Ninth Circuit: No Qualified Immunity for California Jail Nurse Who Cleared Detainee for Release Just Before His Suicide
by Douglas Ankney
On May 3, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to Los Angeles County Jail nurse Trieste Turner in a civil rights claim brought after she cleared a detainee for release and he committed suicide. Turner argued against the denial since Scott Gilbert did not kill himself until after he was released. But the Court held that the timing of his suicide was of no consequence in determining whether she violated his civil rights in a way that left him more vulnerable to it.
Gilbert was “bipolar and off his medications” when he “was arrested for disruptive behavior and eventually transferred to the County Jail’s mental health unit,” as the federal court for the Central District of California later recalled. During the 63 hours he was held, several clinicians evaluated him—but not a psychiatrist. He got no medication either. Then when no charges were filed against him, he could not be released without clearance from a clinician.
That was Turner, who found no reason to keep him on a mental-health hold. But her decision to clear him for release was based “exclusively on his verbal representations of his mental state,” the district court recalled. Unsurprisingly, those representations turned out not to be reliable; within 20 hours after leaving the jail, Gilbert climbed a parking structure and jumped, sustaining injuries that eventually killed him. His parents, Leslie and Greg Gilbert, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, accusing Turner of deliberate indifference to Gilbert’s medical needs in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights. Turner moved to dismiss, claiming QI. When the district court denied her motion, she appealed.
At the Ninth Circuit, Turner argued that she owed Gilbert no duty of care because she encountered him “while he was in the process of being evaluated for release from custody,” and his fatal injury didn’t occur until “after he had left custody.” But the Court called that theory “unavailing.” The Fourteenth Amendment “prohibits prison officials from displaying ‘deliberate indifference’ to the serious medical needs of detainees,” as held in Castro v. Cty. of Los Angeles, 833 F.3d 1060 (9th Cir. 2016). Moreover, if a prison official “is aware of a present ‘substantial risk to [an inmate’s] health,’ including a psychiatric risk, she may not simply ‘decline to act upon this knowledge,’” as held in Gibson v. Cty. of Washoe, Nev., 290 F.3d 1175 (9th Cir. 2002).
Under Clouthier v. Cty. of Contra Costa, 591 F.3d 1232 (9th Cir. 2010), the Court said, “the ‘deliberate indifference’ standard applies to claims that correctional facility officials failed to address the medical needs of pretrial detainees.” That doesn’t make public employees liable in every such situation; they are entitled to QI unless “they violated a federal statutory or constitutional right” that was also “clearly established at the time,” the Court recalled, pointing to District of Columbia v. Westby, 583 U.S. 48 (2018). “Under this standard,” the Court continued, “it is ‘well settled that prison officials violate the Constitution when they choose a course of treatment that is medically unacceptable under … the circumstances,’” per Gordon v. Cty. of Orange, 6 F.4th 961 (9th Cir. 2021).
In this case, Gilbert was still in custody when Turner evaluated him—in fact, “the point of Turner’s evaluation was to determine whether Gilbert was medically fit for release,” the Court noted. True, he died after leaving custody, which “raises causation issues that plaintiffs will need to overcome,” the Court continued. “But no authority indicates that Turner for that reason lacked any duty” to provide Gilbert acceptable medical care “while he was still detained.” Accordingly, denial of QI to Turner was affirmed. See: Gilbert v. Turner, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 10826 (9th Cir. 2024).
The case was returned to the district court, where it is set for trial beginning on February 24, 2025. PLN will update developments as they are available. Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Melanie Partow of the University of California at Irvine Civil Rights Litigation Clinic, John C. Washington and Paul L. Hoffman of Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman and Zeldes LLP in Los Angeles, and John C. Burton with the Law Offices of John Burton in Pasadena. See: Gilbert v. Turner, USDC (C.D. Cal.), Case No. 2:19-cv-08599.
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login