BATON ROUGE – Louisiana’s Department of Corrections is fighting a lawsuit filed by a female officer who was allegedly raped by a male inmate because prison doors at Elayn Hunt didn’t work properly.
That allowed inmate Erick Dehart to approach her from behind with a shank, plaintiff Deshunta Miller wrote in her July lawsuit in Baton Rouge federal court. The DOC’s Oct. 6 motion to dismiss the case takes aim at allegations her due process rights were violated.
“Unlike inmates who have the Due Process Rights which she attempts to invoke, the plaintiff was an employee who accepted a job on the terms she found satisfactory and who was free to quit whenever she felt it necessary,” the motion says.
“It is well settled in this Circuit that the plaintiff has no constitutional protection to be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against private injury.”
The motion cites a Fifth Circuit ruling in 1989 regarding jail detention officers injured by inmates attempting to escape. The ruling cited the U.S. Supreme Court in DeShaney v. Winnebago County, which wrote “a State’s failure to protect an individual against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of the Due Process claim.”
According to Miller’s lawsuit, she was raped by an inmate on July 17, 2020, while she was performing her job duties.
The suit states that the prison security tape shows inmate Dehart “entering (Miller’s work) area and grabbing her from behind with some type of weapon in his hand.”
The suit alleges that cell locks where she worked were defective, as was the beeper that could have aided in her attack.
Miller is under the care of a counselor “as a result of the severe emotional distress, and emotional physical trauma, stress and distress resulting from the rape.”
Miller is also alleging staff at Elayn Hunt was aware of a lack of response to employee reports of inappropriate inmate behavior. The DOC says the Workers’ Compensation system is the exclusive remedy for her workplace injuries – not civil court.
“The Louisiana Supreme Court has addressed complaints strikingly similar to this one, specifically whether the law allows an injured employee to pursue his employer in tort on the basis that the employer knowingly failed to provide employee with a safe place to work,” the motion to dismiss says.
The motion cites Adams v. Time Saver Stores, which says “failure to maintain safe conditions in the workplace may give rise to conditions ‘which, at most, could be said to have made the occurrence of an accident likely, but the circumstances fall short of indicating that injury to plaintiff was inevitable or substantially certain to occur.’”