Wells v. Mendocino County Sheriff's Office

Background

Jesse C. Wells, who was a pretrial detainee during most of the relevant period, filed a pro se civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and employees Sgt. Sotiris Siderakis, Sgt. Eldon Johnston, Deputy Michael Grant, Capt. Timothy Pearce, Sgt. Phil Saye, Deputy Filipe Leon, and Deputy Aohoovaan Case. The operative complaint consisted of the original complaint and an amendment.

Wells claimed that jail officials failed to protect him from violence by other detainees. His claims concerned three situations: his housing with co-defendant Abdirahman Mohamed; his housing with Caleb Silver; and an altercation with Mark Burleigh. Wells alleged that officials disregarded his concerns about being housed with people connected to his criminal case or with people he considered dangerous, and that officials failed to respond adequately to his concerns about Burleigh.

The defendants moved for summary judgment, which is a ruling before trial when the evidence shows that no genuine dispute over an important fact requires a trial. They argued both that Wells had not exhausted available administrative remedies and that his rights were not violated. Wells opposed the motion. The court did not penalize him for filing his opposition one day late, noting that he was representing himself and was in a residential treatment program.

Exhaustion of administrative remedies

The Prison Litigation Reform Act requires a prisoner to properly complete available prison or jail grievance procedures before bringing a civil-rights action about confinement conditions. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office procedure provided three levels of review: Level I, Level II, and Level III, with Level III as the final administrative remedy.

Wells submitted one accepted grievance about his housing, but the undisputed record showed that he did not appeal it beyond Level I. Other housing grievances were rejected as duplicative. The court found that the defendants proved that additional grievance remedies were available and that Wells had not used them. Wells did not provide evidence showing that the appeal process was effectively unavailable or that he could not file a timely appeal.

The court therefore held that the defendants were entitled to summary judgment based on Wells's failure to exhaust administrative remedies.

Merits of the failure-to-protect claims

Because the defendants also addressed the Fourteenth Amendment claims on their merits and Wells responded, the court analyzed those claims as well. For a pretrial detainee's failure-to-protect claim, the court explained that the detainee must show that an official intentionally made a confinement decision, the decision created a substantial risk of serious harm, the official failed to take reasonable available measures despite the obvious risk, and that failure caused the injury. The conduct must be objectively unreasonable—more than negligence but less than a subjective intent to cause harm.

Housing with Abdirahman Mohamed. Wells and Mohamed were housed together from March 29 through April 16, 2017. The court found no evidence that Wells faced a substantial risk of serious harm during that period. Wells had identified concerns about other co-defendants, not Mohamed; Wells and Mohamed did not know they were involved in the same murder investigation when they were placed together; they had no altercations; and Wells reported that they got along. Mohamed requested and received a move after learning they were co-defendants. Wells was later placed on a proposed move list with Mohamed and Gary Blank, but he was never actually housed with either of them after officials learned of the alleged threat. The court granted summary judgment on this claim.

Housing with Caleb Silver. Wells and Silver were housed together from August 10, 2017, through July 19, 2018. The court assumed, for purposes of the motion, that Wells opposed the assignment. But it found that Wells offered no evidence establishing a substantial safety risk that a reasonable officer would have recognized. Wells described Silver as violent and claimed that he defended himself from nine assaults, but he provided no description or supporting records for those alleged assaults. The record instead showed that Wells repeatedly reported that he and Silver got along. The only documented incident was a June 2018 roughhousing incident, after which both inmates requested to remain together. The court also found no evidence that officials knew about Silver's alleged statement that Mohamed had paid him to stab Wells. The court granted summary judgment on this claim.

Altercation with Mark Burleigh. Wells claimed that he warned Leon, Case, and Johnston about a possible altercation with Burleigh and that they failed to move him. The court considered Wells's account even though the timing of his warnings was disputed. It found that Wells had not shown that the officials' responses were objectively unreasonable. Wells had not reported a specific threat, the two men had no history of conflict, and Wells had recently reported that they were getting along. The court concluded that a reasonable officer would not have viewed keeping them in the same shower group as creating a substantial risk of serious harm. The court granted summary judgment on this claim as well.

Disposition

Judge Edward J. Davila granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment. The order states that Wells's failure-to-protect claims were dismissed first for failure to exhaust administrative remedies and second, with prejudice, because there was no genuine dispute of material fact supporting the claims. The clerk was directed to terminate pending motions and close the case.