May
2009
06:06:06:8:06-8:11p Hell in the Cell: just the 1st few minutes of hours of agony
FYI…..Date/Time Format - Year : Month : Day : Time (CST, United States)
[times may also be in 24 hr format - e.g. 20:06-20:11]
QUOTABLE QUOTES via United States Federal District Court Majistrate Franklin Noel and his higher level counterpart, District Judge Joan Ericksen:
Let’s pick on the Honorable [not so] Magistrate first:
1) In analyzing the adequacy of a complaint under Rule 12(b)(6) [defense counsels’ motions to dismiss], the Court must construe the complaint liberally and afford the plaintiff all reasonable inferences to be drawn from those facts…For the purpose of a motion to dismiss, facts in the complaint [as provided in the complaint] are assumed to be true .
2) The right to be free from excessive force is a clearly established constitutional right under the umbrella of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.
3) However, “not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge’s chambers, violates the Fourth Amendment.” Rather, the test is whether the force used is “reasonable.”
4) Eighth Circuit has held that “a de minimis use of force or injury is insufficient to support a finding of a constitutional violation.”
5) …the proper constitutional inquiry is whether the conditions amount to punishment…The Court noted that “[r]estraints that are reasonably related to the institution’s interest in maintaining jail security do not, without more, constitute unconstitutional punishment even if they are discomforting.”
6) “Absent a showing of an expressed intention to punish on the part of the detention facility official” the constitutional determination will turn on whether the restriction is “reasonably related to a legitimate governmental objective” or is merely arbitrary or purposeless.
7) Plaintiff alleges he was in the chair for four hours, during which he was in great pain and repeatedly asked to be released. It is uncontested that the decision to place Plaintiff in the restraint chair was a result of Plaintiff’s self-injurious behavior, and Plaintiff does not allege physical injury stemming from his time in the chair.
8) Plaintiff does not allege physical injury stemming from his time in the chair. As a matter of law, under the cases discussed above, allegations of a discomforting four-hour stint in a restraint chair, without allegations that the use of the chair was motivated by an improper purpose such as punishment, is not a violation of § 1983. Therefore, taking Plaintiff’s allegations to be true and affording Plaintiff all reasonable inferences from the facts alleged, Plaintiff’s complaint fails to state a claim for excessive force under § 1983 against the Hennepin County Defendants.
[[[italics & bold added for emphasis]]]
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REALITY CHECK VERSUS MAGISTRATE’S RECHARACHTERIZATIONS & MISCHARACTERIZATIONS PER THE ACTUAL COMPLAINT WORDS [which words grossly understate the horrific reality that the evidence clearly shows]
The Court also specifically chose to ignore all further elucidation by Plaintiff of the hell of what was done, the premeditative and conspiratorial nature of what was done, and the proof of the ability to identify precisely by whom it was done, and all direct evidence such as jail video and jail logs rife with false statements and other tampering, clearly stated ministerial and other duties as provided in Hennepin County Sheriff Office and Jail Rules/Regs/Policies…etc. The Court chose to ignore all of this in spite of Rules of Evidence stating such evidence must be judicially noticed if requested…which it was].
What started this whole mess is that MPD Officer Lance Faust did not just arrest me from out of a hospital ER while laying nonresponsive eyes-closed on a gurney in hospital clothes from the locked mental health unit I was disgustingly, wrongfully and prematurely discharged from in violation of Federal and MN Patient Rights Law…Faust added his own measure of contempt to the situation…he handcuffed me extremely tightly because I didn’t respond to him and then he lifted me to the floor and literally dragged me out of the hospital legs trailing behind like a dead animal to his squad car…in jail it took awhile for me to ‘come to’ and notice the painful deep purple deep grooved 360 degree wrists Faust had left me with…
1. Defendant Miller agreed to document in her report that [Plaintiff]’s wrists were red and have him review her report for accuracy.
2. Hours later Plaintiff … asked for Defendant Miller to come back to the cell to do the documentation they agreed to. CO Defendant John Doe said he would get her but she never came.
3. Multiple similar exchanges … until finally CO Defendant John Doe said, “Look sir, the nurse is busy with real emergencies.”
4. Plaintiff … sat down shocked and concerned that his wrists wouldn’t be documented for the MPD to be made aware of this unnecessary treatment of any person, particularly one who had been taken into custody clearly as a severely decompensated severely ill mental health patient, in hospital attire, lying on a gurney in an emergency room, while quiet, non-responsive, eyes closed.
5. Plaintiff … realized that no CO Defendant would get Defendant Miller unless she was ‘forced’ to come by the creation of a small ‘real’ emergency, which Plaintiff … created via a minor abrasion of his forearm.
Defendant Pileggi saw the small smear of blood on the cell window … Defendant Miller … immediately wanted to see [Plaintiff]’s arm. Plaintiff … stated he wanted her to look at and document as agreed earlier his still red, grooved wrists first. An argumentative exchange went back and forth until Defendant Miller grabbed [Plaintiff]’s arm to force him to let her look at it which Plaintiff … did not allow.
6. Throughout this interaction Defendant Miller and CO Defendant Doe were adamant in their collective refusal to document his wrists – and even acknowledge their clearly visible red grooved state. Only when Plaintiff … reminded Defendant Miller of her professional ethics responsibilities did she acknowledged that [Plaintiff]’s wrists were still red.
7. Soon Plaintiff … heard Defendant Miller and CO Defendant Doe discuss putting [Plaintiff] into a restraint chair in violation of many, many HCSO, ADC, and HCMC policies specific to inmate rights and safety relative to restraints.
8. For the next four hours Plaintiff … was left in the restraint chair in a cell whose door never opened even though, over time, he went from feeling like the cuffs/restraint straps were fine at the very beginning to realizing that his wrists became numb, and then began to hurt, to realizing that he was in a lot of pain, that the pain kept growing and that no one would respond to 2 ½ - 3 hours of his crying, begging, pleading for help, for mercy – due to pain that had grown to such intolerable levels that near the end of the ordeal he was broken down to a barely audible murmur, and to a frightening and shocking hallucination The point is not that the pain drove him into a permanent delusional/ hallucination-ridden state, but that the pain was so excruciating that among other things this happened too.
9. At 11:15 or so after the full 4 hours ‘allowed’ Defendant … was painfully removed from the agony of the restraint chair by Defendants Hillestad and CO Defendants Doe, who threatened to keep or put him back into the chair if he didn’t ‘cooperate’ by not complaining about having been tortured, not describing the situation as crimes, not asking that pictures be taken, and not asking how to call the police or an attorney for help.
10. Defendants Miller, Hillestad, and CO Defendants Doe, behaviors also violated many policies, rules, requirements, and recommendations of other entities to which all Defendants are beholden by statutes, rules, regulations, policies, case law, and what a “reasonable person” would do in such circumstances, such as:
a. American Correctional Association (ACA) Standards…ban the use of restraints as punishment, and state that four-point restraint should be used only in extreme instances and only when other types of restraint have proven to be ineffective and should not be applied in any event ‘’for more time than is absolutely necessary'’. They also state that advance approval must be obtained from the warden or designee and that the health authority or designee must be notified to assess the inmate’s physical or mental health. The standards further provide that direct visual observation by staff of someone in restraints must be continuous prior to obtaining approval from the health authority or designee, with 15-minute checks thereafter.
b. International Standards…provide that [chair] restraints should be used only when ‘’strictly necessary'’ to prevent damage or injury, the [restraint] chairs appear to be routinely used in some facilities to punish or control prisoners who are disruptive… often used against mentally disturbed…individuals in the ‘’Intake'’ sections of local jails, often at night when there may be few staff on duty.
c. In May 2000, the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) recommended to the US Government to Abolish Restraint Chairs…as a method of restraining people in custody, on the ground that their use led to breaches of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment.
d. The UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as any act by which:
i. severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental; is intentionally inflicted on a person; for such purposes as:
ii. punishing him/her for an act s/he … has committed
iii. intimidating or coercing him/her or …
iv. or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind;
e. The UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials provides that officials ‘’shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force…'’ and only when strictly necessary and must always be proportionate to the threat encountered and designed to minimize damage and injury.
f. The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners…stipulates that restraints should never be applied as a punishment, and provide that restraints may be used only when other measures are ineffective and only as long as is ‘’strictly necessary'’.
g. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights specifies that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
h. Amnesty International has written to…the US Department of Justice, with the following recommendations:
i. Ensure that no-one is subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; all allegations of ill-treatment should be the subject of a full, impartial inquiry, with the results made public and those found responsible for abuses brought to justice.
ii. Each authority should review the use of the restraint chair in their facility, and consider discontinuing it
- The United States ratified the Convention against Torture in 1994. The Convention entered into force for the United States on November 20, 1994 and states that:
i. Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States…
ii. …It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offence under the law of the United States. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification of torture.
iii. Any act falling within the Convention’s definition of torture is clearly illegal
iv. Torture has always been proscribed by the Eighth Amendment…
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Apparently, Magistrate Noel skipped a few paragraphs in order to make the claims about what I claimed that he preferred to claim in order to justify his Report & Recommendation for dismissal instead of holding anyone accountable for the brutalization of a human-being who was at the time in no position whatsoever to harm anyone or anything.
Apparently, District Judge Ericksen skipped the same paragraphs in order to summarily adopt Magistrate’s Report & Recommendation.
Apparently, neither one of these two federal judges gives much of a rip for truthfulness, honesty, objectivity, law, constitutional protections, international treaties, logic, legal definitions such as those for torture [and likewise “injury” which makes it clear that severe pain is in and of itself “injury” - though I went much further in describing how the injury of pain was so great that it broke my brain to the point of delirium and hallucination - a normal functioning brain does not hallucinate, or much of anything else that is supposed to lead us to justice when we are harmed by are own government.
AND WHAT YOU HEAR HERE…THIS IS JUST FROM THE 1ST 5 MINUTES OF HELL…BELIEVE IT OR NOT…IT GOT WORSE…
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