Penn v. Escorsio

764 F.3d 102, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 16239, 2014 WL 4177376
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedAugust 22, 2014
Docket13-2309
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 764 F.3d 102 (Penn v. Escorsio) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the First Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Penn v. Escorsio, 764 F.3d 102, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 16239, 2014 WL 4177376 (1st Cir. 2014).

Opinion

BALDOCK, Circuit Judge.

Defendants Dane Winslow and Angela Escorsio were involved in a series of troubling events that led to the attempted— and nearly completed — suicide of Matthew Lalli. Lalli was at the time a pre-trial detainee being held at the jail where Defendants work as corrections officers. Lalli’s guardian, Plaintiff Cathy Penn, sued Defendants. Penn claimed, among other things, deliberate indifference in violation of Lalli’s Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights. 1 Defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing they were not deliberately indifferent and, in any event, were entitled to qualified immunity. The district court denied Defendants’ motion. The court held that, accepting all facts and drawing all inferences in Penn’s favor, a reasonable jury could conclude Defendants were deliberately indifferent because they took essentially no action to forestall a substantial risk that Lalli would attempt suicide. The court also held reasonable officials in Defendants’ positions would have known they violated Lalli’s clearly established Fourteenth Amendment rights if a jury indeed concluded that Defendants effectively failed to take any action to forestall this risk.

Defendants now appeal, steadfastly asserting qualified immunity. But Defendants’ appeal relies heavily on factual arguments despite our holding that “a district court’s pretrial rejection of a qualified immunity defense is not immediately ap-pealable to the extent that it turns on either an issue of fact or an issue perceived by the trial court to be an issue of fact.” Cady v. Walsh, 753 F.3d 348, 359 (1st Cir.2014) (emphasis in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). In particular, Defendants concede clearly established law at the time Lalli attempted suicide dictated officers must take some reasonable measures to thwart a known, substantial risk that a pre-trial detainee will attempt suicide. But the district court found a reasonable jury could conclude Defendants “effectively failed to take any action to forestall” this risk as to Lalli. Based on the conceded law and the district court’s factual analysis, Defendants cannot show they are entitled to qualified immunity at the summary judgment phase of this litigation. Therefore, after winnowing away the chaff to reveal the very narrow legal question we may answer under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and the collateral order doctrine, we affirm.

I.

We may exercise jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal from a denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity only to the extent the appeal rests on legal, rather than factual grounds. We thus summarize the facts in the light most favorable to Penn, taking as unchallenged any inferences the district court drew in her favor. Cady, 753 F.3d at 350. 2 A more thorough recitation of these facts can *106 be found in the district court’s order, see Penn v. Knox Cnty., No. 2:11-cv-00363, 2013 WL 5503671, at *1-13 (D.Me. Sept. 30, 2013) (unpublished), but the following will suffice for our purposes.

A. Defendant Winslow

On Saturday, October 3, 2009, Matthew Lalli was arrested and taken to Knox County Jail (“KCJ”) for allegedly being intoxicated and committing assault in violation of the terms of his release. Lalli’s arraignment on these charges was set for Monday, October 5. When Lalli arrived at KCJ, Defendant Winslow was on duty as KCJ’s shift supervisor. In accordance with KCJ’s intake procedures, Officer Stil-key, who was the booking officer under Winslow’s supervision, filled out both a suicide risk assessment form and a medical screening form for Lalli. The suicide risk assessment revealed that Lalli had, among other things, (1) lost two close friends to suicide, (2) attempted suicide himself two years prior, and (3) when asked whether he then felt like killing himself responded “not sure, feels that ... life is over.” Under KCJ’s model suicide risk assessment form, a suicide risk score of 15 or more points qualifies as the highest suicide risk level and requires KCJ to provide one-on-one observation of the inmate and to conduct a mental health evaluation within one hour. When Lalli’s answers to the suicide risk assessment and medical screening forms are applied to this model, his risk of suicide scored at least 20 points. A final portion of the suicide risk assessment form calls for the booking officer to indicate with checkmarks which of five levels of intervention the detainee received ranging from “NO INTERVENTION/GENERAL POPULATION” to “PLACED ON SUICIDE WATCH STEP 2.” Neither Stilkey nor Winslow checked off any of these boxes.

But Lalli’s suicide risk assessment and medical assessment worried Officer Stil-key. As a result, after completing the forms, Stilkey told Defendant Winslow: “[Y]ou need to look at this.” After reviewing Lalli’s intake forms, Winslow decided to place Lalli on “welfare watch,” which required staff to make separate log entries regarding Lalli’s condition when they conducted their fifteen-minute checks of his cell and ensured that a mental health care worker would speak with Lalli the next time one was scheduled to visit the jail. Although KCJ had an available suicide prevention cell, Cell 127, which could be constantly monitored from the intake desk, Winslow decided to place Lalli in Cell 135. Officers sitting at the intake desk can hear people in Cell 135 if they make a loud noise, but have no view into Cell 135 itself. Moreover, Cell 135 is not stripped of objects a detainee could use to harm himself. For instance, Cell 135 contains sheets and bedding which a detainee could potentially fashion into a makeshift noose — as Lalli did here. Winslow had no further notable contact with Lalli and Sunday, October 4 was uneventful.

B. Defendant Escorsio

On the morning of Monday, October 5, Officer Heath, who was at that time the *107 on-duty intake officer, documented in KCJ’s intake/release log and in Lalli’s welfare-watch log that: “while moving inmate Wood, inmate Matthew Lalli told me that he has sole custody of his daughter and that if he were not allowed to be on the outside then it would be better if he wasn’t alive at all.” At 12:07 p.m., KCJ’s intake/release log indicates Defendant Es-corsio took over for Heath as intake officer.

Between noon and 12:30 p.m., jail staff assembled nine detainees in the intake area to prepare them for their trip to the Knox County District Court for court appearances. The group included Lalli and several other inmates who were deposed in relation to this suit. One inmate testified that Lalli began “really freaking out” before being loaded into a van for transport to the court — apparently loud enough for Defendant Escorsio to have heard. Another inmate testified that Lalli made various threats to hurt himself during the trip from the jail to the courthouse, saying “if I don’t get the hell out of here I’m going to hurt myself, kill myself.”

At his arraignment, Lalli told the presiding judge that “it would be all be over” and that he would “just end it” if he was denied bail.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
764 F.3d 102, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 16239, 2014 WL 4177376, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/penn-v-escorsio-ca1-2014.