ST. LOUIS - In an appeal filed April 12, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the ruling of a lower court in holding the city of St. Louis and Shelley Sharp, a corrections officer, without liability in the case of Norman Whitney, Jr., who hanged himself while in custody at the St. Louis City Justice Center in August 2014.
The case was brought against Sharp and the city by Whitney's father, Norman Whitney, Sr.
Judges Roger Wollman, Bobby Shepard and Ralph Erickson found that absent any constitutional violation, neither the city nor Sharp could be held liable.
When Whitney was moved to a specialized medical area of the St. Louis City Justice Center, he was monitored by closed-circuit television. Sharp was assigned to monitor and last saw Whitney at 9:05 a.m. before he hanged himself 14 minutes later.
The judges in this case found that allegations in the complaint against unnamed jail personnel lacked evidence.
The court also used the case of Monell v. Department of Social Services, which found that without a constitutional violation by a specific city employee, the municipality cannot be liable.
“Tellingly, the complaint does not allege any facts to support this legal conclusion,” the court wrote. "The surmise of the allegation is unsupported by sufficient factual allegations. There is, for example, no claim that any identifiable jail official had knowledge that Whitney was in the process of committing suicide or even that a particular jail official suspected that he might be committing an act of self-harm.”
The court also asserted that the Monell case applies in the Whitney case and that a sufficient basis could not be found for holding the city liable.