Denise COLLINS, Individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of Ricky Collins, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CAPTAIN DEBORAH SEEMAN, Sergeant Julie Beethem, Correctional Officer Steve Shuck, Correctional Officer Sam Bucalo, and any other Correctional Officers presently unknown responsible for Ricky Collins‘s supervision and care, jointly and severally, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 05-1309
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
September 11, 2006
462 F.3d 757
Mary E. Welsh (argued), Office of the Attorney General Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.
SYKES, Circuit Judge.
Ricky Collins committed suicide in his prison cell at the Sheridan Correctional Center in Sheridan, Illinois. Approximately fifty-five minutes before the suicide was discovered, Collins told a correctional officer that he wanted to see the prison crisis counselor because he was feeling suicidal. The officer relayed the request up the chain of command, but as it was passed along, the information that Collins was feeling suicidal was apparently dropped and the message was transmitted as a generic request to see the crisis counselor. In the meantime, however, the officer returned to Collins‘s cell and told him the counselor had been called and would respond as soon as she could. Collins told the officer that he was all right and could wait until the counselor arrived. Correctional officers checked on Collins twice more in the intervening thirty minutes and nothing was amiss. At some point before the next cell check—about twenty minutes after the last—Collins hanged himself in his cell using a bed sheet.
Collins‘s mother, Denise Collins, for herself and on behalf of her son‘s estate, brought this action under
I. Discussion
On September 27, 2001, at 5:55 p.m., Collins was in his cell at the Sheridan Correctional Center, where he was serving a five-year sentence for an Illinois conviction for aggravated battery. As Correctional Officer Steven Shuck made his rounds, he observed Collins staring at the wall and asked if Collins was feeling well. Collins responded that he wanted to see the prison crisis counselor. When Shuck asked why, Collins responded that he was “feeling suicidal.” The request for the crisis counselor was immediately passed up the chain of command, first from Officer Shuck to the control room, where the message was called in to Captain Deborah Seeman, the Shift Commander. Although Officer Shuck remembers relaying the information that Collins was “feeling suicidal,” this part of the message was apparently left out of the exchange of information once it passed through the control room; the message transmitted from this point forward was only that Collins had requested a meeting with the crisis counselor.
Captain Seeman instructed the control room officer to contact Sergeant Julie Beethem, the crisis counselor on duty at the time. Sergeant Beethem was called, but she was at that moment in the process of escorting a group of 200 inmates from the gym back to their cells. At 6:10 p.m., fifteen minutes after Collins had made the request, Beethem received the message that Collins had asked to see her.
Also at 6:10 p.m., Officer Shuck returned to Collins‘s cell and informed him that Sergeant Beethem had been called and would be there as soon as she was finished escorting prisoners. Collins responded that he was all right and could wait until Beethem arrived. Collins was not placed on formal suicide watch at this time because prison policy provided that suicide watches are instituted after the prisoner has been evaluated by a crisis counselor and the counselor makes a recommendation to the “crisis team leader” that the procedure is necessary.
When Bucalo returned to the control center from this cell inspection at approximately 6:35 p.m., Captain Seeman was there and instructed officers to keep an eye on Collins until the counselor arrived. Fifteen minutes after this meeting, at 6:50 p.m., Bucalo returned to Collins‘s cell and found him hanging from a bed sheet tied to a ceiling pipe. At the time Collins‘s body was discovered, Sergeant Beethem was in the health care unit, where she had “just opened” Collins‘s file to prepare for their meeting. Collins died from hanging, but he also had self-inflicted abrasions on his left wrist that were apparently made by a piece of broken glass taken from his own eyeglasses.
The third amended complaint in this case alleged that Seeman, Bucalo, Shuck, and Beethem, sued in their individual capacities, acted with deliberate indifference to a known risk of suicide, contrary to Collins‘s rights under the Eighth Amendment. The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the correctional officers. The court first found that the plaintiff had failed to properly respond to the defendants’ factual submissions as required by local rule, thereby rendering the defendants’ factual assertions uncontested.1 On the merits, the court held that each defendant had acted in a reasonable manner in response to Collins‘s request to see the counselor, and none had acted with the deliberate indifference necessary to establish Eighth Amendment liability pursuant to
II. Discussion
Our review of the district court‘s decision to grant summary judgment to the defendants is de novo. Matos ex. rel. Matos v. O‘Sullivan, 335 F.3d 553, 556 (7th Cir.2003). A
With respect to the first showing, “it is not enough that there was a danger of which a prison official should have been aware,” rather, “the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference.” Estate of Novack, 226 F.3d at 529 (emphasis added). In other words, the defendant must be cognizant of the significant likelihood that an inmate may imminently seek to take his own life. Id.; Sanville, 266 F.3d at 737 (issue is whether the defendant was subjectively “aware of the substantial risk that [the deceased prisoner] might take his own life“). Liability cannot attach where “the defendants simply were not alerted to the likelihood that [the prisoner] was a genuine suicide risk.” Boncher ex rel. Boncher v. Brown County, 272 F.3d 484, 488 (7th Cir.2001).
The requirement of subjective awareness of a suicide risk is dispositive as to defendants Seeman, Bucalo, and Beethem. With respect to these defendants, the record is devoid of any evidence from which it could be inferred that they were alerted to the likelihood that Collins was at substantial risk for committing suicide. These defendants were made aware that Collins had requested to see the crisis counselor, but they were not informed of the reason for the request. The undisputed facts of record indicate that inmates often request meetings with crisis counselors for reasons both serious and mundane, and sometimes make such requests as a means of manipulating prison staff. Thus, a request to see a crisis counselor, standing alone, is not sufficient to put a defendant on notice that an inmate poses a substantial and imminent risk of suicide.2
Officer Shuck is in a different position because Collins specifically told him that he was feeling suicidal. But it is undisputed that Officer Shuck immediately notified the control room of Collins‘s request to see the crisis counselor and then returned to Collins‘s cell and informed him that the counselor had been called and would be there as soon as possible. Collins responded that he would be all right until the counselor arrived. Accordingly, assuming Shuck had a subjective awareness of an “imminent” threat to Collins‘s safety at 5:50 p.m., that threat had substantially abated fifteen minutes later when Collins assured Shuck he would be all right until the counselor arrived.
We agree with the district court that there is no evidence from which a jury could infer that Officer Shuck recklessly or intentionally disregarded a known risk of suicide. To the contrary, the evidence properly of record demonstrates that Officer Shuck immediately informed the control room that Collins had requested the assistance of a crisis counselor and was “feeling suicidal.” Upon relaying the request, Shuck did not take up other duties or sit idle, but returned to Collins‘s cell and informed Collins that the counselor had been called and would be there as soon as possible. Shuck received an assurance from Collins that he would be all right and could wait until the counselor arrived. At some point within the next fifteen to twenty minutes, Officer Shuck returned to Collins‘s cell a third time to make certain that nothing was wrong. At this point, Officer Bucalo assumed responsibility for monitoring Collins, and he did so, within ten minutes of Shuck‘s last cell check.
The deliberate indifference standard imposes a “high hurdle” for a plaintiff to overcome. Peate v. McCann, 294 F.3d 879, 882 (7th Cir.2002). Although Collins initially informed Officer Shuck that he was feeling suicidal, the undisputed evidence establishes that just a few minutes later he told the officer he would be all right until the crisis counselor arrived. After relaying Collins‘s request for the crisis counselor, Shuck continued to monitor Collins until Officer Bucalo took over. There is nothing in this record to support an inference that Shuck intentionally disregarded a known, imminent suicide risk.
AFFIRMED.