Page 1
Ninth Circuit:
L.A. County Might Be Liable for Suicide of Unwatched Inmate
Panel Says Videotape Reveals 26 ‘Constitutionally Deficient’ Checks of Cells in Which Mentally Impaired Inmates, Including the Plaintiff’s Son, Were Placed, Declaring That This Is Sufficient to Reflect a ‘Custom and Practice’
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated a lawsuit against the County of Los Angeles and its Sheriff’s Department alleging that guards at the Twin Towers jail facility routinely perform slipshod checks of the cells of mentally ill inmates, resulting in what the Coroner’s Office declared to be the suicide of the plaintiff’s son who ingested more than three times a lethal dose of an antipsychotic prescription medication.
Reversing a July 18, 2023 summary judgment awarded the county defendants by District Court Judge Wesley L. Hsu of the Central District of California, a three-judge panel remanded the case “for consideration consistent with this decision.” The language of the memorandum opinion, filed Thursday, accords little latitude to the District Court, clearly sending the message that the record, as it exists, points to liability.
Liability on the part of a local governmental entity for a civil rights violation can be established, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in Monell v. Department of Social Services, by showing that a breach of federal constitutional or statutory law was pursuant to a custom or practice.
Peter Woods Nyarecha, suing on behalf of himself and the estate of his son, Lewis Nyarecha, alleged in his complaint that the defendants engaged in “a custom and practice of callous and reckless disregard for the health and safety of mentally ill inmates” and “knowingly maintained, ratified, enforced and applied” that custom and practice.
Videotape of Checks
But Hsu treated a videotape showing checks of cells of inmates during a 13-hour period preceding the June 6, 2018 discovery of the dead body of arrestee Lewis Nyarecha, 22, as representing a single instance of conduct, not illuminating what the norm is, saying:
“There is a lack of evidence in the record…showing similarly inadequate safety checks at other times.”
Disagreeing, the Ninth Circuit opinion declares:
“The fact that the constitutionally inadequate checks occurred in quick succession over a relatively short period of time does not bar Monell liability.”
County Defendants’ Argument
The defendants/appellees argued in their brief on appeal:
“Plaintiffs acknowledge well-settled law holding that municipal liability cannot be based on isolated incidents, but rather requires evidence of a longstanding, pervasive, well-settled custom or practice. Yet, their only evidence of the alleged custom or practice of inadequate checks is video of a few deputies checking a few jail cells over the course of a single night. That evidence comes nowhere near meeting the bar for establishing municipal liability—and plaintiffs do not cite a single case so much as suggesting otherwise.”
The plaintiffs/appellants responded in their reply brief that “video footage shows a long series of deputies conducting their safety checks by walking by each cell without meaningfully investigating whether the inmates inside were breathing, in distress or otherwise alive,” maintaining:
“The evidence of a pattern of substandard safety checks is ample, strong and unequivocal. From this evidence, genuine issues of material fact have been established that there existed a custom and practice at the Twin Towers Facility, or certainly at the subject cell block/unit within that facility, of substandard safety checks.”
Ninth Circuit’s View
The Ninth Circuit panel—comprised of Circuit Judges Michelle T. Friedland and Roopali Desai, joined by District Court Judge Karen E. Schreier of the District of South Dakota, sitting by designation—agreed with the plaintiffs, saying:
“[T]he record here shows that twenty-six different safety checks each of a seven-cell area, performed by at least six officers working two different shifts, were all constitutionally deficient. During those checks, none of the officers stopped outside of Nyarecha’s cell or the cells of the other detained inmates. Instead, the officers consistently completed their checks of Nyarecha’s seven-cell area in under twenty seconds, without breaking stride or pausing to look into the cells.”
The judges continued:
“And at no point did any officer attempt to elicit a response from Nyarecha or any other inmate. Moreover, the officers each completed their checks independently, and completed them in the exact same deficient manner, indicating that the behavior exhibited during the twenty-six checks is indeed the norm. It is highly unlikely such consistency would have been seen if this were not the de facto policy.”
Lewis Nyarecha had been arrested on suspicion of an attempted robbery.
The case is Nyarecha v. County of Los Angeles, 23-55773.
Representing the plaintiffs on appeal was Long Beach attorney Arnoldo Casillas. Acting for the county defendants were Rickey Ivie of the firm of the downtown Los Angeles firm of Ivie McNeill Wyatt Purcell & Diggs and Alana H. Rotter of the mid-Wilshire appellate-law firm of Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland LLP.
Copyright 2024, Metropolitan News Company