Seventh Circuit orders new damages trial in Illinois inmate rape case

CHICAGO (CN) — Two officials of Illinois’ Logan Correctional Center will face a new trial over damages in a case accusing them of using an inmate as bait to prove her own sexual assault, a Seventh Circuit panel ruled Thursday, finding a lower court improperly excluded evidence.

In a 56-page ruling, the three-judge appellate panel ordered the new trial on compensatory and punitive damages against prison officials Todd Sexton and Margaret Burke. The new trial will not effect the officials’ liability in the inmate’s Eighth Amendment claims. The Eighth Amendment protects people from cruel and unusual punishment, as well as excessive fines and excessive bail.

The inmate accused Sexton and Burke of failing to protect her from a sexual assault at the hands of former prison counselor Richard MacLeod. A federal jury found all three liable in 2021 and awarded the inmate a total of $19.3 million in damages: $10 million in punitive damages against Macleod, $500,000 in punitive damages against Burke, $800,000 in punitive damages against Sexton and an additional $8 million in compensatory damages.

Burke and Sexton appealed, maintaining that they were not deliberately indifferent to a significant risk of harm to Doe. U.S. Circuit Judge David Hamilton noted in the order that the exclusion of evidence — particularly a statement by Sexton — was not harmless as to punitive damages.

“In his testimony, Sexton referred on several occasions to unstated ‘reasons’ for the steps he took, but the district court barred him from explaining his reasons to the jury,” Hamilton, a Barack Obama appointee, said. “Left to speculate on what these reasons might have been, the jury might have drawn any number of unsupported inferences that could have affected the amounts it awarded.”

While the amount of damages could be reduced in a new trial, the matter of Burke and Sexton’s liability won’t change.

Sexton, a member of the prison’s internal affairs department, testified during trial that when he heard about the sexual abuse from the inmate’s roommate, he immediately informed his supervisors and attempted to gather more information.

He said was initially unable to gather any further information regarding the sexual abuse from the inmate, so he conducted an afterhours stakeout in an effort to catch MacLeod in the act. During an offer of proof made outside of the jury’s presence, Sexton noted the statement from the roommate was redacted, and the redacted portion indicated that Doe’s relationship with Macleod may have been consensual.

But because he had testified he knew the inmate was particularly vulnerable to MacLeod due to her reliance on him for access to her daughter, and that he knew MacLeod had refused when she “begged” him to use a condom, Hamilton said, “Our review leaves us satisfied that it is ‘unlikely that a juror would have been persuaded to change his vote on the basis of the excluded testimony.”

“Under these circumstances, Sexton’s self-serving testimony that he believed Nielsen was in a ‘wanted relationship’ would not have had a ‘significant chance’ of convincing the jury that he was not actually aware of at least a significant risk that MacLeod was coercing Nielsen into sex,” he added.

The state said during oral arguments in September that a prison official has no Eighth Amendment liability if they respond reasonably to a risk and it isn’t a constitutional violation to not choose the best course of action.

But Hamilton noted that the standard for the Eighth Amendment requires not merely some response, but a reasonable one.

“Using a prison inmate as unwitting bait to catch a staff member in the act of sexually abusing her is obviously an outrageous response. No reasonable prison official could have considered it acceptable,” Hamilton wrote. “It is so outrageous that we would not expect to find much case law dealing with similar facts. And if that were not bad enough, Sexton carried out this plan so poorly, and then abandoned it, that he allowed at least one further sexual assault by MacLeod.”

Hamilton said the jury was given proper instruction on awarding punitive damages, but the exclusion of Sexton’s knowledge of the abuse may have affected the amount awarded.

“A reasonable jury could conclude that while using as bait an inmate who the prison official thinks is a willing participant might be reprehensible enough, using an unwilling inmate was even more so. Reprehensibility was likely a major factor in the jury’s punitive damages awards,” Hamilton said.

U.S. Circuit Judges Frank Easterbrook, a Ronald Reagan appointee, and Nancy Maldonado, a Joe Biden appointee, joined Hamilton on the panel.

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