Davis v. Department of Human Services et al

Filing 163

ORDER GRANTING Defendant's Motion in Limine Number 5 (Doc. 104 ). Signed by Judge Staci M. Yandle on 5/4/2018. (bps)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

CHRISTOPHER NOVUS DAVIS,
Plaintiff,
vs.
LUCAS NANNY, et al.,
Defendants.

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Case No. 3:13-CV-1260-SMY-RJD

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
Pending before the Court is Defendants’ Motion in Limine 5, which the Court took
under advisement.

Upon further consideration, Defendants’ Motion in Limine 5 is

GRANTED.
According to his Amended Complaint, Plaintiff brings his action under 42 U.S.C. §
1983, alleging that Defendants “intentionally deprived him of his Constitutional rights
during his stay at Chester Mental Health Center on December 26, 2011.” (Doc. 12 at ¶1).
Specifically, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants, who worked as Security Therapy Aides at the
Chester Mental Health Center, beat him in an unmonitored area of the facility while
escorting him back to his room in full restraints. (Id. at ¶¶ 7, 16-20). After the Amended
Complaint was screened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1915A, the remaining Count alleges that
Defendants violated Plaintiff’s rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. (Id. at
¶¶ 27, 29, Doc. 13 at 5).
Defendant’s MIL 5 seeks to bar Plaintiff or his witnesses “from offering evidence or
eliciting any testimony relating to the Illinois Administrative Code, including but not

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limited to the use of force.” (Doc. 104 at 5). Defendants argue that the Administrative
Code is irrelevant to the question of whether Plaintiff’s constitutional rights were violated
by their alleged conduct. (Id. at 4-5). They rely primarily on the Seventh Circuit’s decision
in Thompson v. City of Chicago, 472 F.3d 444, 446 (7th Cir. 2006), a case asserting a
violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Plaintiff argues that the Illinois Administrative Code is relevant and therefore
admissible in cases alleging excessive force. He refers to the Screening Order applicable to
the original Complaint, which determined that Plaintiff’s pro se filing asserted an Eighth
Amendment claim for excessive use of force (Doc. 141 at 3, referencing Doc. 6) and asserts
that courts allow evidence of the violation of administrative policies in Eighth Amendment
excessive force cases, and that such cases are specifically distinguished from Fourth
Amendment cases like Thompson. (Doc. 141 at 3-4).
During the Final Pretrial Conference, Plaintiff’s counsel informed the Court that,
contrary to their briefing, Plaintiff’s case should be analyzed under the Fourteenth
Amendment, as he was a “detainee,” and not a convicted felon under than the Eighth
Amendment. (Doc. 162 at page 13, lines 12-17). Counsel argued that despite the change,
the Court should reach the same conclusion. (Id. at page 13 line 18 through page 14 line
13).
In the Screening Order regarding the Amended Complaint, District Judge Phil
Gilbert noted that at that time, Plaintiff’s status when he was housed at Chester Mental
Health Center was unclear. (Doc. 13 at 3). However, Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint refers
to him as a “detainee” or “patient” (Doc. 12). The publicly-available records from the Lake
County Circuit Clerk suggest he was in custody at the time he arrived at Chester Mental
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Health Center, but was not sentenced until after the events at issue in this case.
Plaintiff’s status at the time of the offense is material; the source of an individual’s
rights (and the elements of a claim) in use-of-force cases varies depending on their status.
See Lewis v. Downey, 581 F.3d 467, 473 (7th Cir. 2009) (“The scope of an individual's right
to be free from punishment- and, derivatively, the basis for an excessive force action
brought under § 1983- hinges on his status within the criminal justice system.”) Convicted
prisoners must bring excessive force claims under the Eighth Amendment's cruel and
unusual punishment clause, while pretrial detainees’ rights spring from the Fourteenth
Amendment's due process clause. The reason for the distinction is that “[p]retrial detainees
(unlike convicted prisoners) cannot be punished at all, much less maliciously and
sadistically.” Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 135 S. Ct. 2466, 2475, 192 L. Ed. 2d 416 (2015)
(quotation omitted).
For an Eighth Amendment excessive force claim, the “core inquiry” is “whether
force was applied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline, or maliciously and
sadistically to cause harm.” Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 7 (1992). There is a
subjective element which requires a finder of fact to “inquire into [the] prison official's state
of mind” to determine whether a constitutional violation has occurred, because “[i]f the pain
inflicted is not formally meted out as punishment by the statute or the sentencing judge,
some mental element must be attributed to the inflicting officer before it can qualify.”
Harper v. Albert, 400 F.3d 1052, 1065 (7th Cir. 2005) (quotation omitted). By contrast, to
prevail on an excessive force claim under the Fourteenth Amendment, “a pretrial detainee
must show only that the force purposely or knowingly used against him was objectively
unreasonable.” Kingsley, 135 S. Ct. at 2473.
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Section 1983 protects plaintiffs from constitutional violations, not violations of state
laws, regulations or policies. See Scott v. Edinburg, 346 F.3d 752, 760 (7th Cir. 2003). The
Seventh Circuit has found in the context of Fourth Amendment excessive force claims,
which, like Fourteenth Amendment claims by pretrial detainees involve those who have not
been adjudged guilty and sentenced to punishment and utilizes an objectively-reasonable
test, evidence of such laws or policies “is completely immaterial as to the question of
whether a violation of the federal constitution has been established” and therefore subject to
exclusion. Thompson, 72 F.3d at 454 (citing Scott). Plaintiff points to Mays v. Springborn,
575 F.3d 643, 650 (7th Cir. 2009), in which the Seventh Circuit found with respect to
Eighth Amendment claims, “although violation of the prison's rule against public searches
was not, by itself, a violation of the [C]onstitution…it was relevant evidence on which the
jury could have relied to conclude that the searches were done with an intent to harass.”
That is, the existence of a policy that may have been violated was relevant to show the
required state of mind—the subjective element of that claim.
In reconciling Thompson and Mays, this Court agrees with the reasoning in Estate of
Carlock v. Williamson, No. 08-3075, 2013 WL 12244415 (C.D. Ill. June 21, 2013). There,
District Judge Sue E. Myerscough pointed out that the subjective element of an Eighth
Amendment claim – which may be shown by the knowing violation of a prison policy – is
what renders evidence of a policy or procedure relevant and admissible. Id. at *7. She then
concluded that if a Fourteenth Amendment excessive force case includes a subjective element
(an unsettled question at that time), “then a knowing violation of a department policy may be
relevant.” Id. The Supreme Court subsequently held in Kingsley that there is no subjective
element to a pretrial detainee’s Fourteenth Amendment claim, making it more equivalent to the
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Fourth Amendment Thompson situation than the Eighth Amendment Mays situation.
Extending the above rationale, the Court concludes that, because Plaintiff appears to
have been a pretrial detainee at the time of his confinement in Chester Mental Health Center,
his claim falls within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections rather than those of the Eighth
Amendment.

As such, Seventh Circuit precedent dictates that evidence regarding an

Administrative Code provision or facility policy on use of force and whether it was ignored by
Defendants is not relevant to or probative of the objective reasonableness of their alleged
actions. 1 Therefore, Defendants’ Motion in Limine 5 is GRANTED, and any such evidence
will be excluded at trial.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
DATED: May 4, 2018

s/ Staci M. Yandle
STACI M. YANDLE
United States District Judge

1

Plaintiff’s counsel argued at the Final Pretrial Hearing that the facts of the situation made it distinguishable from
Thompson and more akin to the stereotypical Eighth Amendment excessive force case, because Thompson involved
the hot pursuit of a suspect while here, the controlled environment and restraints on Plaintiff gave Defendants “the
time and the ability to consider and apply through appropriate corrective measures, unlike the police officers in
Thompson where they had to make a decision in the blink of an eye.” (Doc. 162, page 14 lines 3 to 13). This is not
the point. The objectively-reasonable standard is structured to take such considerations into account when
determining what a reasonable officer in that situation would do “under the circumstances.” Thompson at 454.

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