Ruling Overturned in Jail Rape Case

The county of San Diego should be taken before a federal jury to determine whether it was liable for the rape of an 18-year-old man at the County Jail in Chula Vista by an older inmate in 1983, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturns a 1987 decision by U.S. District Judge Leland Nielsen. He had ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that the county might be liable for the injuries sustained by Clifton Redman when he was raped three times in two days by a cellmate, who was known by jailers at the time to be a sexually aggressive homosexual.

Redman was awaiting trial on charges of car theft.

The day after he was raped the first time, he complained to his mother and girlfriend, who in turn reported the attack to jail deputies. When Redman was asked by a deputy--in the company of his cellmate attacker--whether he had any problems in jail, he said no, and was kept in the cell with the man, who along with two other inmates raped him again the next morning. The morning after, the cellmate struck again.

That inmate, Kevin Clark, later pleaded guilty to sodomy, and Redman’s attorney sued the county in federal court, claiming the Sheriff’s Department failed to adequately protect Redman from sexual assault while in custody.

The civil lawsuit against the county was put to a federal jury in June, 1987, but, shortly before jury deliberations were to begin, Nielsen ruled from the bench that there wasn’t enough evidence to consider the county liable for Redman’s rape and effectively dismissed the case.

Redman’s attorney, Bill Daley, appealed to a three-member panel of the court of appeals, which ruled, 2 to 1, last year to support Nielsen’s decision. Daley then appealed to the full 11-member appeals court, which on Monday ruled, 8 to 3, in favor of Redman, thereby ordering the civil lawsuit back to federal court for trial--where it had been originally in 1987.

At issue was whether jailers showed “deliberate indifference” to Redman’s safety and welfare, which are required to be protected by the U.S. Constitution even for jail inmates and detainees.

Daley, supported by arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that the Sheriff’s Department should be held liable for Redman’s injuries from the rape because jailers “knowingly and recklessly” put a known aggressive homosexual in the same cell as Redman, who was smaller and younger than his attacker.

Previously, Clark had been in the homosexual section of the jail. But he was placed with the mainstream jail population because he was using his size and aggression to coerce other homosexuals in the jail, run then by Sheriff John Duffy.

Clark and Redman were forced to share a one-man cell because of jail crowding.

The appellate court ruled Monday that Nielsen should have allowed Redman’s civil lawsuit against the county to be decided by a jury. “We find that a reasonable jury could find Sheriff Duffy was deliberately indifferent to Redman’s personal security rights by allowing overcrowding of the South Bay Detention Facility,” the court ruled.

A jury could also find that Duffy’s policy of allowing aggressive homosexuals to share one-man cells with physically weaker men who would be unable to defend themselves from sexual assault was “a moving force behind Redman’s rape, and that repudiated Redman’s constitutional right to personal security,” the court majority found.

Daley said Monday, “There’s a sense of victory, in that we’re allowed to take this to a jury. It’s been a long road to get us to that point once again, and we’re certainly not at the end of the line.”

A trial date will now be set, he said.

Betty Wheeler, legal director for the ACLU, applauded the justices’ ruling as “carefully crafted to provide clear guidance to the lower courts about what ‘deliberate indifference’ means.

“This is a case that is really shocking in its facts, and if these facts didn’t show ‘deliberate indifference’ toward a man’s personal safety and welfare, it would be hard to imagine a case that did,” Wheeler said.

“The clear message of this case for Sheriff Jim Roache and the county is to review very carefully the adequacy of the jails’ classification system (in determining how inmates are segregated for their own protection), and the kind of protection it gives the inmates from violence at the hands of other inmates,” Wheeler said. “If those security measures aren’t adequate, the county has to improve them or face the consequences.”

Roache was out of town Monday and could not be reached for comment. But a county spokesman termed the appellate court’s ruling as “epic,” saying it “appears to require local jail officials to provide single cells to all pretrial detainees, to ensure safety from assault by other inmates.”

Spokesman Bob Lerner said, “Any such practice would obviously be enormously expensive and impractical.” He said county attorneys are considering petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court for a review.

Rick Pinckard, the legal adviser for the Sheriff’s Department, wasn’t quite as certain as Lerner about the legal consequences of the ruling. “We don’t think this specifically requires us to provide single cells. But, if we extend the logic of the appeals court, this is a potential result,” he said.

Daley said he is trying to locate his client to notify him of the ruling.