A lawsuit filed nearly three years ago on behalf of detainees who say they were wantonly maced in the St. Louis city jail is scheduled to be heard by a jury in July after a federal judge refused to dismiss the case.
U.S. District Court Judge Henry Autrey wrote in an order issued on Thursday that the detainees and their attorneys bringing the suit “present evidence of a continuing, widespread, persistent pattern of unconstitutional misconduct by the officers in deliberately violating the constitutional rights of pretrial detainees.”
The judge's order was in response to a motion for summary judgment filed by the city, which was essentially a request that the judge dismiss the case on its merits rather than allow it to go to trial. Autrey denied the motion and set a trial date of July 29.
Autrey wrote that there was enough credible evidence that jail staff excessively deployed pepper spray and shut off water to cells as punishment that the allegations warranted being heard by a jury. The city had argued there was no systemic abuse.
"We're glad the judge saw the evidence for what it was," says Shubra Ohri, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center who is among those representing the detainees. "We're looking forward to laying out all this damning evidence in front of a jury."
That jury trial is a long time coming.
The lawsuit was initially filed in May 2021, alleging detainees at the jail were maced for purposes of "inflicting punishment or pain, rather than for security reasons."
Ohri says that federal civil rights cases tend to take a while, but that much of the delay in this case has been due to a tussle over discovery, including the attorneys for the detainees seeking access to surveillance videos from the jail.
The ArchCity Defenders eventually got those videos and released them last July. They showed numerous instances of corrections officers deploying mace against detainees who appeared to pose no threat to the jail staff. For instance, one video showed staffers macing a detainee seated on a bench with his head in his hands.
The city argued that just because there are so many uses of pepper spray, it didn't mean that they are all examples of excessive force. They've also argued that the city and the corrections officers named as defendants in the suit are protected by qualified immunity, a legal principle that protects government officials from lawsuits.
Ohri and other attorneys argued to Autrey that they never said every use of pepper spray was excessive, but instead identified approximately 250 specific examples of detainees being maced while "passively resistant." An example of this would be detainees being sprayed through the food-delivery slot of cells.
"For us, his order was a win, forcing the city to go to trial," says Amy Breihan, another attorney representing the detainees.
In the three years since the suit was originally filed, the city jail has come under more intense scrutiny after a rash of detainee deaths, a hostage situation and detainees forced to meet with their legal counsel in states of undress. Recently, criminal defense attorneys have been so worried for their clients' well-being they have violated jail policy to make photos of them public. One detainee could be seen with an untreated, cantaloupe-sized hernia. Another, who is paralyzed, was reduced to lying in his own feces — a condition he told his attorney had lasted for two days or more.
"I think that what's been really disturbing is that in the three years this litigation has been pending, nothing has changed [at the city jail]," says Ohri. "Evidence keeps mounting. There's been no policy changes. It's egregious and shocking that the city hasn't done anything.”
If the plaintiffs emerge victorious from trial, the judge could issue an order forcing the jail to stop some of its current practices, including those governing the use of pepper spray.
Before July, the city could appeal Autrey’s decision, which would likely push back the trial date even further.
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