On June 21, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to pay $10,000 to transgender prisoner Grace Pinson for her claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) that a guard at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Tucson negligently failed to protect her from attempted rape by a fellow prisoner. The Court earlier awarded Pinson, identified in court documents as Jeremy, another $243 for self-inflicted cuts with a razor that the same guard failed to intercept when he had the chance.

Pinson, 38, was serving an 18-year term for embezzlement in 2005 when she mailed a threat to kill then-Pres. George W. Bush (R), earning another 15-year term when she was convicted the following year. Since then, she has become an experienced jailhouse lawyer who has filed numerous cases across the country while confined at various BOP facilities; PLN has reported some of those cases. [See, e.g., PLN, Dec. 2020, p.58.] She was also briefly a PLN contributing writer.

A former gang member who previously identified as a homosexual male, Pinson is now a transgender woman, for which she has been assaulted by other prisoners. She also suffers from serious mental health issues, with a history of suicidal ideation and self-directed violence—including over 100 suicide risk assessments and placement on suicide watch over 40 times, spending most of her incarceration as a result in a BOP Special Housing Unit (SHU).

While in SHU at USP-Tucson in 2020, Pinson obtained a razor and proceeded to cut herself with it repeatedly. She later filed suit under FTCA, blaming SHU guard Miguel Vasquez for negligently letting her get the razor blade. The Court conducted a four-day bench trial, at which witnesses testified and Penson represented herself. Her former cellmate, Rene Ellis Jr., said that he possessed “a lot of contraband,” including “multiple razors,” and Vasquez admitted passing items between SHU prisoners, including an envelope with coffee and stamps passed from Ellis to Pinson in September 2020. The envelope also contained a razor, but Vasquez claimed he didn’t see it.

That same day, Pinson reported suicidal thoughts to psychologist Dr. Samantha Licata, who discounted the statements as unrealistic and grandiose. But the next day, Pinson used the blade to cut herself 243 times. Dr. Licata noted that many of the cuts were less than an inch and all were superficial, not life-threatening, bleeding nor requiring stitches. As a result, she determined that Pinson’s self-harm was not suicidal but driven by frustration over continued placement in SHU. Pinson simply testified that she cut herself to deal with the stress, calling it a “maladaptive coping mechanism.”

The Government did not dispute that Vasquez owed Pinson a duty of care to protect her from unreasonable risk of harm. The Court then found that Vazquez breached this duty when he handed Pinson “an envelope containing a prohibited razor.” Pinson’s own actions in harming herself did not relieve the Government of liability under Arizona common law. So at the trial’s conclusion, judgment was entered in Penson’s favor on March 28, 2024. She was awarded damages equal to $1.00 per cut, for a total of $243.00, because the cuts were superficial, and Pinson did not request medical care nor incur any medical expenses or lost wages. Her “mental state appeared relatively unchanged,” the Court also noted. See: Pinson v. United States, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57491 (D. Ariz.).

Reconsideration

Normally that would have closed the case. But Pinson moved for reconsideration of the Court’s dismissal of another negligence claim—one based on the absence of a functioning alarm in the SHU cell she shared with Ricki Makhimetas. That caused a delayed response from staffers when Pinson was almost raped by her fellow prisoner.

Pinson had alleged in her complaint that she warned Vazquez how Makhimetas had threatened to rape her. But the guard did nothing. Makhimetas attempted to make good on the threat, leaving Pinson with physical and emotional injuries, including nasal fractures, bruising, swelling, bleeding and PTSD.

The Court initially dismissed the claim under the discretionary function exception to FTCA, which absolves the government of liability if an employee was not performing a “mandatory function.” Pinson had attempted during discovery to get documentation that maintaining functional alarms was a mandatory duty. But BOP dragged its feet and didn’t provide the document until just before trial. The Court agreed to reconsider its earlier dismissal in light of the newly discovered document, after which it determined that the guard negligently breached a mandatory duty to ensure the alarm was functioning in Pinson’s cell, and that this was the proximate cause of her injuries.

After that, Pinson was awarded additional damages for her physical injuries, pain and suffering, plus emotional distress. But she was denied any damages for the attempted sexual assault because the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, precludes recovery absent any sexual contact. Judgment was therefore entered for an additional $10,000. See: Pinson v. United States, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109591 (D. Ariz.).

Pinson should be commended for achieving this on her own. As the Court noted, she “is an experienced pro se litigant who skillfully presented testimony and evidence at the trial in this matter.”   

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