Hare V. City Of Corinth

Today we again visit the measures of liability under the U.S. Constitution for failing to prevent a suicide by a pretrial detainee. Tina Hare committed suicide while detained in the city jail in Corinth, Mississippi. Her husband, Richard Hare, sued municipal and individual defendants under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court denied summary judgment. This appeal by individual defendants  claiming qualified immunity followed. A panel of this court dismissed their appeal. We elected to hear the case en banc, and now find that the district court applied an erroneous legal standard in denying summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds. We hold that the episodic act or omission of a state jail official does not violate a pretrial detainee's due process right to medical care or protection from suicide unless the official acted or failed to act with subjective deliberate indifference to the detainee's rights, as defined in Farmer v. Brennan, 128 L. Ed. 2d 811, 114 S. Ct. 1970 (1994). We vacate and remand for review of the claims of qualified immunity under the correct legal standard.