by Chuck Sharman

People not intimately familiar with prison life struggle to comprehend the level of casual cruelty that must be endured. Yet even the most hardened prisoner would be stunned by the allegations in a case pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. 

There, survivors of mentally ill and suicidal state prisoner Tyler Venema sued Woodland Center Correctional Facility (WCCF) guards Fred West and Curtis Keys after they gave Venema the plastic bag that he used to fatally suffocate himself. They added claims against Warden Jodi DeAngelo for failing to train the guards not to do it. 

Shamelessly, all three Defendants claimed qualified immunity (QI); when it was denied, DeAngelo appealed. But on April 3, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling, finding it plausible that DeAngelo knew or should have known what her guards were doing, thereby making her culpable for the failure to train them to do otherwise. 

When he died in June 2017, Venema had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. His prison file recorded “a history of self-­injurious behaviors and suicidal ideations,” the Sixth Circuit noted, including previous suicide attempts. In one, he hanged himself with a bedsheet. In another, ominously, he put a plastic bag over his head.

As a result, Venema was under an involuntary treatment order when he was transferred to WCCF for an inpatient treatment program on June 20, 2017. Initially assessed at moderate risk of self-­harm by a social worker, he was put in a suicide-­prevention gown and deprived of personal property. Three days later, he was re-­assessed at an intermediate risk of self-­harm. That freed him from the gown and entitled him to dress again. That’s when West and Keys, in a jaw-­dropping display of cruelty or stupidity, handed Venema his clothes in a plastic bag and left it with him.

When they returned to his cell hours later, the guards found Venema unresponsive, with the bag over his head. The prisoner was transported to a hospital, where he later died. On behalf of his estate, his sibling, Jordan Venema, filed suit in the district court in 2021, making deliberate indifference claims against the two guards and adding a failure to supervise claim against Warden DeAngelo, all in violation of Venema’s Eighth Amendment rights.

All three Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint, claiming QI. The guards claimed that no one instructed them not to give a plastic bag to the prisoner. The warden claimed that she was too far removed from their decision to be liable for it. The district court denied all three claims. For the guards, the court said, it should have been obvious that they put Venema at risk of harm. For the warden, the court found sufficient evidence that she knew or should have known of the risk because she failed to train the guards not to give suicidal prisoners plastic bags.

Case Moves to the Sixth Circuit

West and Keys did not file an appeal, but DeAngelo did. The Estate moved to dismiss her appeal for lack of jurisdiction. But the Sixth Circuit denied that motion, determining that there were no questions of material fact, only questions of law: “whether the complaint adequately alleges that DeAngelo violated Venema’s Eighth Amendment rights, and whether those rights were clearly established at the time of the violation.”

The first prong of the QI test involved a determination whether DeAngelo had committed a civil rights violation. She did not contest that West and Keys had violated Venema’s Eight Amendment rights. The only question was whether she had supervisory liability for their actions. To establish that, the Court said that DeAngelo must have more than supervisory responsibility; there must instead be “some active unconstitutional behavior on the part of the supervisor,” quoting Peatross v. City of Memphis, 818 F.3d 233 (6th Cir. 2016), which also said “at a minimum, the plaintiff must show that the defendant at least implicitly authorized, approved, or knowingly acquiesced in the unconstitutional conduct of the offending officers.”

In this case, the Court said, “facts plausibly allege that DeAngelo knowingly acquiesced in the unconstitutional conduct of subordinates Keys and West through the execution of her job function.” However, the Plaintiff must also show a causal connection between the supervisor’s actions or inactions and the injury suffered. The Court said that the Estate met that burden, too, because “the facts plausibly allege that there is a causal connection between DeAngelo’s acts and omissions and Venema’s death.”

Pointing to Peatross and Coley v. Lucas Cty., 799 F.3d 530 (6th Cir. 2015), the Court said it had made clear “that supervising police officers could be liable for violations of a deceased’s constitutional rights when complaints plausibly alleged that the supervisor-­defendant had failed to train and supervise subordinate officers against engaging in the conduct that caused the death.” As in those cases, DeAngelo failed to train her guards not to give suicidal prisoners plastic bags and then give them hours to use it to kill themselves.

That also established a causal connection. The Court compared DeAngelo to the police chief in Campbell v. City of Springboro, 700 F. 3d 779 (6th Cir. 2012). He “was not ‘actively involved’ in dog-­bite incidents” that formed the basis of the complaint. But his “failure to require appropriate supervision of the police department’s canine unit and failure ‘to establish and publish an official K-­9 unit policy could be reasonably expected to give rise to just the sort of injuries that occurred.’”

As to showing that DeAngelo violated a clearly established right, the Court said that the Estate had not yet met its burden, though what it pleaded was sufficient to state a supervisory liability claim and defeat her motion to dismiss at the pleading stage. 

Dissenting Judge John B. Nalbandian derided the Estate’s pleadings as “conclusory allegations” that failed to “show [DeAngelo’s] active involvement in the constitutional deprivation.” Moreover, he said, she had no causal connection to Venema’s injury because “her alleged acts or omissions were not the proximate cause of [his] death.”

Overruling that, the Court denied DeAngelo’s appeal and affirmed the district court’s judgment. Before the Court, the Estate was represented by attorneys Matthew D. Klakulak and Andrew J. Laurila of Giroux Pappas Trial Attorneys in Southfield. See: Venema v. West, 133 F.4th 625 (6th Cir. 2025).

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