Williams v. Lee County, Alabama

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.