Graves v. Arpaio

48 F. Supp. 3d 1318, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140563, 2014 WL 4898717
CourtDistrict Court, D. Arizona
DecidedSeptember 30, 2014
DocketNo. CV-77-00479-PHX-NVW
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 48 F. Supp. 3d 1318 (Graves v. Arpaio) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Graves v. Arpaio, 48 F. Supp. 3d 1318, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140563, 2014 WL 4898717 (D. Ariz. 2014).

Opinion

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW and ORDER

NEIL V. WAKE, District Judge.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Summary..............................................................1325

II. Background............................................................1327

III. Legal Standards........................................................1332

A. Termination of Prospective Relief Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act.......................................................... 1332

[1325]*1325B. Relevant Period for a “Current and Ongoing” Violation...................1333

C. Pretrial Detainees’ Protection from Punishment Under the Fourteenth Amendment......................................................1333

D. Eighth Amendment Standard for Medical and Mental Health Care........1335

E. Remedies..........................................................1337

IV. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law...................................1338

A. The Parties.........................................................1338

B. The Maricopa County Jail............................................1340

C. Receiving Screening.................................................1346

D. Ready Access to Needed Medical and Mental Health Care................1356

E. Prescription Medications Without Interruption..........................1357

F. Electronic Records Management......................................1358

G. Remedies..........................................................1358

H. Fourth Amended Judgment to Be Entered.............................1358

I. Attorney Fees......................................................1359
V. Order..................................................................1359

Before the Court is Defendants Fulton Brock, Don Stapley, Andrew Kunasek, Max Wilson and Mary Rose Wilcox’s Motion to Terminate Third Amended Judgment on Behalf of Correctional Health Services (Doc. 2142).1 The Court has considered the par-ties’ briefs, memoranda, proposed findings, and evidence and argument presented on February 25-27 and March 4-6, 2014.

I. SUMMARY

Pretrial detainees held in the Maricopa County Jail brought this class action in 1977 against the Maricopa County Sheriff and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors seeking injunctive relief for alleged violations of their civil rights. Throughout the years, the injunctive relief was amended as conditions changed. Now Defendants seek to terminate the remaining in-junctive relief regarding medical, dental, and mental health care for pretrial detainees held in the Maricopa County Jail. Terminating the Court-ordered relief would end this class action and the Court’s monitoring of conditions in the Maricopa County Jail, but would not end Defendants’ constitutional obligations to pretrial detainees.

The Eighth Amendment requires that the Maricopa County Jail provide pretrial detainees a system of ready access to adequate medical, dental, and mental health care, which includes timely examination, diagnosis, and treatment by medical personnel qualified to do so. It also requires that the Maricopa County Jail not be deliberately indifferent to pretrial detainees’ serious medical, dental, and mental health needs, including conditions that are likely •to cause future serious illness and needless suffering.

The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the Maricopa County Jail not withhold or delay medical, dental, or mental health care unless doing so is reasonably related to a legitimate governmental objective, such as protecting a pretrial detainee from likely harm, protecting others from likely harm, and preserving institutional security. Lack of resources does not justify delay or denial of medical, dental, or mental health care.

[1326]*1326The Maricopa County Jail must make reasonable efforts to prevent a pretrial detainee’s confinement from causing the detainee serious medical or mental health injury. It also must make reasonable efforts to avoid depriving the detainee from obtaining or continuing necessary medical or mental health care the detainee would have obtained or continued outside of the Jail. But the Jail is not the County’s public health care provider. Several hundred pretrial detainees enter the Jail daily, approximately half need some form of health care, and nearly 40% are released within 24 hours. Only 35% stay longer than 7 days; only 25% stay longer than 14 days. With a high-volume, short-stay inmate population, the Jail cannot cure serious systemic inadequacies in public medical and mental health care in Maricopa County and the State of Arizona.

Defendants have shown significant improvements in many areas relevant to the Third Amended Judgment and have set in place practices that may cure or nearly cure most of the previously identified ongoing constitutional violations. However, on August 9, 2013, they moved for termination of the Third Amended Judgment before collecting evidence that the improvements had been successfully implemented and were producing the intended results. Some of the new practices were begun only a few days before. Thus, Defendants have not met their burden to prove that they eliminated all current and ongoing constitutional violations as of August 9, 2013.

For example, Defendants now have at least one medical provider and additional mental health staff assigned to the Jail’s intake center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But they have not shown they have resolved systemic deficiencies in providing pretrial detainees timely face-to-face assessment by medical and mental health providers for serious acute or chronic complex conditions.

Defendants now have designated housing for male general population pretrial detainees who need close monitoring and treatment during withdrawal from alcohol and/or drugs. But they have not shown they have resolved systemic deficiencies in providing adequate monitoring and treatment of female pretrial detainees during withdrawal or male pretrial detainees who are placed in housing for suicide monitoring, close custody, administrative segregation, disciplinary segregation, or the Special Management Unit during withdrawal.

Defendants have not shown they have resolved systemic deficiencies in articulating and implementing criteria for placement of seriously mentally ill pretrial de.tainees in the Mental Health Unit, its subunits, and outside mental health/psychiatric facilities. Appropriate placement, transition, and transfer do not guarantee any particular result for an individual pretrial detainee, but they do require a mental health provider’s timely clinical assessment and judgment for each seriously mentally ill pretrial detainee.

Curing these systemic deficiencies may require more medical and mental health providers than are currently caring for pretrial detainees in the Maricopa County Jail.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
48 F. Supp. 3d 1318, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140563, 2014 WL 4898717, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/graves-v-arpaio-azd-2014.