United States Court of Appeals,
Eleventh Circuit.
No. 94-6921.
Jimmie Lee WILLIAMS, Jr., Administrator of the Estate of Jimmie
Lee Williams, III, Plaintiff-Appellant,
Lisa Ponds, as mother and next friend of Travis Lee Ponds,
Demetria Lashun Jenkins, as mother and next friend of Duntavious
Lamar Jenkins, Plaintiffs,
v.
LEE COUNTY, ALABAMA, and Herman Chapman, Individually,
Defendants-Appellees,
Lee County, Alabama Commission, etc., et al., Defendants.
Feb. 1, 1996.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of Alabama. (No. CV 91-S-160-E), Charles S. Coody,
District Judge.
Before TJOFLAT, Chief Judge, BLACK, Circuit Judge, and GOODWIN1,
Senior Circuit Judge.
GOODWIN, Senior Circuit Judge:
Jimmie Lee Williams, Jr., appeals the summary judgment in both
his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim and his pendant wrongful death claim
under Ala.Code § 6-5-410, arising out of the jail suicide of his
son. Plaintiff also appeals the dismissal of the decedent's
children as parties to the wrongful death action, and the district
court's failure to rule on plaintiff's motion to amend the
complaint to add new defendants.2 We affirm.
I.
1
Honorable Alfred T. Goodwin, Senior U.S. Circuit Judge for
the Ninth Circuit, sitting by designation.
2
As we affirm the summary judgment, we do not address
plaintiff's contention that the court improperly dismissed
decedent's children as plaintiffs.
Plaintiff's son, Jimmie Lee Williams, III (Williams), had
committed himself for detoxification and treatment for drug abuse
to the East Alabama Medical Center (EAMC). After leaving that
facility without authority, he was taken into custody on March 8,
1989 on the order of the probate court and lodged in the Lee County
jail on a temporary "mental hold" pending his hearing before the
probate court which, on March 10 committed him to the State
Department of Mental Health for treatment. He was ordered held at
the county jail pending transfer to a treatment facility.
The Lee County Sheriff's Department had information, from the
probate court commitment order, on a printed form, that Williams
"is mentally ill; ... he poses a real and present threat of
substantial harm to himself and to others;" and a blank space on
the form was filled in to state that "Mr. Williams left the
hospital without authorization and has homicidal intentions."
Other than the information contained on the commitment form,
the sheriff's office had no other information on Williams.
As was the practice of the sheriff's office with such cases,
Williams was kept under constant observation for two days in the
"booking" area. He was later moved to a single cell where he was
checked on every fifteen to twenty minutes. Between 4:30 and 5:00
in the afternoon of March 10, 1989, Officer Douglas Jones visited
Williams in his cell. Williams said to Jones at that time, "I'm
not going to make it. If I don't do it myself, somebody else
will."
Jones thought about Williams' statement for several minutes
and concluded that it was a threat of self-harm. Whether or not
Jones' supervisor, Lieutenant Ausby, was apprised of the situation
remains in dispute, but fifteen to twenty minutes after Williams'
statement Jones returned to the cell to discover Williams hanging
by a sheet from a sprinkler in the ceiling. Attempts to
resuscitate Williams failed. The state medical examiner pronounced
the cause of Williams' death as suicide by hanging.
Plaintiff's complaint joined defendants Sheriff Chapman, Lee
County, and various fictitious parties. Plaintiff later moved to
amend the complaint to substitute Cary Torbet, Minnie Ausby and
Douglas Jones for fictitious party-defendants. The district court
denied the motions to amend the complaint and granted defendants'
motion for summary judgment.
II.
A. The Section 1983 Claim
To prevail under section 1983 in a jail suicide case, the
plaintiff must show that the jail official acted with "deliberate
indifference." Edwards v. Gilbert, 867 F.2d 1271, 1274-75 (11th
Cir.1989). Moreover, to establish deliberate indifference to a
suicide risk in this circuit, the official must have notice of a
"strong likelihood, rather than a mere possibility," of the
particular decedent's suicidal tendencies. Tittle v. Jefferson
County Commission, 10 F.3d 1535, 1539-1540 (11th Cir.1994).
Plaintiff offered no proof that Chapman in his individual
capacity as sheriff of Lee County was causally related to the
suicide. There was no evidence that Sheriff Chapman knew anything
of Williams' transfer to the jail other than that he had been
committed from the EAMC and "had homicidal tendencies." A
reasonable official would have no reason to assume from routine
booking information that a prisoner brought with him a strong, or
any, likelihood of suicide. Thus, no facts were tendered to impose
liability on Chapman for his personal involvement in Williams'
death.
As to the allegations against the Sheriff, the county, and
other defendants of insufficient training and supervision, suicide
prevention was covered both by the staff training manual and an
instructional video produced by the National Sheriff's
Association—both of which were used in training the staff.
Moreover, procedures were in place for evaluating inmates for
mental health problems, including potential suicide victims. The
training and monitoring procedures described in the documentary
evidence before the court tend to disprove deliberate indifference,
and shift to the plaintiff the burden of producing some evidence of
deliberate indifference.
We have found less formal means of suicide prevention than
those of Lee County to pass constitutional muster. See, Belcher v.
City of Foley, 30 F.3d 1390 (11th Cir.1994); Schmelz v. Monroe
County, 954 F.2d 1540 (11th Cir.1992). While Plaintiff's experts
did testify from hindsight concerning steps that might have been
taken to prevent Williams' suicide, "these alleged weaknesses,
without more, do not amount to a showing of deliberate indifference
..." Tittle, 10 F.3d at 1540.
We need not reach plaintiff's contention that Lee County is
liable for the "policies" of the sheriff because the plaintiff
failed to produce evidence that any act or omission on the part of
Chapman violated Williams' constitutional rights. Moreover, we
find no support in the record for plaintiff's argument that Lee
County defectively constructed and maintained the jail. The
evidence showed that a suicide had never before occurred in the
jail, that Williams' room was specially constructed with non-moving
furniture, and that the sprinkler head from which he managed to
hang himself was ten feet above the floor. Given these facts,
there was no "substantial likelihood" that a suicide would occur.
Thus there was no error in granting summary judgment for the
County.
B. The State Wrongful Death Claim
Under Alabama law, "foreseeability of a decedent's suicide is
legally significant only if the deceased had a history of suicidal
proclivities, or manifested suicidal proclivities in the presence
of the defendant, or was admitted to the facility of the defendant
because of a suicide attempt." Popham v. City of Talladega, 582
So.2d 541 (Ala.1991). The plaintiff offered no evidence in the
present case of a suicidal history, nor was the decedent admitted
to Lee County Jail or EAMC because of a suicide attempt. Moreover,
for the reasons stated above in regard to the Section 1983 claim,
there was insufficient evidence offered to permit a jury to find
that Williams' suicide was foreseeable, based on any notice to the
sheriff's officers or any manifestation of suicidal tendencies in
the presence of defendants. Summary judgment was appropriate on
this claim.
III.
Plaintiff also asserts that the district court erred in
refusing to allow him to amend the complaint to add new defendants.
While courts allow amendments freely when justice so requires, if
the statute of limitations has expired, as in the present case, the
amendment must "relate back" to the original filing date.
Fed.R.Civ.Pro. 15. Here the proposed amendment was untimely, the
proposed parties to be added were not shown to have received
sufficient notice of the action, nor were facts tendered to show
that they had any liability. Thus the district court did not abuse
its discretion in denying plaintiff's motion to amend to add more
defendants. See Stevens v. Gay, 864 F.2d 113, 116 (11th Cir.1989).
AFFIRMED.