Opinion
CIV-23-704-D
11-08-2023
DONALD EUGENE COOKS, Plaintiff, v. BOBBY THOMPSON, et. al., Defendants.
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
Plaintiff, a federal pretrial detainee appearing pro se and in forma pauperis, brings this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging his constitutional rights have been violated while detained at the Pottawatomie County Public Safety Center Jail (“PCPS”).The matter has been referred to the undersigned Magistrate Judge for initial proceedings consistent with 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B), and the undersigned has undertaken a preliminary review of the sufficiency of the Complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915A and 1915(e)(2)(B). For the following reasons, it is recommended the Complaint be dismissed without prejudice.
In his Complaint, Plaintiff indicates he is bringing this action pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). Doc. No. 1 at 2. However, Bivens provides a remedy for plaintiffs who are suing defendants acting under federal law. In this matter, Plaintiff is suing state employees who are presumably acting under the color of state law. Therefore, his claims properly arise under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Campbell v. AMAX Coal Co., 610 F.2d 701, 702 (10th Cir. 1979) (holding that 42 U.S.C. § 1983 “does not apply to federal officers acting under color of federal law” (citation omitted)).
I. Plaintiff's Allegations
Plaintiff filed this action on August 10, 2023, alleging Defendants violated his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments while he has been detained at PCPS. Doc. No. 1.As Defendants, Plaintiff has named PCPS Chief of Security (“COS”) Bobby Thompson, PCPS Jail Administrator Thompson, and PCPS. Id. at 1, 4, 5, 6. In his first claim, Plaintiff contends his conditions of confinement constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Id. at 5-6. In his second claim, Plaintiff asserts that he submitted two PREA claims against “Pearce and the older young” and his complaints were never investigated. Id. at 7.
Pretrial detainees are protected under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535 n.16 (1979); Lopez v. LeMaster, 172 F.3d 756, 759 n.2 (10th Cir. 1999) (“Pretrial detainees are protected under the Due Process Clause rather than the Eighth Amendment.”), abrogated in part on other grounds, Brown v. Flowers, 974 F.3d 1178, 1182 (10th Cir. 2020). These protections are “at least as great as the Eighth Amendment protections available to a convicted prisoner.” City of Revere v. Mass. Gen. Hosp., 463 U.S. 239, 244 (1983). “Although the Due Process clause governs a pretrial detainee's claim of unconstitutional conditions of confinement, the Eighth Amendment standard provides the benchmark for such claims.” Craig v. Eberly, 164 F.3d 490, 495 (10th Cir. 1998) (citation omitted). Thus, the Court will analyze Plaintiff's claims under the Eighth Amendment.
II. Screening of Prisoner Complaints
A federal district court must review complaints filed by parties appearing in forma pauperis or prisoners seeking relief against a governmental entity or an officer or employee of a governmental entity. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e)(2)(B), 1915A(a). Upon conducting said review, the court must dismiss a complaint or any portion of it presenting claims that are frivolous, malicious, fail to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, or seek monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such relief. Id.
In conducting this review, the reviewing court must accept the plaintiff's allegations as true and construe them, and any reasonable inferences to be drawn from the allegations, in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Kay v. Bemis, 500 F.3d 1214, 1217 (10th Cir. 2007). Although a pro se litigant's pleadings are liberally construed, Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972), “[t]he burden is on the plaintiff to frame a ‘complaint with enough factual matter (taken as true) to suggest' that he or she is entitled to relief.” Robbins v. Oklahoma, 519 F.3d 1242, 1247-48 (10th Cir. 2008) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 556 (2007)). The allegations in a complaint must present “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570. Further, a claim is frivolous “where it lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact” or is “based on an indisputably meritless legal theory[.]” Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325, 327 (1989).
III. Claim One: Conditions of Confinement
A plaintiff seeking to prove that prison conditions amount to cruel and unusual punishment must satisfy an objective and subjective requirement.That is, he must prove (1) that the condition complained of is, “objectively, sufficiently serious” that it “result[s] in the denial of the minimal civilized measure of life's necessities”; and (2) that the prison official's state of mind was one of “deliberate indifference to inmate health or safety.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994) (quotations omitted). In the Tenth Circuit, the bar for the objective requirement is high. For example, in DeSpain v. Uphoff, 264 F.3d 965 (10th Cir. 2001), the court explained:
The undersigned notes the Supreme Court's decision in Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389 (2015), wherein a pretrial detainee alleged that jail officers used excessive force in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Id. at 393. The Court concluded “that a pretrial detainee must show only that the force purposely or knowingly used against him was objectively unreasonable.” Id. at 396-97. The Tenth Circuit has “noted the circuits are split on whether Kingsley alters the standard for conditions of confinement and inadequate medical care claims brought by pretrial detainees.” Sawyers v. Norton, 962 F.3d 1270, 1282 n.11 (10th Cir. 2020) (quotations omitted). Since that time, however, the Tenth Circuit has continued to apply both the objective and subjective components to a pretrial detainee's Fourteenth Amendment claim not arising from the alleged use of excessive force. See Buchanan v. Turn Key Health Clinics, LLC, No. 22-7029, 2023 WL 6997404, at *4 (10th Cir. Oct. 24, 2023) (applying both the subjective and objective elements to a pre-trial detainee's Fourteenth Amendment due process claim based on inadequate medical care).
An inquiry into conditions of confinement by necessity relies on the particular facts of each situation; the circumstances, nature, and duration of the challenged conditions must be carefully considered. While no single factor controls the outcome of these cases, the length of exposure to the conditions is often of prime importance. For example, a filthy, overcrowded cell and a diet of ‘grue' might be tolerable for a few days and intolerably cruel for weeks or months. We have held that a situation involving filthy cells, poor lighting, inadequate ventilation or air cooling, and unappetizing food simply did not rise to the level of a constitutional violation where prisoners were exposed to the conditions for only forty-eight hours. In general, the severity and duration of deprivations are inversely proportional, so that minor deprivations suffered for short periods would not rise to an Eighth Amendment violation, while substantial deprivations of shelter, food, drinking water, and sanitation may meet the standard despite a shorter duration.Id. at 974 (citations, quotations, and alterations omitted).
In his first claim, Plaintiff complains that he and other inmates have to sit on the floor when a guard enters their pod, have to eat on the floor where everyone walks and works out, and “split [sic] on the floor that's not frequently cleaned.” Doc. No. 1 at 6. These allegations are wholly insufficient to plausibly establish the objective element of his claim. For example, he failed to indicate how long he has been subjected to these conditions. Thus, Plaintiff has not presented “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570. See also Rascon v. Douglas, 718 Fed.Appx. 587, 593 (10th Cir. 2017) (noting that conditions including, “confinement for at least ten days in a small cell with only a cement slab for a bed, no bedding, a light in the cell on at all times, two meals per day, and one shower per week” and being “held for four nights and five days in a stripped basement intake cell with minimal clothing and bedding, no personal hygiene items, and no cleaning supplies for the cell” do not satisfy the Eighth Amendment objective standard).
Additionally, Plaintiff's allegations are not sufficient to establish the subjective component of this Eighth Amendment claim. Plaintiff does not specify the individual who may have violated his constitutional rights in this regard. Even liberally construed, Plaintiff does not “identify specific actions taken by particular defendants.” Pahls v. Thomas, 718 F.3d 1210, 1226 (10th Cir. 2013) (quotations omitted). In Pahls, the Tenth Circuit reiterated that a plaintiff's “undifferentiated contention that ‘defendants' infringed his rights” is insufficient to state a § 1983 claim because “a plaintiff must show that each defendant acted with the requisite state of mind.” Id. “Because § 1983 . . . [actions] are vehicles for imposing personal liability on government officials, we have stressed the need for careful attention to particulars, especially in lawsuits involving multiple defendants. ‘It is particularly important' that plaintiffs ‘make clear exactly who is alleged to have done what to whom, . . . as distinguished from collective allegations.'” Id. at 1225 (quoting Kan. Penn Gaming, LLC v. Collins, 656 F.3d 1210, 1215 (10th Cir. 2011) (additional alteration omitted)). Accordingly, Plaintiff's first claim should be dismissed based upon his failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.
IV. Claim Two: Failure to Investigate
In Plaintiff's second claim, he states that he submitted two PREA claims against “Pearce and the older young” and that his complaints were never investigated. Doc. No. 1 at 7. Again, Plaintiff's allegations are insufficient to establish a plausible claim as the Court is unable to discern the precise constitutional violation he intends to assert. Additionally, “[p]ersonal participation is an essential allegation in a [§] 1983 claim.” Bennett v. Passic, 545 F.2d 1260, 1262-63 (10th Cir. 1976). Plaintiff does not refer to any actions by or omissions of an individual defendant, nor the underlying nature of his complaint.
Further, to the extent Plaintiff intended to name Defendants COS Thompson or Jail Administrator Thompson based upon their supervisory capacity, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 does not allow the imposition of liability on a defendant-supervisor based solely upon “a theory of respondeat superior.” Cox v. Glanz, 800 F.3d 1231, 1248 (10th Cir. 2015). Liability for a constitutional violation must instead be satisfied by establishing the defendant-supervisor's personal participation in the violation of the plaintiff's constitutional rights, or by showing the supervisor created, promulgated, or implemented “a policy which subjects, or causes to be subjected that plaintiff to the deprivation of any rights secured by the Constitution.” Id. (quotations and alterations omitted).
“A plaintiff arguing for the imposition of supervisory liability therefore must show an affirmative link between the supervisor and the constitutional violation.” Id. (quotations omitted). The requisite showing of an “affirmative link” between a supervisor and the alleged constitutional injury has “come to have three related prongs: (1) personal involvement, (2) sufficient causal connection, and (3) culpable state of mind.” Id. (quoting Dodds v. Richardson, 614 F.3d 1185, 1195 (10th Cir. 2010) (alteration omitted)); see also Garcia-Rodriguez v. Gomm, 169 F.Supp.3d 1221, 1234 (D. Utah 2016) (holding that allegations which stated only that plaintiff believed supervisors “personally directed the violation of constitutional rights or had knowledge of the violation and acquiesced to its continuance” was “nothing more than a recital of the elements of a supervisory liability claim and [was] therefore insufficient to state a claim for relief.”). Further, any theory of liability against a supervisory defendant based solely upon mere “acquiescence” has been rejected by the United States Supreme Court. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 677 (2009) (rejecting the respondent's argument that “under a theory of supervisory liability, petitioners can be liable for knowledge and acquiescence in their subordinates' use of discriminatory criteria to make classification decisions among detainees.” (quotations omitted)). Plaintiff failed to assert any allegations establishing actions on the part of either Defendants COS Thompson or Jail Administrator Thompson related to his second claim.
V. PCPS
Finally, the Court notes that PCPS is not a proper party to this lawsuit. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(b) provides that a non-corporate entity's capacity to be sued is determined by the law of the state in which the district court is located. A county jail in Oklahoma, as a subdivision of the county in which it is located, has no separate legal identity under Oklahoma law. Thus, PCPS is not amenable to suit in this Court. Lindsey v. Thomson, No. 06-7114, 2007 WL 2693970, at *3 (10th Cir. Sept. 10, 2007) (affirming dismissal of § 1983 claims against police department and county sheriff's department because they are entities with no apparent legal existence); see e.g. White v. Utah, No. 00-4109, 2001 WL 201980, at *1 (10th Cir. March 1, 2001) (affirming dismissal of county jail because no state law supported a cause of action directly against a county's subdivisions, including its jails).
RECOMMENDATION
Based on the foregoing findings, it is recommended this action be dismissed without prejudice based on Plaintiff's failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Plaintiff is advised of his right to file an objection to this Report and Recommendation with the Clerk of this Court by November 28, 2023, in accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 636 and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72. The failure to timely object to this Report and Recommendation would waive appellate review of the recommended ruling. Moore v. United States, 950 F.2d 656 (10th Cir. 1991); cf. Marshall v. Chater, 75 F.3d 1421, 1426 (10th Cir. 1996) (“Issues raised for the first time in objections to the magistrate judge's recommendation are deemed waived.”).
This Report and Recommendation disposes of all issues referred to the undersigned Magistrate Judge in the captioned matter.