CA7: Deliberate indifference for jail suicide stated claim

The estate of an Algerian national held in immigration detention who committed suicide stated a claim for deliberate indifference and Fourth Amendment unreasonableness in a 1983 case. Dismissal of 1983 case and dismissal of supplemental claims reversed. Belbachir v. County of McHenry, 726 F.3d 975 (7th Cir. 2013):

We begin with deliberate indifference and defendant Frederick—a licensed clinical social worker employed by Centegra—noting first that the application of the standard of deliberate indifference varies with circumstances, as this case illustrates. Had Belbachir been a known violent criminal, security needs might have made it difficult for the guards and medical personnel to provide her with the same level of protection, including protection from herself, as would be possible in a different environment. If the risk of suicide is enhanced by isolation, nevertheless regard for the safety of other prisoners may preclude allowing a prisoner to have a cellmate. But this is not such a case.

The suicide rate in jails has fallen a great deal in recent years; it was estimated to be 9 times the rate in the general population in 1988 and “only” 3 times that rate in 2005. Lindsay M. Hayes, National Study of Jail Suicide: 20 Years Later 46 (National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, April 2010). Yet even the lower ratio is frighteningly high. And the risk of a jail suicide is concentrated in the first week of detention—48 percent of jail suicides occur then. Christopher J. Mumola, Suicide and Homicide in State Prisons and Local Jails 8 (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Aug. 2005). Belbachir killed herself on the eighth day.

She was not a criminal and was no danger to any person in the jail, whether staff member, detainee, or visitor. She was an obvious suicide risk who should have been hospitalized or at least placed on suicide watch, during which a guard would have glanced into her cell every 10 minutes. There are more elaborate forms of suicide watch (see “Suicide Watch,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Suicide_watch (visited Aug. 8, 2013))—for it needn’t take 10 minutes to kill oneself. But there is no contention that the jail’s method of suicide watch was inadequate, let alone constitutionally deficient.

We don’t have to recite the depressing facts that culminated in her strangling herself with her socks. It is enough simply to reproduce at the end of this opinion the report of the intake screening by a guard and the mental health progress notes by defendant Frederick—the only potentially culpable Centegra employee, as we’ll see.

The guard who filled out the intake report changed Belbachir’s answer “yes” to the question “Are you currently extremely depressed or feeling suicidal?” to “no.” He stated in his deposition that he had simply made a mistake initially, in circling “yes” when he meant “no.” Maybe so, but a jury would not have to believe him. It might find that he’d been afraid of getting into trouble by having answered “yes” but then having failed to place Belbachir on suicide watch, and so he changed “yes” to “no.” There is conflicting evidence on when he changed it. He is not, however, a defendant.