Evans v. State of Mississippi

Filing 66

Memorandum Opinion and Order. Plaintiff's 1 Complaint is dismissed with prejudice. Final Judgment in favor of Defendants shall be entered. Signed by Magistrate Judge Linda R. Anderson on 4/7/2014. (ACF)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF MISSISSIPPI
NORTHERN DIVISION
DONOVAN EVANS

PLAINTIFF

VS.

CIVIL ACTION NO. 3:13CV996-LRA

OFFICERS FORD, WRIGHT AND SHARP
DEFENDANTS
________________________________
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
The Plaintiff Donovan Evans, pro se, and Lee Thaggard, counsel for
Defendants (Officers Wright, Ford and Sharp), appeared for a hearing before the
undersigned United States Magistrate Judge on the 24th day of October, 2013, at
the Jackson Federal Courthouse. The hearing was conducted under the
authority of Spears v. McCotter, 766 F.2d 179 (5th Cir. 1985), and its progeny.
Plaintiff is currently housed at the Lauderdale County Detention Facility [LCDF] in
Meridian, Mississippi, as a pretrial detainee.
Plaintiff was granted in forma pauperis status by this Court by Order
entered March 20, 2013 [23]. A district court may dismiss an IFP complaint as
frivolous or for failure to state a claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1915 (e)(2)(B). A
complaint is frivolous if it lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact. Siglar v.
Hightower, 112 F.3d 191, 193 (5th Cir. 1997). A pro se prisoner is entitled to
develop his complaint factually before a proper frivolousness determination can
be made. See Eason v. Thaler, 14 F.3d 8, 9-10 (5th Cir. 1994). The purpose of
a Spears hearing is to "bring into focus the factual and legal bases of prisoners'

claims." Id. at 9 (quoting Spears, 766 F.2d at 181). At this hearing, Evans was
granted an opportunity to fully explain in his own words the factual basis of his
claims.
Certain claims (involving a 2009 arrest) were dismissed by Judge Wingate
because they were not filed within the applicable statute of limitations; Sheriff
James Moore was dismissed as a Defendant. See Memorandum Opinion and
Order filed April 17, 2013 [31]. The claims considered herein were contained in
the Complaint as amended [8, 14, 26] and in the response [30] filed by Plaintiff
and only involve the conditions of Plaintiff’s confinement in the LCDF and the
actions of Officers Ford, Wright and Sharp, the remaining Defendants.
According to his sworn testimony at the hearing, and the pleadings, Plaintiff
was housed in the LCDF beginning November 8, 2012. Defendant Officers Ford,
Wright, Sharp, and an Officer Jones kept “picking on me, assaulting me with my
food; didn’t have no running water...”. Plaintiff testified that the other inmates
also picked on him; they put paper over the window because Plaintiff was inside
his cell and standing up watching TV. That is when Officer Ford came by, and
Plaintiff tried to tell her to get the paper off his door. Officer Ford “assaulted [him]
with [his] food and beverage,” and then lied about what Plaintiff had done to her.
She threw his beverage in his face and kept kicking the door and “picking on”
Plaintiff. When he bent down to get his food, that is when she assaulted him with
his beverage. Officer Wright was the sergeant, and she was with Officer Ford
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when the paper was on Plaintiff’s door, and neither one of them would take off the
paper so he could look out. Officer Wright saw Officer Ford kicking the door and
assaulting him with the beverage so, “they were actually picking on me, cruel and
unusual punishment; making my life sufferingness.” Plaintiff testified that that
was all Sergeant Wright did.
Plaintiff continued by explaining what Officer Sharp did. Officer Sharp put
oatmeal on his door, covering up the holes and windows so he could not see out
and nobody could see in. The oatmeal remained there for probably a week, until
he was moved to another cell. Additionally, Officer Sharp kept bringing him his
food; he would open Plaintiff’s door and tried to get the food to him, “just picking
on [him].” Plaintiff did not want to eat because they were picking on him by
covering up his door with oatmeal.
Plaintiff testified that two other female officers named Jones were also
involved; they kept refusing to let him have toilet paper and hygiene products
every time it was passed out. He had to use his own money to get canteen
items.
Plaintiff also charges that jail officials would unpack his newspaper, The
Meridian Star, that he receives at the jail on the weekends. They would take
some of his favorite sections of the paper before giving it to him. Plaintiff does
not charge Defendants Ford, Wright or Sharp with this; he is uncertain who took
his newspaper.
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Assuming the facts as stated by the Plaintiff are accurate, the Court finds
that Plaintiff has failed to state a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or the
United States Constitution. Because he was a pretrial detainee during his stay in
the LCDF, Evans had a clearly established due process right to be free from
punishment; this includes the right not to be subjected to jail conditions that are
imposed for the purpose of punishment. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535
(1979); Hamilton v. Lyons, 74 F.3d 99, 103 (5th Cir. 1996); Hamilton v. Lyons, 74
F.3d 99, 103 (5th Cir. 1996). In order to succeed on a claim under § 1983 alleging
unconstitutional jail conditions, a pretrial detainee must establish that the
complained-of conditions have been imposed for a punitive purpose and that they
have resulted in “serious deficiencies” in providing for his “basic human needs.”
Shepherd v. Dallas County, 591 F.3d 445, 454 (5th Cir. 2009); Duvall v. Dallas
Cnty., 631 F.3d 203, 206 (5th Cir. 2011) (the conditions of a pretrial detainees's
detention may be so harmful or dangerous that the conditions themselves may
amount to impermissible “punishment.”).
Constitutional challenges may be brought by a pretrial detainee under two
alternative theories: as an attack on a ‘condition of confinement’ or as an
‘episodic act or omission.” Id. at 452. In this case, In this case, Plaintiff’s claims
focus on the episodic acts of Officers Ford, Wright, and Sharp.1 To prove a
1

Determining whether to classify a claim as a conditions-of-confinement claim or an
"episodic acts" claim is not always straightforward. See, e.g., Scott v. Moore, 114 F.3d 51, 5354
(5th Cir. 1997) (en banc) (holding that the "episodic act" branch of the doctrine governed a
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violation of constitutional rights in connection with an episodic act or omission
case, a detainee must establish that the defendant acted with subjective
deliberate indifference. See Hare v. City of Corinth, 74 F.3d 633, 649 (5th Cir.
1996) (en banc). This requires that the plaintiff establish that the defendant was
actually aware of a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate’s health or
safety, yet consciously disregarded the risk. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825,
827 (1994).
Plaintiff testified that he did not receive any actual physical injuries due to
Defendants’ actions. Although he could not see for a minute after the drink hit his
face, the Court finds that the conditions and actions about which he complains did
not pose a substantial risk of serious harm to his health or safety. There is no
constitutional prohibition against teasing or tossing a drink or kicking the doors or
covering the windows of a detainee’s cell. Though this behavior is not condoned,
the Court cannot interfere with the day-to-day administration of the jails. Federal
courts are not prison managers, and, ordinarily, courts accord great deference to
the internal administrative decisions of prison officials. Gentris v. O’Connel,
2009 WL 5195777 (W.D. La. 2009) citing Royal v. Clark, 447 F.2d 501 (5th Cir.
1971); Krist v. Smith, 439 F.2d 146 (5th Cir. 1971); and, Haggerty v. Wainwright,
427 F.2d 1137 (5th Cir. 1970). The fact that Plaintiff stayed for two or three days

detainee's claim arising out of sexual assault by a guard); id. at 56 (Wisdom, J., dissenting) (the
assault was traceable to "regular and systematic" staffing policies that were the "antithesis of
episodic").
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in the holding cell under the conditions he described also posed no serious risk of
harm to him.
Accepting all of Plaintiff’s testimony as accurate, the actions of Defendants
Wright, Ford, and Sharp simply do not rise to the level of constitutional violations.
The Court, having carefully considered the complaint, as augmented by the
sworn testimony of Plaintiff at the hearing, as well as the applicable law, finds that
Evans's claims have no basis either in law or in fact and, therefore, are frivolous2
and fail to state a claim on which relief may be granted. are insufficient in law to
state a cause of action under §1983. For these reasons, this action shall be
dismissed with prejudice pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1915(e)(2)(B)(I) and(ii). Final
Judgment in favor of Defendants shall be entered.
IT IS, THEREFORE, ORDERED that the Complaint is dismissed with
prejudice. A separate Final Judgment in favor of Defendants shall be entered on
this date.
THIS the 7th day of April, 2014.

S/ Linda R. Anderson
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
2

“Frivolous” in this context is a legal term of art that indicates that, although the
Plaintiff’s allegations are serious to him, and may, indeed, be based on a tangible injury, the
theory on which his claims are based are “indisputably meritless” in a legal sense. See Allison v.
Kyle, 66 F.3d 71, 73 (5th Cir. 1995).
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