Jonathon Castro v. County of Los Angeles
2016 WL 4268955, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 14950, 833 F.3d 1060 (2016)
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Rule of Law:
For a Fourteenth Amendment failure-to-protect claim, a pretrial detainee is not required to prove an individual officer's subjective awareness of risk, but must show the officer's actions were objectively unreasonable. A municipality can be held liable for a custom that reflects deliberate indifference to inmate safety, which can be established by showing policymakers had constructive notice of an obvious risk.
Facts:
- Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deputies arrested Jonathan Castro for public drunkenness, a misdemeanor, and placed him in a sobering cell for his own safety.
- Several hours later, authorities arrested Jonathan Gonzalez on a felony charge after he shattered a glass door; an intake form characterized Gonzalez as 'combative'.
- Authorities placed the combative Gonzalez in the same sobering cell with the intoxicated Castro.
- The sobering cell was a fully walled chamber that lacked audio monitoring and did not allow for maximum visual supervision, contrary to California Building Code standards adopted by the County and the station's own manual.
- Shortly after Gonzalez entered, Castro pounded on the cell's window to get an officer’s attention, but no one responded.
- A volunteer later saw Gonzalez inappropriately touching Castro but only reported it to the supervising officer, Christopher Solomon, without intervening.
- Six minutes after the report, Solomon discovered Gonzalez stomping on Castro’s head.
- Castro was found unconscious in a pool of blood and suffered severe, long-term injuries, including permanent cognitive difficulties and memory loss.
Procedural Posture:
- Jonathan Castro filed a complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the County of Los Angeles, the LASD, and individual officers in the United States District Court.
- The case proceeded to a jury trial.
- At the close of the plaintiff's case, the defendants moved for judgment as a matter of law, which the district court denied.
- The jury returned a verdict in favor of Castro on all counts.
- The defendants filed a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law, which the district court denied.
- The defendants appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
- A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the judgment against the individual defendants but reversed the judgment against the entity defendants.
- A majority of active, non-recused judges of the Ninth Circuit voted to rehear the case en banc.
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Issue:
Does a pretrial detainee's Fourteenth Amendment failure-to-protect claim against an individual officer require proof that the officer was subjectively aware of a substantial risk of harm, or is an objective standard of recklessness sufficient?
Opinions:
Majority - Graber, J.
No, a pretrial detainee's failure-to-protect claim does not require proof that the officer was subjectively aware of a substantial risk of harm. The Supreme Court's decision in Kingsley v. Hendrickson, which established an objective standard for pretrial detainees' excessive force claims, logically extends to failure-to-protect claims. Both claim types arise from the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which protects detainees from any form of punishment, intended or not. The court overruled its precedent in Clouthier v. County of Contra Costa, which required a subjective standard. Instead, the court established a new four-part test for individual liability requiring proof of something more than negligence but less than subjective intent, akin to reckless disregard. The court also affirmed the entity defendants' liability, holding that the County's long-standing custom of using inadequately monitored sobering cells—despite its own adopted regulations requiring audio monitoring and visual supervision—amounted to deliberate indifference because the risk was obvious.
Dissenting - Callahan, J.
The judgment against the entity defendants should be reversed because there was no policy or custom reflecting deliberate indifference. The majority improperly cobbles together unrelated facts to manufacture a 'policy.' The County's actual written policy forbade placing two inmates like Castro and Gonzalez together; the harm was caused by the individual officers violating this policy, which amounts to improper respondeat superior liability. Furthermore, the County did not have notice of any danger from the cell's design because the California Building Code contained a 'grandfather clause' exempting older facilities. There was no evidence of prior incidents to put the County on notice that its practices were dangerous, and therefore no basis for finding deliberate indifference.
Dissenting - Ikuta, J.
Yes, a subjective awareness of risk should be required. The majority misinterprets and improperly extends Kingsley v. Hendrickson. Kingsley involved an affirmative act of excessive force, whereas this case involves a failure to act. For an omission to constitute 'punishment' under the Fourteenth Amendment, precedent like Farmer v. Brennan requires proof that the official actually knew of a substantial risk and consciously disregarded it. An objectively unreasonable failure to act is merely negligence, which is not a constitutional violation. The majority’s new four-part test unnecessarily muddles the established legal framework and is inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent differentiating claims based on affirmative acts from those based on omissions.
Analysis:
This decision significantly lowers the burden of proof for pretrial detainees bringing failure-to-protect claims under § 1983 in the Ninth Circuit. By explicitly overruling Clouthier and adopting an objective 'reckless disregard' standard from Kingsley, the court removes the difficult requirement of proving an officer's subjective state of mind. Plaintiffs now only need to show that a reasonable officer would have appreciated the high degree of risk. This alignment of the failure-to-protect standard with the excessive force standard simplifies the legal landscape for pretrial detainee claims and increases the potential for both individual and municipal liability in cases of inmate-on-inmate violence.
