The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has partially reversed a lower court’s decision in a case brought by the estate of Kongchi Justin Thao, who died by suicide while detained in the Grady County Law Enforcement Center in Oklahoma. The court upheld the lower court’s decision on the excessive force claim but sent the case back for further review on the claim of inadequate training, specifically regarding suicide prevention.
The Incident and the Lawsuit
Kongchi Justin Thao, awaiting transfer to a California jail, was held overnight at the Grady County facility in November 2017. During his time there, Mr. Thao was placed in a holding pod with other inmates. According to court documents, he attempted to leave the pod and was subsequently tased by a detention officer. He was then placed in a shower cell, known as Cell 126, where he repeatedly expressed a desire to die and threatened self-harm. He was later found unconscious, hanging from the cell door.
Mr. Thao’s brother, Xouchi Jonathan Thao, as the administrator of his estate, filed a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging violations of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit named the Grady County Criminal Justice Authority (GCCJA) and several individual defendants. The claims against the individual defendants were later dropped, leaving the estate’s claims against GCCJA for excessive force and deliberate indifference to Mr. Thao’s serious medical needs. The district court granted summary judgment to GCCJA, concluding that a reasonable juror could not find the county was deliberately indifferent to the risk of its officers using excessive force or failing to train its officers to provide adequate medical care.
The Court’s Decision: Excessive Force Affirmed
The Tenth Circuit upheld the district court’s decision regarding the excessive force claim. The Estate argued that the GCCJA’s Use of Force policy was unconstitutional. The policy stated that a taser “will not be deployed on a handcuffed individual without articulable extenuating circumstances.” The court found that this policy was not facially unconstitutional. The court explained that the policy itself does not direct employees to inflict constitutional injuries. Instead, the policy appears to sanction the use of force only when necessary. Since the Estate’s claim was based on the GCCJA’s Use of Force policy, the court’s focus was on whether the policy itself was unconstitutional.
The Court’s Decision: Failure to Train Reversed
However, the appeals court reversed the lower court’s decision on the claim of inadequate training. The Estate claimed that GCCJA failed to adequately train its officers on identifying and assessing inmates at risk of suicide. The Tenth Circuit found that there were disputed issues of material fact regarding the training detention officers received concerning how to detect inmate suicide risks.
The court noted that while GCCJA presented evidence of some training, the evidence was not conclusive. The court highlighted testimony from Warden James Gerlach, representing GCCJA, suggesting that the facility’s formal policies and procedures included no formal training on identifying suicidality in housed inmates at the time of Mr. Thao’s death. Warden Gerlach testified that, at the time of Mr. Thao’s death, the “only” training detention officers would have received on identifying mental health problems were the materials contained in the “policies and procedures and their training manual.” The court also pointed out that the Oklahoma state jail standards, which detention officers must review, require pre-housing assessment for medical and psychological issues but are silent on the detection of suicide risks in a housed inmate.
The court found that a reasonable juror could conclude that GCCJA provided its officers no formalized training on how to identify suicidal inmates. The appeals court noted that Officer Henneman testified that he had not received any training on how to identify someone having a mental health episode, despite being present when Mr. Thao was expressing a desire to die. The court determined that a reasonable juror could find that knowledge on how to identify a mental health crisis arbitrarily varied from one officer to the next because the facility had not implemented a formal and mandatory training for all officers. The court, therefore, sent the case back to the district court to determine whether an individual officer violated Mr. Thao’s rights.
What Happens Next?
The case will now return to the district court for further proceedings. The district court will need to consider whether any individual officer violated Mr. Thao’s right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment by acting with deliberate indifference toward his serious medical needs during his time at the facility.