EEOC v. Product Fabricators, Inc.

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
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No. 10-3838
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Dale Hayden, *
*
Plaintiff - Appellant, *
*
v. * Appeal from the United States
* District Court for the
Nevada County, AR; Abb Mormon, * Western District of Arkansas.
Individually and as Sheriff of Nevada *
County, Arkansas, *
*
Defendants - Appellees. *
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Submitted: September 19, 2011
Filed: January 10, 2012
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Before LOKEN, BEAM, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
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LOKEN, Circuit Judge.
Dale Hayden appeals the district court’s dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. § 19831
claims against Nevada County, Arkansas, and its Sheriff, Abb Mormon. Assuming
as true the facts alleged by Hayden, the issue is whether Hayden’s due process rights
were violated when Mormon induced Hayden to plead guilty to a pending felony
charge of terroristic threatening in December 1989. Reviewing the district court’s
The Honorable Harry F. Barnes, United States District Judge for the Western1
District of Arkansas.

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grant of summary judgement de novo, we affirm. Curry v. Crist, 226 F.3d 974, 977
(8th Cir. 2000) (standard of review).
There is a reason Hayden first asserted claims relating to a 1989 guilty plea in
June 2008. In an unrelated criminal proceeding in April 1992, Hayden was found
competent to stand trial and convicted of disorderly conduct and harassing
communications. He was sentenced to five years in prison, and served nineteen
months, at least in part because he committed these offenses while on probation from
the 1989 terroristic threatening conviction. In December 2006, acting on Hayden’s
petition for a writ of error coram nobis, the Nevada County Circuit Court dismissed
the 1989 terroristic threatening charges, finding that Hayden “was not competent to
understand the proceeding against him at the time he entered his plea of guilty on
December 21, 1989.” Our record does not reveal whether the judge who issued this
order had before him a November 1989 report of an Arkansas State Hospital (ASH)
psychologist opining that Hayden was then competent to stand trial.
The terroristic threatening charges were filed in January 1989. Because
Hayden had been declared incompetent and committed to ASH several times in the
past, he was committed to ASH for a mental evaluation in July 1989. See Ark. Code
Ann. § 5-2-305(b). After the psychologist issued his competency report, Hayden was
returned to the Nevada County jail for trial. See Ark. Code Ann. § 5-2-310(b)(2)(B).
He pleaded guilty to terroristic threatening in the first degree on December 21 and
was sentenced to five years probation. The summary judgment record does not
include the Nevada County Circuit Court proceedings relating to that plea and
sentencing. Because the charge was a felony, Arkansas law required that Hayden be
represented by counsel and that the court determine that his guilty plea was knowing
and voluntary before accepting it. See Ark. R. Crim. P. 24.2, 24.5. We assume the
court, which previously ordered Hayden committed to ASH for a mental evaluation,
had before it when it accepted Hayden’s guilty plea the ASH report opining that he
was competent to stand trial.
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Hayden’s § 1983 due process complaint alleged that, while he was in pretrial
custody under Mormon’s supervision, Mormon “attempted to coerce” Hayden to
plead guilty to terroristic threatening by “assuring him that doing so would result in
only two years of probation” and his release before Christmas. Hayden further
alleged that he did not understand the charge against him, as Mormon knew, and that
he pleaded guilty “based only upon the advice given to him by Defendant Mormon,”
despite believing he was innocent. The complaint also asserted § 1983 claims2
against Nevada County and against Mormon in his official capacity, alleging that the
County’s failure to train its police officers, including Mormon, encouraged them to
give legal advice to detainees that they are not qualified to give. He requested
injunctive relief and $2,000,000 compensatory and $2,000,000 punitive damages.
The district court granted summary judgment dismissing the claim against
Mormon in his individual capacity on the ground that he is entitled to qualified
immunity from these damage claims. The district court concluded that Hayden
“adequately asserted a violation of his constitutional right to be free from criminal
prosecution while incompetent.” Assuming the truth of the allegations that Mormon
knew of Hayden’s past mental health issues and convinced Hayden to plead guilty,
the court concluded that a reasonable person in Mormon’s position would not have
known that he was committing a constitutional violation because Mormon reasonably
relied on the ASH psychologist’s report that Hayden was competent to stand trial.
The court dismissed the claims against Nevada County and Mormon in his official
capacity because Hayden’s “conclusory statement alleging a lack of training is simply
not sufficient to create a genuine issue of fact” and a need for better training was not
Hayden also sued Nevada County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Danny Rogers2
for “accepting” the guilty plea of a defendant who had been declared incompetent in
prior proceedings. Early in the litigation, the district court dismissed the claim
against Rogers and entered final judgment pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b). Hayden
did not appeal that ruling.
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apparent from the facts of the case. The court also dismissed Hayden’s pendent state
tort claims without prejudice, a ruling Hayden does not challenge on appeal.
Hayden argues that the district court erred in granting summary judgment
because there is no evidence in the record demonstrating that Mormon knew about
the ASH report when he attempted to coerce Hayden to plead guilty, raising a genuine
issue of disputed fact as to whether a reasonable sheriff in Mormon’s position would
know that coercing Hayden’s guilty plea violated a clearly established constitutional
right. Assuming that this fact is disputed (which is questionable), we conclude that
it is not material because Mormon and Nevada County were nonetheless entitled to
summary judgment on the merits of Hayden’s § 1983 claims.
The first issue is whether Hayden alleged the violation of a constitutional right
by Sheriff Mormon. Without question, a guilty plea entered by a legally incompetent
defendant is constitutionally infirm. But Hayden cites no case -- and we have found
none -- imposing § 1983 liability on a state actor for coercing or inducing a guilty
plea that is later determined not to be knowing and voluntary. The persons most
directly responsible for accepting such a plea, the trial judge and the prosecutor, are
of course entitled to absolute immunity from such a claim. There are other state
actors who may be in a position to influence a defendant to plead guilty, such as
jailers, probation and parole officers, and investigating law enforcement officers.
And we assume without deciding that such an officer could be liable under § 1983 for
a substantive due process violation if he coerced a defendant’s guilty plea by the use
of conscience-shocking torture. Cf. Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760, 796
(Kennedy, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“torture or its equivalent in
an attempt to induce a statement violates an individual’s fundamental right to
liberty”). But that is not this case. The alleged coercion -- Mormon telling Hayden
that pleading guilty “would result in only two years of probation, with no fines or
further holding,” Complaint ¶ 10, -- did not render Hayden’s plea involuntary. See
Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 751-58 (1970). Hayden asserts, without
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citation to authority: “Even if Mormon had knowledge that Hayden had been declared
competent, and . . . understood the charges against him . . . dispensing [] unsolicited
legal advice to a detainee . . . was in violation of that person’s constitutional right to
due process.” There is no such constitutional right, even vaguely established, in our
jurisprudence.
Sheriff Mormon was also entitled to summary judgment for an additional
reason. “Causation is an essential element of a section 1983 cause of action.”
Morton v. Becker, 793 F.2d 185, 187 (8th Cir. 1986); see Martinez v. California, 444
U.S. 277, 285 (1980) (“not every injury in which a state official has played some part
is actionable”). “To survive a summary judgment motion on this issue, [Hayden]
must present evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that [Mormon’s]
statements were the proximate cause of the violation of his constitutional right.”
Latimore v. Widseth, 7 F.3d 709, 716 (8th Cir. 1993) (Arnold, J., dissenting), cert.
denied, 510 U.S. 1140 (1994). He failed to do so.
As Mormon rightly notes, “it has never been the duty of the Sheriff to
determine one’s fitness to stand trial or capacity to maintain the culpable mental
state.” Before accepting Hayden’s guilty plea to a terroristic threatening felony, it
was the trial judge’s responsibility to determine that Hayden was competent to stand
trial and that the waiver of his constitutional rights was knowing and voluntary. See
Godinez v. Moran, 509 U.S. 389, 400 (1993); Hunter v. Bowersox, 172 F.3d 1016,
1022-23 (8th Cir. 1999). If a reasonable doubt as to competency emerged, the court
was required to suspend the proceedings sua sponte and conduct a further
competency inquiry. See Campbell v. Lockhart, 789 F.2d 644, 646 (8th Cir. 1986);
Ark. Code Ann. § 5-2-305(a)(1)(B), (D). The 2006 ruling that the trial judge erred
in accepting the guilty plea was not a reasonably foreseeable result of Mormon’s
pretrial advice. Cf. Walden v. Carmack, 156 F.3d 861, 874 (8th Cir. 1998) (sheriff
not liable under § 1983 for recommending excessive bail because “setting the bail
bond is entirely at the discretion of the presiding judge”). Therefore, absent an
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unconstitutional motive, jailer Mormon was not liable for advising Hayden to enter
a guilty plea subsequently determined to be invalid. An official holding a criminal
defendant in pretrial custody may reasonably assume that the trial court will properly
determine whether the defendant is competent to stand trial or plead guilty.
Moreover, the principal injury alleged by Hayden was the more severe sentence
imposed in 1992 because he committed those later offenses while serving the five-
year probationary sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to terroristic threatening.
The proximate cause of that injury was Hayden’s own failure to obtain timely relief
from his invalid plea, either by moving to withdraw the plea after the court imposed
a longer probationary period than Mormon allegedly promised, see Ark. R. Crim. P.
26.1(b), (c); or by seeking post-conviction relief on the ground that he was not
competent to stand trial or that the plea was not knowing and voluntary.
For these reasons, Sheriff Mormon was entitled to summary judgment on the
merits of Hayden’s due process claim.
Because Hayden failed to establish a violation of his constitutional rights by
Sheriff Mormon, the district court properly dismissed Hayden’s official capacity
claims against Mormon and Nevada County. See, e.g., McCoy v. Monticello, 411
F.3d 920, 922 (8th Cir. 2005).
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
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