A federal appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a Mississippi man's lawsuit alleging that in 2016, a prisoner transport service made him sit upright, in shackles, during a nonstop, nine-day trip from Colorado Springs, Colo., to Albany, Miss., in violation of his civil rights.
The lawsuit was originally filed in federal court in Sacramento, Calif., and was later transferred to the Eastern District of Arkansas, where U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson threw it out in late 2018 at the recommendation of U.S. Magistrate Judge Joe Volpe.
The suit alleged that on Sept. 17, 2016, Inmate Services Corp. of West Memphis picked up Danzel Stearns from a Colorado Springs jail on a warrant from Mississippi, and placed the pretrial detainee in a van with other prisoners, chaining him hand and foot, with his hands anchored to a belly chain. It said the normally 17-hour trip took over 200 hours as the van "wandered through 13 states," picking up and dropping off other inmates, "before finally delivering a sick, sleep-deprived Stearns for prosecution on a minor drug charge."
The lawsuit said the two van drivers took turns sleeping on a mattress in the front of the van to avoid any lengthy stops, and that Stearns was forced to urinate in a cup two or three times, while other prisoners spilled urine onto the van floor while trying to do the same, and a female prisoner defecated in her pants after asking three times for a bathroom stop.
"The unnecessarily prolonged transport, fully chained, immobile, with no opportunity to wash even his hands, to change clothes, or to use the toilet more than irregularly and while chained, and able only to snatch an occasional nap while sitting up on hard seats for nine continuous days" violated Stearns' 8th Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, the lawsuit contends.
Filed as a class-action lawsuit with the intention of Stearns acting as a class representative, the suit sought monetary damages on behalf of himself and other prisoners transported by Inmate Services Corp., including men, women, minors, pretrial and sentenced prisoners, mental hospital inmates and immigration detainees. Wilson denied the request for class-action status before dismissing the case.
In granting summary judgment for the corporation, Volpe said the constant restraints were "objectively reasonable" and that there was no evidence Stearns sought relief for any injuries once he arrived at the Mississippi jail.
In an opinion issued Wednesday by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Senior Judge Michael Melloy of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, wrote that based on standards that apply to pretrial detainees, the company wasn't entitled to summary judgment.
Noting that the restraints caused Stearns' ankles and wrists to become raw, the opinion noted that the company's policy requires that restraints be removed "from inmates that are on transport more than 48 hours."
The opinion noted that the van was sometimes overcrowded with 15 to 17 passengers, and that its air conditioner broke for roughly six hours in Phoenix.
The 8th Circuit judges -- who included Jane Kelly, also of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and David Stras of Minneapolis -- analyzed Stearns' claim under the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires that "a pretrial detainee not be punished."
They said the case was governed by an earlier case that makes the "fighting question" whether the transport company's policies or customs that caused Stearns' misery "were reasonably related to a legitimate goal or were excessive as compared to that goal."
They noted that if found to be arbitrary or excessive, one could infer that the purpose was punishment, which the constitution says may not be inflicted upon pretrial detainees.
A jury could reasonably find that the conditions Stearns endured were arbitrary or excessive when compared with the government's perceived goal of securely transporting him to his destination, the circuit judges said, reinstating the lawsuit so that a jury can decide the company's fate.
Metro on 04/30/2020