California Appeals Court Revives Transsexual Inmate's Negligence Suit Against Prison Officials, but Rejects State Constitutional Claim

A transsexual former California state prison inmate, who claimed to have suffered repeated sexual assaults and beatings at the hands of two cellmates, should be allowed to pursue a negligence damage claim against prison officials, an appeals court ruled on November 14, but she was not entitled to pursue damages under the "cruel and unusual punishment" provision of the state constitution. The plaintiff’s demand for injunctive relief was properly denied, ruled the court, because by the time of her trial, she had been released on parole.  Giraldo v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 2008 Westlaw 4891584 (Cal. App. 1st Dist., Nov. 14, 2008).

Writing for the three judge panel of the California 1st District Court of Appeal, Judge James A. Richman found that although numerous courts in other states had ruled that a jailer has a duty under tort law to protect vulnerable prisoners from attack, there was no previous binding California precedent, which caused the trial court to dismiss the negligence claim.

As a result of the ruling, Alexis Giraldo, who was sent to Folsom State Prison on January 4, 2006, while serving time for a parole violation, will be given a trial of her charge that prison officials were negligent in failing to protect her from attacks by her cellmates. However, the court found, the California Constitution does not afford an individual right to sue for damages for violations of the cruel and unusual punishment provision, which can only be enforced through a suit for a court order to end unlawful punishment. A trial jury considered but rejected Giraldo’s claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

According to Judge Richman’s opinion, Giraldo self-identifies as a "male-to-female transgender person." When she was taken into custody at North Kern State Prison, she was evaluated for placement for the duration of her sentence. She was classified as a Level III inmate with 36 points, which gave her a "primary placement recommendation" to be placed at California Medical Facility or California Men’s Colony, institutions with experience in handling transsexual inmates, where they "are relatively safer... than at other state prisons." Despite this recommendation, she was sent to Folsom and put into general male population.

"Within a week of her assignment to FSP, an inmate employed as a lieutenant’s clerk requested that plaintiff be assigned as his cellmate," wrote Richman," which request was granted. Beginning almost immediately, and lasting through late January, the cellmate ‘sexually harassed, assaulted, raped and threatened’ plaintiff on a daily basis." Then this first cellmate introduced plaintiff to "his friend, another inmate, who in late January requested that plaintiff be transferred to his cell, which request was also granted." Just weeks later, this second inmate "began raping and beating her, again daily." Although Giraldo reported this abuse to prison officials and begged to be transferred to a different cell, her requests were ignored for several weeks.

Finally, after suffering a rape and attack with a box-cutter by her cellmate on March 12, 2006, she was moved to "segregated housing." This was just days after she had told a correctional counselor about the abuse to which she was being subjected, and pleaded to be moved to a different cell, pointing out that her original classification meant she was not supposed to have been assigned to Folsom. The counselor’s reaction was to tell her to be "tough and strong," and the counselor discouraged her from taking any further action, returning her to the cell. Just two days before the final incident, she had also spoken with a medical employee, who noted the conversation in her file but took no steps to report the matter to authorities, because "I don’t want to get him into trouble."

Giraldo was moved to a unit for psychologically troubled inmates, but lived in constant fear that she might be sent back to general population and placed with another abusive cellmate. She was released on parole after filing her lawsuit, shortly before the trial of her claims was to take place.

The state argued that there was no general duty under tort law for prison officials to protect inmates from attacks by other inmates. Under the federal constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that prison officials may be liable for damages for deliberate indifference to the likelihood that a transsexual inmate might be assaulted by other inmates, thus recognizing a federal constitutional tort claim, but no similar ruling has been made under the comparable provision of the California Constitution. The court was unwilling to recognize such a claim in this case, pointing out that California has sharply limited the right of individuals to sue for damages for violation of state constitutional rights, especially when damages might be available through alternative, non-constitutional theories, such as common law tort liability.

In this case, Richman noted with some surprise that California courts had never previously addressed the question whether the state’s tort law recognized a "special relationship" between inmates and jailers on which to ground a duty to protect. Generally, tort law imposes no duty on an individual to protect another individual from harm, but such a duty can be found if there is a special relationship such that the law will impose responsibility on an individual for the protection of another. Such a special relationship can be found if an individual has control over the environment of the other, and the other is particularly vulnerable to harm.

The court found that the situation of an inmate fit squarely within this description, which can be found in decisions by the courts of many other states and has been described in leading torts treatises by respected scholars. An inmate has no control over his environment, which is controlled by the jailer, and is vulnerable because he is not allowed to have weapons or any lawful means to protect himself against attack within the prison.

To back up its ruling, the court noted two recently enacted statutes, the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, which was intended to "increase the accountability of prison officials who fail to detect, prevent, reduce, and punish prison rape," and the California Sexual Abuse in Detention Elimination Act, passed in 2005 in response to findings about sexual abuse in the state prison system. Responding to the state law, the Corrections Department had developed a Prison Rape Elimination Policy, set out in a manual "detailing procedures for preventing, detecting, responding to, investigating, or tracking sexual abuse in CDCR facilities."

Pointing out that "the most important consideration in establishing duty is foreseeability," Richman wrote, "It is manifestly foreseeable that an inmate may be at risk of harm, as the recently enacted [laws] show, recognizing the serious problem presented by sexual abuse in the prison environment. As also noted, important factors in determining whether a relationship is ‘special’ include vulnerability and dependence. Prisoners are vulnerable. And dependent. Moreover, the relationship between them is protective by nature, such that the jailer has control over the prisoner, who is deprived of the normal opportunity to protect himself from harm inflicted by others. This, we conclude, is the epitome of a special relationship, imposing a duty of care on a jailer owed to a prisoner, and we today add California to the list of jurisdictions recognizing a special relationship between jailer and prisoner."

The area of state tort liability of prison officials for sexual abuse in prisons has not been well developed, probably due in part to the tendency of abused prisoners to sue in the federal courts under the 8th Amendment, where, unfortunately, the courts have held that negligence by prison officials is not sufficient to impose liability. Only "deliberate indifference" to the fate of a prisoner may result in liability in a federal case. In light of this ruling, and the numerous state court rulings cited by the court, it seems that a state tort suit is likely to be more productive.

However, because the trial court had dismissed the negligence claim, there has not been a trial on the question of which of the named defendants should be held liable for negligence in connection with Giraldo’s suffering. On sending the case back to the San Francisco Superior Court for trial, Judge Richman wrote, "Who comes within the category of jailer is not before us, nor is the question of what law pertains to non-jailer defendants – and those questions could not be decided on this record in any event." So a major issue at trial would be whether each of the named defendants was in a "special relationship" of inmate and jailer with Giraldo, and whether any or all of those violated their duty to protect her from harm.

Since Giraldo was released on parole before the trial, the state might take the prudential step of offering Giraldo a monetary settlement of her claim rather than have to go through a trial at which each of the named defendants would have to testify, especially considering the specific allegations of callous disregard on the part of some of them recited by the court.

Comments

[m Andrea]

There appears to be an awful lot of men raping and generally intimidating their physically smaller cellmates while in prison; this problem is not limited to transfolk.

Has the correctional industry never considered matching prospective cellmates according to physical ability and temperment???