Destiny Hoffman v. Susan Knoebel
Opinion
Like many jurisdictions, Indiana has turned to "drug courts" to tackle substance-abuse problems more flexibly than traditional sentencing regimes might allow.
*838
Indiana's actions may have ended the DTC, but they did not end the litigation in the district court. That court denied class certification, dismissed some claims, and resolved most of the rest of the claims on summary judgment. A final plaintiff's claim was settled before trial. In the end, the plaintiffs failed to win relief. On appeal, we are left with due process claims by seventeen plaintiffs against three defendants, and Fourth Amendment claims by three plaintiffs against two defendants. The district court resolved all of these claims in the defendants' favor at summary judgment. While we have no doubt that the plaintiffs' constitutional rights were violated, the question is whether these defendants were personally responsible for the systemic breakdown. Plaintiffs have failed to make that showing, and so the district court's judgment dismissing the action must be affirmed.
I
The Clark County DTC was founded in 2002. Like all Indiana drug courts, it was given the task of "bringing together substance abuse rehabilitation professionals, local social programs, and intensive judicial monitoring" to provide "individually tailored programs or services" to its participants.
Upon successful completion of the program, a participant's deferred criminal charges were dismissed with prejudice. By *839 contrast, an unsuccessful participant could be "terminated" from the program, meaning, essentially, that she had flunked out. "Terminated" participants had their convictions entered and were sentenced in accordance with their plea agreement. Before turning to this drastic remedy, the DTC could impose a number of intermediate "incentives, sanctions, and therapeutic adjustments" to bring a participant back on track. IND. PROB. SOLV. CT. R. 27. The available sanctions ranged from assigned reflective essays to more frequent monitoring to short-term jail stays.
The program appears to have proceeded smoothly until Judge Jacobi became the DTC's presiding judge in January 2012. Under his stewardship, the administration of the program went seriously awry. Two troubling practices arose. First, many short-term jail sanctions began stretching beyond anything that fairly could be called "short-term." To take two of the worst examples, Jason O'Connor was jailed 220 days for what was announced in court as a 30-day sanction, and Destiny Hoffman was jailed 154 days for what was announced as a 48-hour sanction. In all, 16 of the plaintiffs advancing due process violations on appeal were jailed 24 times, for periods ranging from 6 to 220 days. These sanctions were imposed without the procedural protections required by Indiana law, such as written notice, a right to counsel, or a right to present evidence. The plaintiffs argue that these extended periods of incarceration violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second, two DTC staff members personally arrested participants who had violated DTC rules, when they should have asked local police to execute the warrants. Three plaintiffs argue that these seizures violated the Fourth Amendment.
In the district court, the plaintiffs sued nine county employees and entities. Four defendants remain on appeal, three of whom are sued in their individual capacity. Josh Seybold was one of two case managers for the DTC. As case manager, he was responsible for finding placements in treatment centers for jailed participants and often served as participants' first point of contact with the DTC. Susan Knoebel was the chief probation officer in Judge Jacobi's court and the director of the DTC. As director, she oversaw the administrative details of the Clark County DTC, including Seybold's work as a case manager. Jeremy Snelling was the courtroom's bailiff and also served as a "field officer" for the DTC. He tracked down and arrested several of the plaintiffs for violating DTC rules; Knoebel accompanied him. Finally, Danny Rodden, the Clark County Sheriff, was sued in his official capacity. We interpret these claims as claims against the Clark County Sheriff's Department as an entity. See
Kentucky v. Graham
,
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of all four defendants. We assess the district court's decision
de novo
and review the record just as the district court did-by taking all disputed facts and competing inferences from the evidence in the plaintiffs' favor.
Bunch v. United States
,
II
A
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the deprivation
*840
of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1. The plaintiffs argue that Knoebel, Seybold, and the Clark County Sheriff's Department violated those rights by facilitating the DTC's use of jail sanctions. Sixteen of the plaintiffs were jailed for violating conditions of the DTC program in 2012 and 2013: Destiny Hoffman, Jason O'Connor, Nathan Clifford, Joshua Foley, Amy Tuttle, Amanda Campbell, Justin Lanham, Trentney Rhodes, Joanie Watson, Julia Joseph, Jarvis Peele, Katherine Tudor, Ashleigh Santiago, Robert Upton, Michael Campell, and Brandelyn Taylor. Another plaintiff, Shane Bratcher, separately says that Knoebel and Seybold violated the due process clause by extending his time in the DTC program without procedural protections. But because his claim is distinct and he presented no independent argument in the district court or on appeal, any argument he might make is waived.
Williams v. REP Corp.
,
Each of the 16 plaintiffs was held in the Clark County jail after being sanctioned by Judge Jacobi or a magistrate judge presiding in his stead. The plaintiffs were brought before the DTC for a variety of missteps: failed or diluted drug tests, missed status hearings, and even self-reported drug or alcohol use. Before sanctions were imposed, Indiana law, consistent with the Due Process Clause, required that the accused person be given written notice, "obtain the disclosure of evidence against the individual," "confront and cross-examine witnesses," and be allowed counsel.
As a result of this opaque process, the plaintiffs were left in the dark. Many of them, including Hoffman, O'Connor, and Amanda Campbell, wrote letters to Judge Jacobi, Clark County magistrate judges, and DTC staff pleading for help or even just for clarity. In some cases, family members called or visited Seybold's office after earlier inquiries proved ineffective. The record reveals that whatever the stated length of the sanction was at the hearing, the plaintiffs remained in jail until Seybold or another DTC staff member was able to obtain placement in a treatment facility. Whatever caused the delays in these placements, there was no justification in Indiana law for jailing the participants while they waited. As the district court concluded, "[i]t was a wholly indefensible system."
Before proceeding, we think it important to pin down the precise type of due process violation alleged in this case. We have said in the past that prolonged detention before receiving a hearing violates the Due Process Clause's substantive component. See,
e.g.
,
*841
Holloway v. Delaware Cnty. Sheriff
,
As we said at the outset, this is enough to show that the plaintiffs were deprived of a liberty interest without due process of law. But who is responsible? In particular, were either the individual defendants (Knoebel and Seybold) or the Clark County Sheriff's Office subject to liability for a constitutional tort? For both sets of defendants, the crucial issue is personal (or departmental) responsibility. Section 1983 imposes liability only on an official who "subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws."
B
We begin with the individual defendants. The plaintiffs do not argue that Knoebel and Seybold are responsible for the failure to provide due process protections in the first instance. Rather, they argue that both defendants were deliberately indifferent for failing to intervene while the plaintiffs were in jail. "The deliberate indifference standard reflects a mental state somewhere between the culpability poles of negligence and purpose, and is thus properly equated with reckless disregard."
Perez v. Fenoglio
,
Plaintiffs first accuse Seybold (and Knoebel as his supervisor) of failing to secure placements with treatment centers, and thus of extending the plaintiffs' unlawful detentions. But no rational trier of fact could find that Seybold's actions were taken with at least reckless disregard for their impact on plaintiffs' constitutional rights. See
Farmer v. Brennan
,
The plaintiffs argue that these contacts were not frequent enough, but they have not told us why the actual frequency was so deficient that it amounted to a due process violation. When liability is predicated on a departure from the norm, we need a baseline of responsible behavior.
Cf.
Estate of Cole v. Fromm
,
Hoffman and O'Connor separately argue that Knoebel's failure to file petitions to terminate them from the DTC program violated their due process rights. It is true that Knoebel was the person responsible for filing such a petition, which would have notified the prosecutor that charges should be reinstated, and she did not do so. Yet according to Judge Jacobi's testimony, court records showed the petition had been filed, which led the DTC judges and staff to think they were waiting for the prosecutors to reinstate charges. This procedural confusion left the plaintiffs in jail for just over a year in the aggregate. That is enough, Hoffman and O'Connor say, to show that Knoebel was deliberately indifferent to their plight. As with Seybold's placement practices, however, Hoffman and O'Connor have not told us why any part the defendants played in this unfortunate tale was so egregious that it violated their due process rights. They cannot mean that every bureaucratic slip creates a constitutional violation. In
Arnett v. Webster
,
The plaintiffs also argue that Seybold and Knoebel were deliberately indifferent for failing to bring an end to the DTC's unlawful incarcerations earlier. But it is clear from the record that Knoebel and Seybold themselves lacked authority to change the DTC's sanctioning practices. While Knoebel had some authority over the administrative policies of the Clark County DTC, neither she nor Seybold had the power to override Judge Jacobi's orders. When the staff and outside lawyers did bring due process concerns to Judge Jacobi's attention, he dismissed them. Knoebel and Seybold had no ability to compel the judge to do otherwise.
Recognizing this, the plaintiffs contend that Knoebel and Seybold should at least have "investigated and made a report of the obvious constitutional violations that were running rampant in 2012 and pre-November
*843
2013." Seybold eventually did make such a report when he expressed his concerns to Clark County Chief Judge Vicki Carmichael in November 2013, and his report contributed to the eventual revelation of the DTC's abuses. But the plaintiffs say more was required. To be sure, the Constitution imposes an affirmative duty to protect the well-being of those in custody. See
DeShaney v. Winnebago Cnty. Dep't of Soc. Servs.
,
C
Trying another tack, the plaintiffs argue that under
Monell v. Department of Social Services of the City of New York
,
The Clark County Jail, however, had several policies in place at the time that conceivably could have safeguarded detainees from wrongful detention. The jail sent a "Weekly Inmate Roster" to the county court listing all the detainees at the jail who had come from the court. Those being wrongfully detained could have complained by using the jail's informal in-house mail system, through which the guards would walk unstamped mail over to court employees. (The jail and courthouse were housed in the same building.) This system was ad hoc and imperfect, but there is evidence in the record of several letters that made it to the appropriate court officials. Failing that, detainees could try the U.S. mail or file a grievance through the jail's internal grievance system, although there is scant evidence that these fallback policies were actually used.
Relying primarily on
Armstrong v. Squadrito
,
There are two problems with this theory. First, the plaintiffs in our case were held pursuant to a facially valid court order, whereas Armstrong was held on a warrant. "In Indiana, the sheriff's department (which administers the jail) is ... the entity charged with taking those arrested on both civil warrants and criminal warrants to court."
Second, there is considerable evidence that, whatever the defects of the sheriff's policies, they were successful in getting some complaints to the DTC staff. In making their case against Knoebel and Seybold, the plaintiffs point to many letters that made it into DTC case files from the in-house mail system. This suggests that the sheriff's deputies were transmitting some letters from those in custody to the court. Even if the sheriff's informal policies were flawed, those inefficiencies did not cause the plaintiffs' extended incarcerations and fall short of the "policy or custom of refusing to accept complaint forms" at issue in
Armstrong.
We can assume that the Clark County DTC's imposition of extended jail "sanctions" without proper hearings ran afoul of both state and federal law. None of the defendants before us, however, violated federal due process norms.
III
Finally, we consider the Fourth Amendment claims advanced by three plaintiffs: Michael Campbell, Brandelyn Taylor, and Amy Bennett. All three were arrested by Knoebel and Snelling after warrants were issued for violations of DTC rules. The three arrests follow a similar pattern. In each case, Judge Jacobi or another presiding judge issued an arrest warrant for failure to appear at a DTC hearing or drug test. Rather than waiting for local or county police to execute the warrant, Knoebel and Snelling set out in an unmarked county vehicle and tracked down each participant. Both wore badges and carried guns, and in the arrest of Taylor, Snelling yelled *845 "Clarksville Police" as he approached. Snelling then handcuffed each participant and brought him or her back to the court. The defendants dispute some of these details, but for the purpose of summary judgment they concede that we must accept the plaintiffs' version of events.
Where, as here, the defendants have conceded that a seizure occurred, the only question is whether the "seizure was unreasonable."
Dunn v. City of Elgin
,
Everyone agrees that Knoebel and Snelling lacked any semblance of state-law authority to arrest DTC participants. But, as
Virginia v. Moore,
That is not to say that all was well from a broader point of view. The extent to which Knoebel and Snelling exceeded their jurisdiction is quite troubling. Snelling was a bailiff whose arrest powers did not extend past the courthouse doors, and Judge Jacobi testified that he told Snelling not to arrest people. Knoebel had no conceivable basis for arrest authority, though in fairness she did not personally handcuff any participants. Both defendants misleadingly brought with them indicia of authority-badges, guns, and in one case a call of "police"-when they had no actual authority. But these are all matters of state law: no one argues that any other aspects of the arrest would offend the Fourth Amendment. The warrants were valid, no excessive force was used, and each plaintiff was promptly taken to the DTC. This does not add up to a Fourth Amendment violation.
IV
We have no doubt that the plaintiffs' constitutional rights were violated during their time as participants in the Clark County DTC. But that is not the question before us. It is whether any of the four defendants can be held liable for those constitutional injuries. The plaintiffs cannot overcome the barriers to recovery against these four defendants. We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Destiny HOFFMAN, Et Al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Susan KNOEBEL, Et Al., Defendants-Appellees.
- Cited By
- 22 cases
- Status
- Published