Caines v. Pacheco

Background

Kamieo Caines, an inmate in New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision custody, sued Sergeant Pacheco and Corrections Officers Carlstrom, Mitchell, and Johnson without a lawyer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged violations of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Caines alleged that on July 6, 2019, Pacheco put one or two fingers in Caines’s mouth, scratched his gums, and caused bleeding. Caines also alleged that Pacheco called him a derogatory term. He said that, after the incident, the defendants did not promptly obtain medical care for him and that his requests for treatment were ignored. He received medical attention two days later, on July 8, 2019. Caines also alleged that the defendants failed to protect him from the injury and abuse. The opinion states that Caines abandoned claims against two John Doe defendants after saying he was not accusing them.

Caines filed a grievance, which the superintendent denied. He appealed to the Central Office Review Committee, but that body did not respond. The defendants filed an unopposed motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which asks whether the complaint alleges enough facts to state a legally plausible claim.

Exhaustion of prison grievances

The defendants argued that the case should be dismissed because Caines filed suit before receiving a response from the Central Office Review Committee. The court rejected that argument at this stage. It treated Caines’s allegations as true and assumed that he had completed the available grievance process because more than 30 days had passed without a response. The court noted that the case could later be dismissed for failure to exhaust if it became clear that Caines had not completed the required process.

Eighth Amendment claims

The court dismissed the excessive-force claim against Pacheco. It concluded that the alleged finger contact and scratch, without a lasting injury beyond what the court described as a minor gum scratch, did not allege sufficiently serious harm. The court also held that Caines did not plausibly allege that Pacheco acted with the malicious or sadistic intent required for an Eighth Amendment excessive-force claim. The court separately stated that verbal abuse, including the alleged derogatory term, does not by itself violate the Constitution.

The court also dismissed the claim that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need. It found that Caines did not allege that the two-day delay in treatment caused sufficiently serious harm. The court further held that the complaint did not adequately allege that any defendant knew of and deliberately disregarded a substantial risk of serious harm. The opinion also states that any intended claim against Nurse Jane Doe failed because she was not named as a defendant and the complaint did not allege enough facts against her.

The court dismissed the failure-to-protect claim as well. Caines did not allege a sufficiently serious risk of harm or facts showing that the officers knew in advance about such a risk. The court characterized the incident as a surprise attack and noted that Caines did not allege a prior history of altercations with Pacheco or that he had warned anyone about a risk.

The opinion also states that Caines’s complaint invoked equal protection under the Fifth Amendment. The court concluded that, to the extent he intended to claim discrimination based on Pacheco’s use of the derogatory term, he did not allege that he was treated differently from similarly situated people because of a protected characteristic.

Disposition

The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss. It dismissed Caines’s claims without prejudice and granted him leave to file an amended complaint by July 30, 2021. The court stated that, if he did not file an amended pleading or request an extension, the dismissed claims could later be dismissed with prejudice and the case terminated without further notice. Judge Nelson S. Roman did not conduct a qualified-immunity analysis because he found that Caines had not adequately alleged a constitutional violation.