U.S. District Court: FAILURE TO PROTECT.

Richards v. Southeast Alabama Youth Ser. Diversion 105 F.Supp.2d 1268 (M.D.Ala. 2000). The mother of a detainee who had committed suicide while in custody brought a civil rights action against city and county officials. The district court denied Eleventh Amendment immunity to the city defendants and denied summary judgment for the defendants on a deliberate indifference claim. The district court held that summary judgment was precluded by issues of material fact as to whether the actions of the police officer who transported the detainee to a privately-owned facility rose above the level of mere negligence and constituted deliberate indifference, and whether his actions were the proximate cause of the detainee's death. Despite his knowledge of the detainee's suicidal tendencies, the officer failed to search the detainee for weapons, failed to handcuff the detainee, and failed to inform the subsequent custodians of the detainee's suicidal proclivities. The court also found fact issues as to whether the actions or inactions of juvenile probation officers rose above the level of mere negligence and constituted deliberate indifference, and whether the detainee was in the custody of the officers at the time he escaped from the detention facility and committed suicide with a gun he had surreptitiously brought into the facility. The detainee had been taken to a privately-operated "diversion center" and was left alone in an intake room where he produced a gun, fled the center, walked into a wooded area and fatally shot himself. (Southeast Alabama Youth Services Diversion Center)