Eighth Amendment Claims in Prison Suicide Litigation

Facts of the Case

In April 2011, Brandon Palakovic, began serving a 16–48-month sentence for burglary at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill (SCI Camp Hill), Pennsylvania. During a mental health screening, Mr. Palakovic informed SCI Camp Hill mental health staff that he had previously attempted suicide and he reported active suicidal thoughts, including plans on how to kill himself. Diagnosed with an impulse control disorder, alcohol dependence, and anti-social personality disorder, he was placed on the mental health roster, identified as a “suicide behavior risk,” and assigned the lowest possible stability rating offered by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC).

In June 2011, Mr. Palakovic was transferred to SCI Cresson. While there, he continued to show signs of depression, including suicidal thoughts. Over his 13-month incarceration at SCI Cresson, a comprehensive suicide risk assessment was not completed. Despite requesting individual therapy and reporting a poor response to his prescribed antidepressant, he did not receive individual therapy or medication management appointments. He served multiple “30-day stints” in solitary confinement at the Restricted Housing Unit (RHU), which consisted of 23 hours of isolation per day in a 100-square-foot cell, one hour of outdoor exercise in a cage, no phone calls, and minimal outside visibility.

During Mr. Palakovic's incarceration, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigation into allegations of Eighth Amendment violations at SCI Cresson. The alleged violations included that SCI Cresson provided prisoners with inadequate mental health care, failed to protect them from harm, and placed them in isolation for prolonged periods. On June 16, 2012, before the completion of the DOJ investigation, Mr. Palakovic committed suicide while in solitary confinement.

On July 16, 2014, Mr. Palakovic's parents filed a five-count civil rights complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania naming several staff at SCI Cresson. The Palakovics presented Eighth Amendment claims alleging that all named defendants were deliberately indifferent to the inhumane conditions their son suffered in solitary confinement and to his serious need for mental health care.

On June 26, 2015, the district court granted the defense's motion to dismiss the claim. The district court reasoned because the case involved a prisoner suicide, the Third Circuit Court of Appeal's “vulnerability to suicide” legal framework applied. This legal framework required the Palakovics to show that their son had a vulnerability to suicide that created a strong likelihood that he would harm himself; the defendants knew, or should have known, of this vulnerability; and the defendants were deliberately indifferent to this vulnerability. The district court concluded that the Palakovics' complaint was factually insufficient to support the three prongs of this framework and dismissed their complaint with leave to amend. In August 2015, the Palakovics filed an amended complaint, including four vulnerabilities to suicide claims and an Eighth Amendment “failure to train” claim against supervisory officials at SCI Cresson.

On February 22, 2016, the district court granted the defense's motion to dismiss the amended complaint citing factual insufficiency. The Palakovics declined the option to file a second amended complaint, and instead chose to appeal. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously vacated all the district court's dismissal orders and remanded the matter to the district court for further proceeding.

Ruling and Reasoning

The Third Circuit held that the district court erred by applying a vulnerability to suicide legal framework to the Palakovics' original complaint because this framework is only applicable in cases that seek to hold prison officials responsible for “failing to prevent a prison suicide.” By contrast, the Palakovics' initial Eighth Amendment claim sought to hold prison officials accountable for injuries Mr. Palakovic endured while alive and in solitary confinement.

In a unanimous opinion, Chief Judge Smith referenced the Third Circuit's recent decision in Williams v. Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, 848 F.3d 549 (3d Cir. 2017) to highlight the growing body of legal and scientific evidence that inmates placed in solitary confinement are at heightened risk for psychological damage, self-mutilation, and suicide. Given these known dangers of solitary confinement, combined with the factual allegations specified in the original complaint, the Third Circuit concluded that the Palakovics' claim of deliberate indifference to the inhumane conditions should have been allowed to proceed to discovery.

The Third Circuit further found that the Palakovics' claim that prison officials violated their son's constitutional rights by providing inadequate mental health care, and their amended claims involving vulnerability to suicide and failure to train were all sufficiently pleaded to warrant discovery. The court referenced several of the Palakovics' factual allegations to support their holdings:

• Mr. Palakovic was repeatedly subjected to solitary confinement despite prison policy warning that exposing mentally ill inmates to solitary confinement can increase their suicide risk.

• Mr. Palakovic's history of depression, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation with a plan made him vulnerable to suicide and created a “strong likelihood” he would engage in self-harm.

• The defendants knew, or should have known, his vulnerability to suicide; because mental health staff had given him the lowest possible stability rating offered in the Pennsylvania DOC, he was identified by the prison as a “suicide behavior risk,” and his history of suicide attempts were documented in the record.

• Despite Mr. Palakovic's receiving some mental health treatment, the cited defendants were deliberately indifferent to his vulnerability to suicide and serious need for mental health care, by allegedly refusing his reasonable requests for counseling and medication monitoring, while instead choosing to place him in solitary confinement.

• Prison supervisors allegedly failed to train and provide proper policies to help officials better assess and manage inmates with mental illness, and suicidal ideation.