdict for
Edwards, the district court (Underhill, J.) granted Defendant Warden
Angel Quiros’s motion for judgment as a matter of law on the basis
that Quiros’s personal involvement was for too short a time to
support an Eighth Amendment claim. We conclude that the evidence
was sufficient to support the jury’s findings that (1) Edwards was
subjected to an Eighth Amendment violation, and (2) Quiros was
liable for it. We also conclude that Quiros is not protected by qualified
immunity. Accordingly, we VACATE the district court’s entry of
judgment as a matter of law and REMAND for further proceedings.
BACKGROUND
Facts
Plaintiff Edwards has been incarcerated in the Connecticut
state prison system following his conviction for murder more than 20 4 19-3251-cv
years ago. The instant case arose from Edwards’s treatment as an
inmate at Northern Correctional Institution (Northern) in Somers,
Connecticut, a maximum-security facility where Defendant-Appellee
Angel Quiros was the warden at all times relevant to this suit.
Edwards was transferred to Northern on September 21, 2010,
after assaulting a correctional officer at his prior, lower-security
facility. Upon his arrival at Northern, Edwards was held in punitive
segregation until mid-October, when he was transferred to
administrative detention pending further review of his detention
status. On November 3, Edwards was placed into administrative
segregation (AS) Phase I status. The imprisonment conditions during
his time in punitive segregation, administrative detention, and AS
Phase I were the most restrictive at Northern.
AS Phase I inmates are normally placed in the East or West
wing of Unit One at Northern. Unit One is the most secure and
restrictive of Northern’s three housing units, and its recreation yards
contain individual secured enclosures within the larger secured
recreation enclosure. The doors to these smaller enclosures are
equipped with trap doors through which corrections officers can
remove inmates’ restraints once the inmate is secured inside, allowing
the inmate freedom of movement while exercising. The trap doors 5 19-3251-cv
make it possible for officers to remove the restraints while physically
separated from the inmate by the enclosure itself.
At the time Edwards was placed in AS Phase I, however, Unit
One was fully occupied. As a result, he was housed in “overflow” AS
Phase I housing in Unit Three’s East wing but kept under restrictions
commensurate with those in Unit One. Every AS Phase I inmate
assigned to overflow housing in Unit Three was supposed to be
rotated back to Unit One after only one or two weeks. This was in
part because Unit Three’s recreation yard was not designed to
accommodate AS Phase I inmates; it was equipped with neither
individual recreation enclosures nor trap doors on the enclosure
doors. Therefore, when AS Phase I overflow inmates such as
Edwards were taken to the recreation yard in Unit Three, corrections
officers did not remove the set of full restraints even after securing the
inmates in the enclosed yard. These inmates spent their recreation
time with their hands cuffed behind their backs, leg irons on their
ankles, and a chain tether securing those two sets of restraints to one
another, which severely restricted the inmates’ freedom of
movement. As an AS Phase I inmate in Unit Three, Edwards’s only
unrestrained exercise opportunity was in his 7-by-12-foot cell;
although Edwards testified that he was able to perform push-ups and
sit-ups while unrestrained in his cell, other forms of exercise were 6 19-3251-cv
impossible because furniture, including a bed, desk, chair, footlocker,
sink, and toilet, occupied much of the space.
On March 3, 2011, Edwards submitted an inmate request form
to his unit manager at Northern, complaining about being forced to
exercise in full restraints for his permitted one hour of yard exercise.
The unit manager denied the request, explaining that Edwards was
kept in full restraints both because of the severity of his latest assault
on a correctional officer and because, due to the lack of trap doors,
there was no way for officers to safely remove the restraints from
inmates in Unit Three’s exercise enclosure. On March 8, Edwards
submitted the same complaint on an inmate request form to Warden
Quiros. In response, Quiros told Edwards to take the complaint up
with his unit manager, apparently unaware that Edwards had already
done so. On March 10, Edwards filed a formal grievance with Quiros
on the same grounds. Quiros received the request on March 15 and
ultimately denied it on April 11. In the interim, however, on March
24, Quiros transferred Edwards to AS Phase II status, whereupon he
was no longer required to exercise in full restraints.
In the six months between Edwards’s arrival at Northern in
punitive segregation on September 21, 2010, and his eventual transfer
out of AS Phase I on March 24, 2011, Edwards was never permitted to
exercise outside his cell except under full restraints. 7 19-3251-cv
Procedural History
In 2011, Edwards commenced this civil rights action, pro se,
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against several supervisory officials at the
Connecticut Department of Corrections and Northern. The
defendants moved for summary judgment on the ground that they
were entitled to qualified immunity, and, in 2014, the district court
granted that motion. Qualified immunity shields government
officials from liability for civil damages as long as the officials’
conduct “does not violate clearly established statutory or
constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have
known.” 1 Because the district court found that prisoners do not have
a clearly established right “to recreate free from restraints,” it granted
qualified immunity to the defendants. 2
In 2015, on a prior appeal, we vacated the district court’s grant
of summary judgment based on qualified immunity. In doing so, we
determined that the proper delineation of the right at issue is a “right
to some meaningful opportunity to exercise[,] subject to a safety
exception and adequate consideration of alternatives.” 3 Because this
1 Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). 2 Edwards v. Arnone, 613 F. App’x 44, 46 (2d Cir. 2015). 3 Id. 8 19-3251-cv
right to meaningful exercise was clearly established, 4 and because
there remained material factual disputes about the adequacy of the
prison’s safety justification, we held that the district court’s qualified
immunity finding was error. 5
On remand, following the appointment of pro bono counsel for
Edwards, the case proceeded to trial in 2018 against Warden Quiros
and Deputy Warden Lauren Powers. 6 After Edwards presented his
evidence, both officials moved for judgment as a matter of law under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(a). After the close of all evidence,
the jury returned a verdict in Edwards’s favor against Quiros but not
against Powers. Quiros then renewed his motion for judgment as a
matter of law under Rule 50(b). The district court granted Quiros’s
motion on the ground that there was insufficient evidence of Quiros’s
personal involvement in the decision to require Edwards to exercise
in full restraints. It determined that the evidence supported Quiros’s
involvement only for the roughly two-week period between March 8,
2011, when Quiros received Edwards’s inmate request form, and
March 24, 2011, when Quiros transferred Edwards to AS Phase II
4 See Williams v. Greifinger, 97 F.3d 699, 704 & n.5 (2d Cir. 1996). 5 Edwards, 613 F. App’x at 47. Edwards voluntarily dismissed his claims against Commissioner 6
Arnone and District Commissioner Lajoie prior to the presentation of evidence. 9 19-3251-cv
status. Because, in the district court’s view, Quiros’s involvement in
this deprivation of meaningful exercise was too brief to sustain a
violation of the Eighth Amendment, the district court held the
evidence insufficient to support the jury’s verdict and granted
Quiros’s Rule 50(b) motion. The district court denied his alternative
motion for a new trial under Rule 59 as moot.
This appeal followed.
DISCUSSION
The central issue on appeal is whether sufficient evidence
supported the jury’s determination that Quiros was personally
involved in the decision to have Edwards exercise in full restraints for
a long enough period to establish an Eighth Amendment violation.
Separately, Quiros argues that the evidence did not support any
violation of the Eighth Amendment, regardless of his personal
involvement. Quiros also argues that he is entitled to qualified
immunity.
I. Sufficient Evidence Supported the Jury’s Verdict
We review de novo a district court’s decision to set aside a jury
verdict and grant judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50. 7 A jury
7 Cross v. N.Y.C. Transit Auth., 417 F.3d 241, 248 (2d Cir. 2005). 10 19-3251-cv
verdict should only be set aside “where there is such a complete
absence of evidence supporting the verdict that the jury’s findings
could only have been the result of sheer surmise and conjecture, or
there is such an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of the
movant that reasonable and fair minded men could not arrive at a
verdict against him.” 8 In deciding a motion for judgment as a matter
of law, a district court “may consider all the record evidence, but in
doing so it ‘must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the
nonmoving party, and it may not make credibility determinations or
weigh the evidence.’” 9
Turning to the substance of the legal claim at issue, the Eighth
Amendment proscribes the infliction of “cruel and unusual
punishments.” 10 To prevail on an Eighth Amendment conditions-of-
confinement claim against prison officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a
plaintiff must prove that “objectively, the deprivation the inmate
suffered was sufficiently serious that he was denied the minimal
civilized measure of life’s necessities,” 11 such as being denied “a
8 Id. (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). 9Id. at 247 (quoting Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 150 (2000)). 10 U.S. Const. amend. VIII. 11McCray v. Lee, 963 F.3d 110, 117 (2d Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). 11 19-3251-cv
meaningful opportunity for physical exercise.” 12 The plaintiff must
also prove that “subjectively, the defendant official acted with a
sufficiently culpable state of mind, such as deliberate indifference to
inmate health or safety.” 13 Deliberate indifference is more than
negligence—it requires a showing that the prison official “kn[e]w of,
and disregard[ed], an excessive risk to inmate health or safety” from
the challenged condition of confinement. 14
We first address the sufficiency of the evidence in support of
the subjective component of Edwards’s claim, which is Quiros’s
personal awareness of, and deliberate indifference to, the risk to
Edwards’s health. Here we conclude that there was sufficient
evidence for the jury to find that Quiros had the requisite state of
mind for the entire six-month period during which Edwards was
required to exercise in restraints when outside of his cell, not just the
two weeks that the district court found. The jury’s verdict was not
based on “sheer surmise and conjecture,” but on abundant
circumstantial evidence from which the jury reasonably inferred
12Id. at 120; see also Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294, 304 (1991) (recognizing that conditions of confinement may constitute an Eighth Amendment violation where they produce a “deprivation of a single, identifiable human need such as food, warmth, or exercise”). 13McCray, 963 F.3d at 117 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted); see also Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834. 14 Jabbar v. Fischer, 683 F.3d 54, 57 (2d Cir. 2012) (per curiam). 12 19-3251-cv
Quiros’s actual knowledge of Edwards’s recreation status and the
concomitant risk to Edwards’s health from being required to exercise
in restraints.
Quiros’s own testimony provided a sufficient basis for the
jury’s conclusion that he knew Edwards was required to exercise in
full restraints for the entire six months at issue. Quiros testified about
his knowledge of the policy requiring any inmates in punitive
segregation or administration detention (as Edwards was between
September 21 and November 3, 2010) to exercise either in full
restraints or individual enclosures. Quiros also testified that he had
endorsed the prison’s policy requiring AS Phase I inmates in overflow
Unit Three housing (as Edwards was between November 3, 2010 and
March 24, 2011) to similarly exercise in full restraints. His testimony
supported an inference that, if Quiros knew there were AS Phase I
prisoners in Unit Three, then he knew they were required to exercise
Quiros also testified that he monitored the AS Phase I inmates
closely, that there were only three or four AS Phase I inmates housed
in Unit Three during the time Edwards was there, and that he had
access to surveillance footage of the unit recreation areas. Thus, his
testimony was sufficient to support the jury’s inference that he would
have noticed any AS Phase I inmate who stayed in Unit Three for 13 19-3251-cv
longer than usual, at least because only the AS Phase I inmates would
be in full restraints on the surveillance footage of the Unit Three
exercise yard. Bolstering that inference, after counsel at trial
suggested to Quiros that he would not have had any way of knowing
how long an AS Phase I inmate stayed in Unit Three, Quiros objected
to counsel’s characterization. He testified, “That is incorrect. I pay
. . . attention to my job and my responsibility. I tour twice a week.” 15
In sum, Quiros presented himself to the jury as a hands-on
warden who kept close tabs on the inmates on restrictive status under
his purview. The jury was entitled to credit Quiros’s testimony in
those respects and infer that in fact he did know that Edwards was in
Unit Three, exercising in full restraints, until his transfer to AS Phase
II status. We therefore respectfully find that the district court erred
by drawing inferences against the verdict and by discrediting
Quiros’s own testimony when it found that no evidence supported
Quiros’s knowledge of Edwards’s recreation status prior to March 8,
2011, the date he received Edwards’s inmate request form.
The jury was also entitled to conclude that Quiros was
deliberately indifferent to the risk of harm to Edwards resulting from
his being required to exercise in full restraints for six months, all of
15 J. App. at 183. 14 19-3251-cv
which was spent in Unit Three East. Quiros testified that AS Phase I
inmates should only be kept in Unit Three for “one or two weeks at
the most,” 16 and that “the overflow [placement] is a temporary basis,
which means that the offender will be in and out for—on a rotating
basis, anywhere from two—a week to two week[s]. Once [a Unit One]
bed became available, they would end up in 1 East and 1 West and
recreate without restraints.” 17 This testimony indicated that he
understood the importance of moving AS Phase I inmates to Unit One
when a bed became available so that they could exercise unrestrained.
Quiros’s testimony about why he had rejected Edwards’s inmate
request for the installation of trap doors in the Unit Three yard
enclosure, which would have permitted inmates to exercise
unshackled, also supported such an inference. Quiros testified that
he “came to the conclusion that we were not going to put [in] trap
doors because it was just temporary housing,” 18 reinforcing Quiros’s
understanding that requiring inmates to exercise in restraints was
acceptable only on a temporary basis.
Taken as a whole, Quiros’s testimony provided sufficient
support for the jury’s finding that Quiros understood the problem
16 Id. at 182. 17 Id. at 165. 18 Id. at 181. 15 19-3251-cv
with prisoners exercising in full restraints for longer than the one-to-
two-week duration of temporary housing. The inference that Quiros
understood why that would be a problem—because deprivation of
meaningful exercise poses a risk of serious health problems—was
reasonable in light of his testimony and the fact that exercise is widely
understood to be a basic human need. As we have previously
recognized, and as is the case here, “[e]vidence that a risk was obvious
or otherwise must have been known to a defendant may be sufficient
for a fact finder to conclude that the defendant was actually aware of
the risk.” 19 To be held liable, Quiros need only appreciate that the
deprivation of meaningful exercise posed an excessive risk to
Edwards’s health. Quiros need not have known the specifics of that
health risk with the level of detail a physician would understand.
Turning next to the objective component of Edwards’s
conditions-of-confinement claim, sufficient evidence supported the
jury’s verdict here as well. Quiros argues principally that both the
availability of in-cell exercise and the prison’s safety justification for
restrained exercise independently foreclose an Eighth Amendment
claim. 20 We disagree, and we find no independent basis for affirming
Walker v. Schult, 717 F.3d 119, 125 (2d Cir. 2013) (internal quotation 19
marks omitted). 20 Def.-Appellee Quiros’s Br. at 39–41. 16 19-3251-cv
the entry of judgment as a matter of law in his favor based on the
objective component. 21
The availability of in-cell exercise does not establish as a matter
of law that a prisoner had a meaningful opportunity to exercise. We
have previously permitted Eighth Amendment opportunity-to-
exercise claims to proceed where those claims exclusively concerned
impediments to out-of-cell exercise, including when the alleged
deprivation was shorter than the six months at issue here.22 In this
case, a properly instructed jury found that the in-cell opportunity for
exercise was not sufficient to provide Edwards with a meaningful
opportunity to exercise. The jury came to its verdict after hearing
Edwards’s testimony about the small size of his cell, the furniture and
bathroom fixtures taking up space in the cell, and the limits to the
extent he could exercise there. The verdict was therefore not based
on “sheer surmise and conjecture” and cannot be set aside on that
ground.
21The district court’s entry of judgment as a matter of law reached only the subjective component of the Eighth Amendment claim. 22 See McCray, 963 F.3d at 117–18 (vacating dismissal of opportunity-to- exercise claim arising from a prison yard allegedly not being cleared of snow for four months); Williams, 97 F.3d at 701–02, 707–08 (reversing grant of qualified immunity for prison official where plaintiff was subject to policy preventing him from getting any out-of-cell exercise). 17 19-3251-cv
Moreover, we find completely unavailing Quiros’s related
contention that there can be no Eighth Amendment violation here
because “the plaintiff was not deprived of the ability to attend
outdoor recreation and to get fresh air and walk.” 23 We have
described the right at issue as that to “some opportunity to exercise,” 24
and we cannot determine as a matter of law that the jury erred in
finding that Edwards’s limited ability to shuffle around in full
restraints while breathing fresh air constituted meaningful exercise.
Quiros also argues that the prison’s safety justification was
adequate, and that there can thus be no Eighth Amendment violation.
However, the jury was entitled to disagree. The safety justification
was undermined by testimony from Edwards, credited by the jury,
that corrections officers would not always employ the most restrictive
shackling method of full restraints when they were moving him out
of his cell and around the facility. That testimony called into question
the prison’s safety justification for requiring Edwards to exercise in
full restraints, notwithstanding his significant disciplinary record.
Because corrections officers were not always so concerned about their
safety as to employ the most restrictive shackling methods while
transporting Edwards, a reasonable jury was entitled to doubt the
23 Def.-Appellee Quiros’s Br. at 46. 24 Williams, 97 F.3d at 704. 18 19-3251-cv
prison’s basis for leaving Edwards fully restrained in the yard
enclosure. The jury did not act unreasonably by discrediting the
prison’s safety justification.
The jury similarly was entitled to reject the argument that
defendants had adequately considered, but appropriately rejected,
alternatives to full-restraint exercise. Specifically, the jury was
entitled to discredit testimony from a corrections officer about how
he had heard from somebody in the maintenance department that
installing trap doors in the Unit Three yard enclosures could
undermine the enclosures’ integrity. Further supporting the jury’s
decision, Quiros himself testified that he had decided against
installing the trap doors because AS Phase I prisoners were supposed
to be housed in Unit Three only briefly, not because their installation
would cause structural problems with the enclosures. Finally, there
was conflicting testimony about whether Northern had the ability to
move Edwards out of overflow housing in Unit Three and into Unit
One housing, where he would have had the opportunity to exercise
unrestrained in the individual enclosures. The jury was thus entitled
to credit Edwards’s version of events, in which he requested a transfer
to Unit One but was arbitrarily rebuffed. 19 19-3251-cv
Regardless of whether we would have weighed the evidence as
the jury did, we respectfully find that the district court erred in setting
aside the jury’s verdict on a Rule 50 motion.
II. Quiros Is Not Entitled to Qualified Immunity
Quiros once again claims he is entitled to qualified immunity,
as he did in seeking summary judgment. But we rejected essentially
the same argument at an earlier stage of this litigation, 25 and we have
no new reason to grant qualified immunity to Quiros now. The
disputed issues of fact that remained after our prior decision have
now been resolved against him by the jury. The jury reasonably
determined, upon sufficient evidence, that Quiros knowingly
violated Edwards’s clearly established right to meaningful exercise
under the circumstances and lacked a sufficient justification for doing
so. We will not disturb the jury’s finding that Quiros was not entitled
to qualified immunity.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we VACATE the district court’s
entry of judgment as a matter of law in favor of Quiros and REMAND
for further proceedings.
25 Edwards, 613 F. App’x at 47.