ANDRE DAVIS, District Judge
Twenty-seven-year old Robert W. Clementson, Jr., committed suicide by hanging, using a bed sheet tied to a fire suppression sprinkler head, in his cell at the Central Intake and Booking Center ("CIBC") in Baltimore City on November 16, 2000. Plaintiff Lois Kunkoski, his mother, filed this constitutional wrongful death action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law against numerous law enforcement officials, alleging that the acts and omissions of the defendants caused Clementson's death, in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. Defendants timely removed the case to this court.
In connection with defendants' motions to dismiss the original complaint, I held a hearing on April 12, 2004, and counsel were heard at length. Pursuant to an order issued that same day granting without prejudice the motions to dismiss, plaintiff filed an amended complaint. Now pending is the motion to dismiss the amended complaint filed by the "police defendants," viz., defendants Edward T. Norris, the former Police Commissioner of Baltimore City, and Robert Marianetti, the Baltimore City police officer who arrested Clementson and delivered him to CIBC (each sued in his individual and official capacities), and the Baltimore City Police Department. Plaintiff has filed her memorandum in opposition to the motion and no further hearing is necessary. For the reasons stated herein, the motion shall be granted as to the federal claims, and the state law claims shall be remanded.
I.
The applicable standard for the review of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) is well settled:
A Rule 12(b)(6) motion should only be granted if, after accepting all well-pleaded allegations in the plaintiff's complaint as true, it appears certain that the plaintiff cannot prove any set of facts in support of his claim entitling him to relief.
See Edwards v. City of Goldsboro, 178 F.3d 231, 244 (4th Cir. 1999). Furthermore, the "Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not require a claimant to set out in detail the facts upon which he bases his claim."
Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47,
78 S.Ct. 99,
2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957). Rather, Rule 8(a)(2) requires only a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2).
Migdal v. Rowe Price-Fleming Int'l, Inc., 248 F.3d 321, 325-26 (4th Cir. 2001).
II.
Of course, the factual allegations of the amended complaint are viewed (and any inferences from them are drawn) in the light most favorable to plaintiff.
Robert W. Clementson, Jr., was a recovering heroin addict suffering from depression, among other health problems. In the fall of 2000, as a result of personal difficulties, he relapsed after a period of sobriety. As a result, he resorted to theft as a means to support his habit, including the theft of jewelry from his mother, plaintiff Kunkoski. In an effort to ensure that he receive drug treatment, Kunkoski filed a sworn "Application for Statement of Charges" with a court commissioner at the District Court of Maryland for Carroll County, alleging theft. Both orally and in writing in the Application, Kunkoski informed the court commissioner that Clementson had threatened to commit suicide if Kunkoski filed charges against him for the theft of her jewelry. The court commissioner issued a charging document and an arrest warrant based on the Application filed by Kunkoski.
Twenty-nine days later, on November 15, 2000, at about 10:30 a.m., defendant Marianetti, a Baltimore City police officer, arrested Clementson at his job in Baltimore, based on the warrant issued in Carroll County, and transported Clementson to the CIBC. At CIBC, Marianetti relinquished custody of Clementson to CIBC officers. Thereafter, according to the amended complaint, the following series of events occurred:
[Clementson]'s booking process was initiated at approximately 11:37 a.m. As part of the booking process, [Clementson] completed an Offender Medical/Medical health Screening Report and reported to [defendant Kimberly Ziegelhaefer, identified as a "booking officer" at CIBC] that he was prescribed medication for a medical condition, that he currently received treatment for a mental health condition, that he had been evaluated for a mental health issue or had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and that he had used drugs or alcohol within the previous 72 hours . . . [and] that he took antidepressants and would go through heroin withdrawal. . . . Ziegelhaefer failed to apprise the other [CIBC] staff that [Clementson] was to receive appropriate medical and health care.
Instead of being housed in the hospital, [Clementson] was incarcerated in a cell that had sheets on the bed, a sprinkler head on the wall, and that was out of view of the CIBC employees. . . . On November 16, 2000 [Clementson] called Robin Statler [the mother of his daughter] at approximately 1:00 a.m. in the morning from CIBC, and at approximately 2:30 a.m. an unidentified
Pretrial Release employee conducted a background investigation regarding [Clementson] and called Robin Statler . . . who informed said employee that [Clementson] was a heroin addict and suicidal. . . .
At approximately 3:00 a.m., [Clementson] was alive but distraught and called his mother [plaintiff] to identify an accomplice in the theft at her home and during this period of incarceration, [Clementson] made at least one unsuccessful attempt to hang himself and the attempted and successful suicide attempts by [Clementson] were made in his cell in plain view and open sight and sound of any person in the vicinity of his cell. . . .
At 4:55 a.m. an employee from the Pretrial Release [Division] faxed a notice to the shift Commander of the unit in which [Clementson] was placed, that [Clementson] was at risk for suicide. . . . [Clementson] committed suicide on November 16, 2000, by hanging himself from a sprinkler in his cell. . . . He was found hanging in his jail cell at approximately 8:15 a.m. and died at 9:23 a.m.
Amended Complaint, ¶¶ 37-42.
Although it serves as a pretrial detention center solely for Baltimore City arrestees, CIBC is operated by the State of Maryland and is staffed by state employees. The gravamen of plaintiff's claims is that numerous state officials, including the past and present state Secretaries (and Assistant Secretaries) of Public Safety and Correctional Services, the present and past Wardens of CIBC, and numerous others (the motion to dismiss filed on behalf of whom will be separately considered), together with the present Baltimore City police movants, through their acts and omissions, proximately caused and/or culpably failed to prevent Clementson's suicide. These alleged acts and omissions included, but are not limited to, failures to: (1) fund adequately (or to seek adequate funding for) CIBC, so as to make it a safe and secure pretrial detention facility, including funding for adequate corrections and medical staff; (2) train and educate existing staff in mental health protocols, including suicide prevention protocols; and, (3) supervise and monitor staff. In support of her allegations, Kunkoski alleges that in a six month period in 2000, there were at least seven suicides at CIBC, allegedly indicating a constitutionally deficient suicide prevention system. Kunkoski further alleges that defendants violated minimally appropriate detention standards in that they: (1) failed to maintain a jail video monitoring system; (2) failed to ensure that the design of CIBC holding cells protected the lives of suicidal detainees; and (3) failed to ensure that the sprinkler system was designed to preclude a detainee from using a part of the system to commit suicide.
As for the police defendants who are the movants here, plaintiff makes similar allegations, and specifically seems to cast upon Baltimore City police officials some undefined duty to inform itself of the suicide risk of, and to intervene at the CIBC on behalf of, arrestees who might pose such a risk at the time custody of such arrestees is delivered to CIBC officers. In particular, plaintiff alleges that Marianetti owed a constitutional duty to Clementson (and thus, to plaintiffs, his survivors) to discover the allegation contained in the Application for Statement of Charges filed by plaintiff in Carroll County, and which led directly to his arrest, that Clementson had threatened to commit suicide if plaintiff filed charges against him, and that Marianetti's breach of that duty was a proximate cause of Clementson's death by suicide.
Plaintiff also alleges that information suggesting that Clementson may have had earlier suicide attempts could have been found in a state-maintained criminal justice electronic database that was available to Marianetti.
III.
Although she sues in three different capacities in four different counts, all of plaintiff's federal claims reduce to a fourteenth amendment claim of deliberate indifference by governmental officials to the significant medical needs of a pre-trial detainee. (The state law claims share most of the same elements as are involved in the federal claims.) The standards for such a claim are well settled, as the Fourth Circuit recently reiterated:
Although [appellant] asserts four independent constitutional claims in the complaint, his claims boil down to one relevant question: whether the individual defendants violated [decedent's] Fourteenth Amendment rights as a pre-trial detainee through their deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of physical harm. . . .
As a general matter, "[o]nly governmental conduct that `shocks the conscience' is actionable as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment." The degree of culpability on the part of a governmental actor that is sufficient to shock the conscience will depend on the circumstances of any given case. In cases where the government is accused of failing to attend to a detainee's serious medical needs . . ., "conduct that amounts to `deliberate indifference' . . . is viewed as sufficiently shocking to the conscience that it can support a Fourteenth Amendment claim."
"Deliberate indifference is a very high standard — a showing of mere negligence will not meet it." An officer is deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk of harm to a detainee when that officer "knows of and disregards" the risk. In order to be liable under this standard, "the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference." Stated somewhat differently, "[d]eliberate indifference requires a showing that the defendants
actually knew of and
disregarded a substantial risk of serious injury to the detainee or that they
actually knew of and
ignored a detainee's serious need for medical care."
Liability under this standard thus requires two showings. First, the evidence must show that the official in question subjectively recognized a substantial risk of harm. It is not enough that the officers
should have recognized it; they actually must have perceived the risk.
Rich v. Bruce, 129 F.3d 336, 340 n. 2 (4th Cir. 1997). Second, the evidence must show that the
official in question subjectively recognized that his actions were "inappropriate in light of that risk."
Id. As with the subjective awareness element, it is not enough that the official
should have recognized that his actions were inappropriate; the official actually
must have recognized that his actions were insufficient.
See Brown v. Harris, 240 F.3d 383, 390-91 (4th Cir. 2001).
Parrish v. Cleveland, 372 F.3d 294, 302-04 (4th Cir. 2004) (first two alterations added; footnotes and some citations omitted).
Judged by the above standard of "deliberate indifference," plaintiff has failed to state a claim against Marianetti. Movants correctly contend that there is no basis in law for plaintiff's assertion that Marianetti owed a duty to Clementson affirmatively to discover that he was a suicide threat, even assuming that such information could reasonably be thought to be available to be discovered by an officer making a routine arrest authorized by a warrant issued by judicial officer. Furthermore, it seems clear that Marianetti was in no position to advise the CIBC officials of any information more pertinent about Clementson's mental status than those officials in fact learned within hours after they took custody of Clementson, from the report completed by Clementson and the information provided through the pre-trial services investigation, including the information provided by Robin Statler in the late night telephone communication. In short, as movants contend, plaintiff alleges no legally material facts that were known to Marianetti at the time he transported Clementson to the CIBC that would have imposed a duty on the officer to take some unspecified action to prevent Clementson's suicide, or that the breach of such an ostensible duty contributed to Clementson's death by suicide.
As plaintiff's allegations against former Police Commissioner Norris's subordinate are insufficient to state a claim of constitutional dimension, a fortiori, the allegations seeking supervisory or "policy-maker" liability are insufficient as against Norris. It is undisputed that Norris is not in the supervisory chain of command over any employee of the CIBC. (I need not consider the remaining grounds asserted by movants in support of their motion, e.g., immunity, although several of those grounds are well taken.)
IV.
For the reasons set forth, the motion to dismiss filed by the police defendants shall be granted as to any federal claim. In the absence of diversity of citizenship jurisdiction, I decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff's state law claims. See generally Andrews v. Anne Arundel County, Md., 931 F. Supp. 1255, 1267-68 (D.Md. 1996), aff'd, 114 F.3d 1175 (4th Cir.) (table), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 1015 (1997). Accordingly, the state law claims shall be remanded to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.