UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 13-6446
ANTHONY L. MANN,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
LT. C. FAILEY; MAJOR SHERONDA SUTTON; WARDEN ROBERT STEVENSON
III; ASST. WARDEN JOHN BARKLEY; ASST. WARDEN LARRY CARTLEDGE;
INV. DAVID HURT; VALERIE WHITAKER; CLASSIFICATION MNGR MACON;
DONALD SAMPSON, MD; E. KEITT; JAMES HARRIS, III; CAPT. PERCY
JONES; CAPT. WILSON; LT. WILLIE SIMMONS; LT. T. JOHNSON; SGT.
BELUE; SGT. YOUNG; SGT. HERMAN WRIGHT; SGT. KEITH MOORE; CPL.
OTIS DANIELS; CPL. VINCENT MANLEY; CPL. SMALLS; CPL. RAY; OFC.
MCNEAL; OFC. COX; CHRISTIAN MANGANELLI; C. COOK; ROBYN ELERBY,
Defendants - Appellees,
and
OFC. MURRAY,
Defendant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
South Carolina, at Rock Hill. Richard M. Gergel, District
Judge. (0:11-cv-02232-RMG)
Argued: May 13, 2014 Decided: July 17, 2014
Before TRAXLER, Chief Judge, KING, Circuit Judge, and DAVIS,
Senior Circuit Judge.
Affirmed in part; vacated and remanded in part by unpublished
per curiam opinion.
ARGUED: Adam Zurbriggen, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER,
Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Janet Brooks Holmes, MCKAY,
CAUTHEN, SETTANA AND STUBLEY, P.A., Columbia, South Carolina,
for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Steven H. Goldblatt, Director, Rita K.
Lomio, Supervising Attorney, Lola A. Kingo, Supervising
Attorney, Bethany S. Hamm, Student Counsel, Appellate Litigation
Program, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, Washington, D.C., for
Appellant. Daniel R. Settana, Jr., Richard E. Marsh, III,
MCKAY, CAUTHEN, SETTANA AND STUBLEY, P.A., Columbia, South
Carolina, for Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
2
PER CURIAM:
Appellant Anthony Mann, a South Carolina inmate, appeals an
adverse summary judgment on his Eighth Amendment excessive force
claims asserted pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 1 Mann’s complaint
arises out of a series of incidents involving correctional
officers and others at the Broad River Correctional Institution
(“BRCI”). He contends that the officers assaulted and battered
him and denied him means of decontamination after they used
significant quantities of pepper spray to subdue him.
Although a magistrate judge recommended that Appellees’
motion for summary judgment be granted in part and denied in
part, upon its de novo review of the magistrate judge’s report
1
Mann was self-represented in the district court and
initially on appeal. We appointed counsel to file a formal brief
and present oral argument in this Court. Although Mann
originally asserted many and varied claims, the only claims
before this Court are those claims discussed in this opinion. We
appreciate the fine efforts of counsel to assist this Court in
resolving this appeal.
Relatedly, we leave to the district court upon remand to
determine whether the interests of justice will be served
through an appointment of counsel in the district court. We also
leave to the district court determination whether further
proceedings short of trial, e.g., further discovery, is
appropriate. In this regard, we note that (as the case proceeded
below) the district court had no occasion to assess whether and
to what extent, if any, the potential individual liability of
any of the twenty-nine specifically named Appellees should be
more carefully scrutinized in light of the evidence in the
record, or whether any such party should be dismissed from the
action.
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and recommendation, the district court granted the motion in its
entirety. In doing so, the district court concluded that Mann
had forecasted insufficient evidence that the officers applied
force “maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of
causing harm.” See Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 320-21
(1986). For the reasons set forth within, we vacate the judgment
in part and remand for further proceedings.
I.
This fact-intensive case arises out of correctional
officers’ use of physical force against Mann during summer 2010.
At the summary judgment stage, we view the facts in the light
most favorable to Mann, the non-moving party. Miller v.
Leathers, 913 F.2d 1085, 1087 (4th Cir. 1990) (en banc)
(observing in excessive force case that inmate was to “have the
credibility of his evidence as forecast assumed, his version of
all that is in dispute accepted, [and] all internal conflicts in
it resolved favorably to him” (citation omitted)), cert. denied,
491 U.S. 1109 (1991).
Mann, who is serving a life sentence for murder, was
incarcerated in BRCI’s Special Management Unit (“SMU”), located
in Columbia, South Carolina. It is undisputed that Mann was a
difficult inmate: his prison record contains a significant
number of disciplinary charges and convictions, including
4
attempted escape. Medical records indicate that Mann suffers
from bipolar disorder, ADHD, anxiety, and depression.
In or about June 2010, Mann began experiencing conflict
with Lt. Cathaline Failey, the SMU unit supervisor, soon after
he reported an incident of alleged neglect of an inmate in
medical distress to her superiors. According to Mann’s verified
complaint, Lt. Failey began retaliating against Mann by shouting
verbal assaults and threats, withholding food, and denying him
access to his legal material. Their conflict eventually
escalated into a series of acts of alleged excessive force by
Lt. Failey and other correctional officers; Mann’s allegations
as to these use-of-force incidents are briefly summarized below.
On June 9, 2010, officers sprayed Mann’s prison cell with
several blasts of Oleoresin Capsicum pepper spray for failing to
comply with orders to back up and be restrained. He was then
left in the closed cell for forty-five minutes. Thereafter,
despite his multiple requests to take a shower, Mann was placed
in a strip cell and was not decontaminated from the chemicals
for the next five days. As a result, he experienced burning
sensations over his body.
On the morning of June 14, Mann was checked by medical
staff and escorted back to the SMU in full body restraints. On
the way, he became lightheaded and knelt to the ground. The
escort officer called for assistance from Lt. Failey, who
5
responded by “grabb[ing Mann] by his left arm and the back of
the crotch chain between his legs” and roughly dragging him 25
yards to the medical unit. Mann states that Lt. Failey’s actions
“smashed his testicles and caused him extreme pain and agony.”
J.A. 23.
Several weeks later, Lt. Failey had a heated conversation
with the attorney involved in Mann’s post-conviction proceedings
when he contacted her to request that she return Mann’s legal
material. The next day, on July 28, Lt. Failey locked Mann in a
small holding cell for the day, stating, “Let’s see how you like
sitting in here all day. You gon’ have your attorney call me,
like you don’t know no better. Im’a fix you, white boy.” J.A.
24.
At the end of the day, as Lt. Failey was part of a team
transporting Mann from the holding cell back into his unit,
Mann’s leg restraints were removed in order for him to descend
the stairs. At some point, Lt. Failey adjusted the remaining
constraints so that they became painful. Mann, aggravated,
delivered a roundhouse kick to Failey’s neck, knocking her
against the banister and sending her down the stairs. Four other
officers wrestled Mann to the floor, and Mann stopped resisting.
Even though Mann was subdued, Failey ran up the steps to
him and began kicking and punching him in the head, striking him
numerous times, until one of the other officers holding Mann
6
interposed his body between her and Mann and told her that he
had Mann under control. Lt. Failey nevertheless continuously
struck his head and face with her fist as he was carried, “in
hogtie form,” fifty yards to the holding cell. J.A. 580-81.
Four of Mann’s fellow inmates provided sworn eyewitness
affidavits that corroborated Mann’s account of this incident.
J.A. 571; 573; 575; 576. There are no medical records related to
this incident, although Mann claims that he sought treatment for
his injuries but received no response to his requests.
The aforementioned interactions escalated further on August
23, 2010. The incident began when a disciplinary hearing for
Mann was interrupted because he produced a broken paperclip,
apparently as evidence that he had not previously stolen a
handcuff key (although he had been able to escape from
restraints). Mann was ejected from the hearing. He was
originally placed in his original cell but was to be transported
to a strip cell. When Mann refused to submit for transfer,
officers expelled several bursts of pepper spray into his cell
and left him there for an hour.
A five-officer extraction team then sought to enter the
cell. By that point, Mann had propped his mattress against the
cell door, and he began pelting the officers with approximately
13-18 bottles of fecal matter from his position on the top bunk.
This action, known as “shit-bombing,” had apparently been the
7
subject of threats made by SMU prisoners in the past, though the
record does not state if it had ever actually occurred prior to
this incident. The team of officers were hit, some in their
faces.
Mann eventually allowed himself to be thrown to the floor
and placed in restraints. Affidavits from inmates in neighboring
cells report hearing Mann repeatedly yell that he is “down . . .
and not resisting.” J.A. 617; 621; 632.
Mann was thereafter attacked by the guards. One officer
slammed his face into the concrete floor and picked up a bottle
of fecal matter and poured it over his face. Others continuously
punched, kneed, kicked, and choked him until he lost
consciousness. He was carried in a chokehold position out of the
unit for 40 to 50 yards, with the officers slamming his body on
walls and bars along the way. Officers then immediately placed
him in a restraint chair for six hours, where he sat fully
restrained at the ankles and wrists, in and out of
consciousness. Mann was denied the opportunity to decontaminate
even though he was “burning all over [his] face, body, and in
[his] facial wound.” J.A. 652-53. He was then placed in a strip
cell and was not permitted to shower for four days.
Inmate affidavits report hearing the commotion in Mann’s
cell and observing Mann being “aggressively removed” from the
cell with a “bed sheet tightly noosed” around his neck. J.A.
8
632. Medical records completed immediately after the incident
indicate that Mann received treatment for a laceration on his
head that was one-inch long, one-quarter inch deep, and a
“moderate [amount] of blood on face.” J.A. 341. Mann later
complained that one of his front teeth had been broken in the
encounter, but the prison nurse recorded that she was unable to
examine his teeth because Mann would not open his mouth.
Cell extractions in BRCI are intended to be recorded, and
at the onset of the August 23 extraction, one of the officers
carried a video recorder. At some point, however, the content of
the recorder became unavailable. Other inmates have overheard
guards suggesting that they deliberately destroyed the evidence
of the beating so “no jury [could] see that video-tape.” J.A.
627; 630.
According to Mann, he repeatedly asked both the officers
and the nurses who treated his injuries if he could be
decontaminated, but he was denied: the nurses said he would have
to talk to Security; the officers told him he would “be lucky if
[he] ever got to decontaminate after what [he’d] done.” J.A.
652. He was also told that he had to wait until his hours in the
restraint chair were up. Mann’s medical records do not mention
these requests. He has stated that he was in the chair for six
hours and was not permitted to shower for four days.
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II.
Mann filed suit against twenty-nine officers, medical
personnel, and others, including the Warden and Assistant
Warden, Lt. Failey, and those officers involved or observing the
August 23 cell extraction. All defendants but one are Appellees
before this Court. They filed a lengthy consolidated motion for
summary judgment, in response to which Mann filed a lengthy
opposition accompanied by more than fifty exhibits. The district
court referred the motion to a magistrate judge for a report and
recommendation.
As relevant to this appeal, the magistrate judge
recommended granting Appellees summary judgment on all excessive
force claims except Mann’s claim that the officers
unconstitutionally denied his request to decontaminate on August
23, which she recommended should proceed to trial. The
magistrate judge concluded that the circumstances were
indistinguishable from those presented in Williams v. Benjamin,
77 F.3d 756 (4th Cir. 1996). The parties filed timely exceptions
to the report and recommendation and the district court
conducted a de novo review thereof.
The district court granted Appellees’ summary judgment
motion on all counts. With respect to the officers’ use of force
on June 14, July 28, and August 23, the court concluded that no
reasonable jury could find that the officers were not acting in
10
good faith in taking action to subdue Mann. As to the June 9
decontamination denial, the court noted that Mann had not
complained during his subsequent medical visits; and as to the
August 23 decontamination denial, the court distinguished
Williams on several grounds, including that pepper spray was
used, not mace, and that Mann was examined by medical staff
before being placed in the restraint chair. Mann timely
appealed.
III.
State and federal inmates serving sentences of
incarceration are protected under the Eighth Amendment from the
“unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” by prison guards and
supervisory officers. Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 327
(1986) (internal citations omitted). Eighth Amendment excessive
force claims contain an objective and a subjective component: in
order for the plaintiff to prevail, he must demonstrate that
that (1) the “deprivation suffered or injury inflicted . . . was
sufficiently serious,” and (2) the “prison official acted with a
sufficiently culpable state of mind.” Williams v. Benjamin, 77
F.3d 756, 761 (4th Cir. 1996). Only the latter, subjective
requirement is at issue in this case.
The subjective component is satisfied when an officer’s
application of force was applied “maliciously and sadistically
for the very purpose of causing harm,” rather than as part of “a
11
good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline.” Hudson v.
McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 6-7 (1992) (internal citations omitted).
“[A] court may allow an inmate’s claim to go to the jury only if
it concludes that the evidence, viewed in a light most favorable
to the claimant, will support a reliable inference of wantonness
in the infliction of pain.” Stanley v. Hejirika, 134 F.3d 629,
634 (4th Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks omitted).
In Whitley, the Supreme Court outlined several factors to
consider when evaluating the subjective component: the need for
the application of force; the relationship between the need and
the amount of force that was used; the extent of the injury
inflicted; the extent of the threat to the safety of staff and
inmates, as reasonably perceived by the responsible official;
and any efforts made to temper the severity of a forceful
response. Whitley, 475 U.S. at 320-21. Notably, a lack of injury
is not dispositive, so long as there is sufficient evidence of
maliciously-applied force. Wilkins v. Gaddy, 559 U.S. 34, 38
(2010) (per curiam) (“An inmate who is gratuitously beaten by
guards does not lose his ability to pursue an excessive force
claim merely because he has the good fortune to escape without
serious injury.”).
The evidence supporting Mann’s case-in-chief is derived
from inmate affidavits, prison records, and his own statements
12
under oath. 2 Many of the facts are disputed – and vigorously so -
but Appellees argue that, even under Mann’s version of the
facts, they are entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Upon
our careful review of the summary judgment record, however, we
cannot agree. We conclude that Mann has provided sufficient
evidence to substantiate each of the excessive force claims
pressed on appeal and that the entry of summary judgment on
those counts was error.
2
Appellees have repeatedly criticized Mann’s presentation
of evidence as improper and insufficient. These protestations
are unavailing. The vast majority of the statements submitted by
inmate witnesses were either notarized or declared under the
penalty of perjury. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(1)(A) (permitting
either “affidavits” or “declarations”); 28 U.S.C. § 1746 (a
litigant may rely on an “unsworn declaration, certificate,
verification, or statement” if it is subscribed “as true under
penalty of perjury”).
Indeed, the record could defeat summary judgment even if
the evidence consisted exclusively of so-called “self-serving”
declarations from Mann himself. Opp. Br. at 12-14. It is well
settled that we may not, at summary judgment, discount viable,
material evidence on the ground that it was offered by a
plaintiff with a troubled past. E.g., Williams v. Staples, Inc.,
372 F.3d 662, 667 (4th Cir. 2004) (the court “may not make
credibility determinations” in reviewing the record). As
Appellant’s brief observes, this rule is acutely necessary in
cases with pro se prisoner plaintiffs, where “events [take]
place with only prison guards present[, a]nd an inmate has
little control of his situation and movement, and few means of
establishing facts, other than recounting evidence himself.”
Rep. at 8-9.
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A. Claims as to Deprivation of Decontamination
We first examine Mann’s contention that Appellees violated
the Eighth Amendment when they refused to let him shower or
otherwise decontaminate after expelling pepper spray in his cell
on June 9 and again on August 23.
We have previously held that the denial of decontamination
can give rise to an Eighth Amendment claim. Williams, 77 F.3d at
768. In Williams, an inmate threw “foul” liquids on officers,
and they responded by spraying a near-lethal dose of mace into
the plaintiff’s cell. Although the plaintiff then complied with
the officers’ orders, he was placed in four-point restraints and
chained to a bunk for eight hours. Williams was in “immense
pain” because of the mace and pleaded for water to wash off the
mace, but the officers did not permit him to decontaminate, and
no medical personnel checked on his condition. Id. at 765. This
Court applied the Whitley factors and concluded that summary
judgment was unwarranted. It held that to do otherwise would
create a “harmful precedent,” in that “whenever any inmate
causes a disturbance by throwing water or something similar at a
guard, and refuses to obey a further command, guards can —
without fear of violating the Constitution — spray an inmate in
the face with mace and then confine him in four-point restraints
for an extended period of time without permitting him to
wash[.]” Id.
14
We agree with the magistrate judge that Williams controls
in the instant case and that evidence bearing on the August 23
incident warrants a merits trial. Although Mann’s circumstances
are not on all fours with those presented in Williams, the fact
remains that, taking Mann’s sworn allegations as true, Appellees
have provided “no reason for the guards’ refusal to permit
[Mann] to wash” and “no evidence that [Mann] was not in the
[pain] he alleges.” Id. at 765. Regardless of whether pepper
spray or mace was used, and regardless of whether he was
restrained in a separate room, the record (viewed in the light
most favorable to Mann) clearly reflects a prisoner in pain for
several hours and a cadre of officers who refused to allow him
to decontaminate. With the additional submission by Mann that an
officer told him that he would “be lucky if he ever got to
decontaminate after what [he’d] done,” J.A. 652, there is ample
evidence from which a fact finder could find that Appellees
acted maliciously, sadistically, and in violation of the Eighth
Amendment.
Similarly, we hold that Appellees are not entitled to
summary judgment as to the June 9 denial of decontamination
claim. Mann has sworn that after being sprayed, he repeatedly
asked officers and medical staff for a shower, was denied, and
experienced burning pain over his body for five days; a
reasonable jury could infer from this evidence that Mann has
15
adequately established both the subjective and objective prongs
of his Eighth Amendment claim.
The district court’s holding to the contrary relies on the
absence of certain evidence, namely the fact that the official
prison records do not contain any complaints of injury, or any
evidence “suggest[ing] that Plaintiff lacked running water with
which he could have decontaminated himself.” J.A. 879. But Mann
has supplied sufficient evidence, in the form of his sworn
affidavit and those of other inmates, to rebut those inferences.
See Davis v. Zahradnick, 600 F.2d 458, 460 (4th Cir. 1979)
(summary judgment “may not be invoked where, as here, the
affidavits present conflicting versions of the facts which
require credibility determinations.”). Mann’s statements raise
genuine issues of disputed fact as to whether Appellees wantonly
denied his repeated requests to wash off the painful effects of
pepper spray before confining him with four-point restraints or
placing him into a strip cell. It was error for the district
court to grant summary judgment on this record.
B. Claims as to Use of Physical Force
Mann also contends that the district court erred in
granting summary judgment on his allegations of excessive
physical force; we agree.
With regard to the events of August 23, the version of
events sworn to by Mann (and supported by the affidavits of
16
other inmates) amply make the case that officers on the cell
extraction team wrapped a bed sheet around Mann’s neck, choked
him into unconsciousness with it, continued to beat him after he
had been wrestled to the floor and had been placed in leg and
arm restraints, and afterward slammed his face into iron doors
and bars en route to a holding cell. Inmate affidavits from
those in neighboring cells report hearing Mann yell that he was
“down” and “not resisting.” Subsequent records reflect medical
treatment to a not-insignificant laceration on Mann’s head.
Notwithstanding Mann’s egregiously offensive and abusive
behavior in spattering the extraction team with feces as they
entered his cell, it is plainly the case that a jury could find
that the officers on the extraction team continued to apply
force against Mann well after he had ceased his resistance.
Because a jury could infer from these facts that the officers
wantonly administered serious force to Mann in retaliation for
his conduct rather than for the purpose of bringing him under
control, the district court failed to apply summary judgment
principles as Fed. R. Civ. P. 56 and we prescribe. See Miller,
913 F.2d at 1087.
The district court focused on giving “wide-ranging
deference to the judgment of prison officials.” J.A. 881. Most
assuredly, as it stated, “[a] court should not retrospectively
attempt, in the calmness of a federal courthouse years after a
17
volatile incident initiated by a disobedient and violent
prisoner, to second guess the exact moment the prisoner was
under control and no further use of force was necessary.” J.A.
881-82. But while some degree of forceful officer action was
undoubtedly required to contain Mann in the instant situations,
courts may not “insulate from review [those] actions taken in
bad faith and for no legitimate purpose.” Whitley, 475 U.S. at
321. Given the affidavits, both from Mann and other inmates,
that he shouted multiple times that he was “not resisting;”
given the probative evidence of the officers’ statements before,
during, and after the incident; and given the suspect
disappearance of the official August 23 videotape, there is
ample support for an inference that “summary, informal,
unofficial and unsanctioned corporal punishment” was employed in
retaliation for Mann’s attack. Ort v. White, 813 F.2d 318, 324
(11th Cir. 1987).
Our review of the record leads us to the same conclusion
with regard to the June 14 and July 28 incidents. On both
occasions, according to Mann’s amply supported version of the
facts, Lt. Failey acted aggressively in dealing with a fully-
restrained inmate. On June 14, for example, she dragged Mann for
25 yards by a chain that was attached to his crotch because he
had felt lightheaded and knelt down to recover. And on July 28,
she continued to assault Mann to the point where another guard
18
used his own body to shield Mann’s head and neck from further
blows.
Many of the Whitley factors support a holding in favor of
Mann. The force applied by Lt. Failey occurred after Mann had
been restrained, and in that sense was unnecessary to preserve
order. It would appear that there was not a significant “need
for the application of force” and that Mann was not a serious
threat as “reasonably perceived by the responsible officials.”
Whitley, 475 U.S. at 320-21. This is especially true in light of
Lt. Failey’s statements to Mann before and during the incidents,
from which malicious intent could be readily inferred. E.g.,
J.A. 24 (“Im’a fix you, white boy.”); J.A. 25 (threatening to
“kick [his] ass”); J.A. 580 (calling Mann a “crybaby” and that
“she was going to beat [him] like [his] mama should’ve.”).
It may very well be the case that Mann is violent,
volatile, and engaged in flagrantly provocative behavior. It may
likewise be the case that, when the record is further developed,
Mann will find it difficult, and perhaps impossible, to prevail
on his claims - to prove that he was confined and assaulted in
the manner he alleges, that the force applied by Appellees was
unjustified, and that they full well knew this. But where, as
here, a prisoner has duly filed the necessary briefs,
affidavits, and corroborative evidence to support his claims,
19
such disputes of credibility are reserved for a fact finder,
here, as requested by Appellees, a jury.
IV.
For the reasons set forth, we vacate the judgment of the
district court in part and remand for further proceedings
insofar as judgment was granted in favor of Appellees as to the
claims discussed herein. See supra, n.1. In all other respects,
we affirm the judgment of the district court.
AFFIRMED IN PART;
VACATED AND REMANDED IN PART
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