Lower Courts Must Adhere to Standards When Determining Whether to Appoint Counsel to Incarcerated Plaintiffs
In Eagan v. Dempsey, 987 F.3d 667 (7th Cir. 2021), the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated and remanded a U.S. district court’s decision to deny the claimant’s motions for recruitment of counsel for an Eighth Amendment claim against his prison physician. The court affirmed the district court’s decision to deny the claimant’s motions for appointment of counsel for his Eighth Amendment claims against prison officers. In justifying the decision against the prison physician, the Seventh Circuit relied on an earlier case in the circuit in which it was established that an Eighth Amendment case against a physician would require sophisticated legal maneuvers that warrant the appointment of an attorney.
Facts of the Case
On November 30, 2014, Shawn Eagan, then incarcerated at Pontiac Correctional Center (Pontiac) in Illinois, repeatedly banged his head to quiet auditory hallucinations while under suicide watch. Mr. Eagan has psychiatric diagnoses of schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder. His head wound was initially treated with wound treatment alone. After continued head banging, he received a forced injection of haloperidol and diphenhydramine. Mr. Eagan reported that, after this injection, he experienced dystonic symptoms (stiffness). His requests for treatment of this symptom were ignored, including a request for acetaminophen to treat the associated pain. He added that this experience left him with residual jaw soreness and popping.
From July 2015 to March 2017, Mr. Eagan filed seven motions for court-appointed counsel, citing the complexity of his case; the handicap of his serious mental illness; his eighth-grade education; his repeated, documented, unsuccessful efforts to obtain counsel; and his dependence on a fellow inmate acting as a “jailhouse lawyer.” In later filings, he cited his transfer from Pontiac to a different facility that did not provide e-filing, legal envelopes, or consistent law library access. The district court denied all of Mr. Eagan’s requests for counsel. In their first denial, the court stated that Mr. Eagan had not provided records of his efforts to obtain counsel even though he had. In another denial, the court stated that his serious mental illness could not have been much of a handicap because his filings were clear enough, ignoring his stated reliance on a jailhouse lawyer. In a later denial, the court stated that Mr. Eagan’s case was not too complex for him to litigate on his own.
While requesting the services of counsel, Mr. Eagan submitted requests to preserve evidence from Pontiac. He also submitted motions to court regarding the defendants: for affidavits and to compel interrogatories and discovery. In addition, he moved for status updates and for memoranda opposing summary judgment. The district court denied his request to preserve evidence because the defendants denied that any existed. In Mr. Eagan’s motion after his transfer from Pontiac, he discussed the challenges of litigating his case from a location different from the facility where the incident in question occurred. The court gave no comment on this.
Ultimately, the district court granted the defendants’ motions for summary judgment, holding that Mr. Eagan had “failed to identify any admissible evidence showing that any defendant displayed deliberate indifference toward his serious mental health or medical needs or any defendant failed to protect him” (Eagan, p 681). They also stated that Michael Dempsey, the treating physician, was entitled to summary judgment because Mr. Eagan did not demonstrate that he experienced any ensuing serious medical condition; moreover, Dr. Dempsey’s treatment was “appropriate.” Prison crisis logs and notes from Dr. Dempsey do not show evidence of dystonic symptoms or significant distress on the part of Mr. Eagan.
Mr. Eagan appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, claiming the district court abused their discretion by denying his motions for recruitment of counsel. Thereafter, he was represented by a pro bono lawyer.
Ruling and Reasoning
In their decision, the Seventh Circuit cited an earlier decision, Pruitt v. Mote, 472 F.3d 484 (7th Cir. 2006), that created a framework for lower courts to determine whether to appoint counsel to indigent litigants. When plaintiffs have made efforts to obtain counsel and are not competent to litigate their cases on their own, the court should appoint a lawyer. The court stated that there were no fixed criteria for assessing competence to litigate one’s own case, but that considerations should include the plaintiff’s literacy, communication skills, and psychiatric history. Courts also must consider the complexity of advanced stages of litigation; of constitutional claims that invoke state of mind (e.g., Mr. Eagan’s claim of deliberate indifference); and cases that include complex medical problems. Critically, in Pruitt, the Seventh Circuit specified that it is an abuse of discretion for a court to not consider whether a person had been using a jailhouse lawyer or had been transferred to a different facility where the plaintiff’s challenges would include inability to gather evidence.
The Seventh Circuit found that the district court clearly abused their discretion in their deviation from Pruitt. But, also as per Pruitt, the Seventh Circuit would reverse a lower court’s failure to appoint counsel only if doing so could create a reasonable likelihood of a different outcome.
Regarding Mr. Eagan’s Eighth Amendment claim against Dr. Dempsey, the Seventh Circuit’s cited precedent showed that inadvertent failures, negligence, and mistakes made by medical professionals are not Eighth Amendment violations. In this case, in contrast, Mr. Eagan is making a claim about Dr. Dempsey’s state of mind on November 30 when Dr. Dempsey initially declined to provide psychiatric treatment. Mr. Eagan stated that he and the man in the neighboring cell recalled Dr. Dempsey suggesting that he was withholding treatment as punishment for Mr. Eagan’s behavior, and that Mr. Eagan seemed to be exaggerating symptoms. The Seventh Circuit agreed with Dr. Dempsey that it was reasonable for him to offer Mr. Eagan an opportunity to control his behavior before ordering forced medication. They stated that even the most favorable interpretation for Mr. Eagan includes the fact that Dr. Dempsey evaluated Mr. Eagan and concluded that his complaints were not due to haloperidol and were generally not severe. They also stated that reluctance to encourage headbanging by administering pain killers like acetaminophen is a reasonable judgment for a psychiatrist to make; and that questions of whether a physician made a good decision under contemporary medical standards is reserved for malpractice claims. Mr. Eagan, however, claims that Dr. Dempsey’s decision to leave him in significant and prolonged pain to teach him a lesson does not involve a mere choice of medical remedies and if true, would violate the Eighth Amendment. The Seventh Circuit held that there is a reasonable chance that litigating this claim that relates to Dr. Dempsey’s state of mind would benefit from legal counsel.
Dissent in Part
Judge Easterbrook disagreed with the majority decision that appointment of counsel could create a reasonable likelihood of a different outcome in Mr. Eagan’s claim against Dr. Dempsey because Mr. Eagan would have to show that Dr. Dempsey exhibited a “complete abandonment of medical judgment” to make a constitutional claim that would be viable (Eagan, p 699). The judge opined that appointing counsel in what he believed to be “doomed” cases like this one was irresponsible because of the limited resource of volunteer lawyers, and, quoting a previous case, wondered why a judge should “ask lawyers to devote less of their time to people with strong cases and more to people with weak ones” (Eagan, p 699).
Discussion
This case demonstrates the enormous challenges facing incarcerated individuals with mental illness who are seeking legal redress for perceived injustice or civil rights violations. Mr. Eagan has an eighth-grade education and severe mental illness. He recognized his limitations and fought with the help of a jailhouse lawyer to repeatedly petition for appointment of counsel to litigate his case. The district court declined all his requests.
Still, even if it is determined that a lower court abused their discretion in denying appointment of counsel, the Seventh Circuit will only reverse those actions if they themselves determine that doing so could lead to a different outcome. The desire to reverse sparingly is understandable because, as Judge Easterbrook pointed out, courts are obligated to be thoughtful stewards of the limited resource of volunteer lawyers. Nevertheless, the subjectivity of the decision of whether to reverse demonstrated in Eagan could lead to arbitrary outcomes. In this case, the majority decided that an astute attorney’s review of Dr. Dempsey’s clinical notes (with help from an expert witness) and prison charts, along with vigorous cross-examination could yield different results. One could imagine, however, the Seventh Circuit reviewing a similar case with poorer filings and arriving at a different result.
Given that Mr. Eagan was able to submit timely filings of good quality, this case demonstrates the importance of access to prison libraries and the unfortunate necessity of jailhouse lawyers for under-resourced incarcerees. It also demonstrates the inequities of the distribution of these resources. Fortunately, there are advocacy organizations that aim to improve these inequities. For example, Prisoners’ Resources of Massachusetts sends attorneys to meet with and guide incarcerated people. NYU’s National Jailhouse Lawyer’s Initiative aims to make general guidance and paralegal training available to incarcerated people. These initiatives are laudable, but the circumstances that cause indigent incarcerees to rely on jailhouse lawyers are unfortunate.
- © 2022 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
