United States District Court Magistrate Rules on Discovery Issues in Prison Gang Death

On November 21, 2013, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, a magistrate judge denied in part and granted in part the plaintiff’s motion to compel CCA records of practices that were a moving force in Bronson Nunuha’s death. Bronson Nunuha was attacked and killed by two other Hawaiian prisoners in his cell in the Special Housing Incentive Program area of Saguaro Correctional Center (SCC) in Eloy, Arizona, per a correctional service agreement between Hawaii’s department of corrections and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), to address problems with Hawaiian prison gang members. The attack occurred on February 18, 2010, after Nunuha was threatened by United Samoan Organization (USO) members and after his request to be transferred to a safer housing area.

The plaintiffs, Nunuha’s family, filed suit against the State of Hawaii on February 15, 2012, asserting claims of wrongful death, negligence/gross negligence, cruel and unusual punishment, deprivation of substantive due process, and violation of Nunuha’s rights as expressed in the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

The plaintiffs sought four classes of documents:

1. Disciplinary records of the 29 SCC prisoners. The defense labelled these items as “unreasonable, cumulative, and duplicative”; the court noted that the disciplinary records submitted by CCA were demonstrably skeletal and only included information on eight of the 29 requested. The court granted the request to compel the remaining documents.
2. Records from the 2005 assault on prisoner Ronnie Lonoaea. The plaintiff sought records arising from the July 2005 assault on Hawaiian Department of Public Safety (DPS) prisoner Ronnie Lonoaea. That attack had many of the same circumstances and some of the same personnel as in Nunuha’s attack, and both were gang related. The defendants objected, noting it was a different facility, five years earlier, and under “wildly” different circumstances. The plaintiffs asserted it was relevant inasmuch as it showed that CCA authorities were aware of the particular gang problem in the case. The judge agreed with plaintiff and granted the issue.
3. Unredacted DPS Audit of Florence Correctional Center, another Arizona prison under correctional service agreement between CCA and DPS that had USO gang problems. The plaintiff claimed that CCA failed to learn from the problems at Florence and the defense claimed that the redacted portion of the report that the plaintiff was seeking was primarily prisoners’ names. In this instance, the judge held for defense.
4. Documents related to the internal affairs investigation of Nunuha’s death. The plaintiff sought to compel DPS release of internal affairs investigation of Nunuha’s death, but the defense argued that the report was directed by the state attorney general and that the investigator was told beforehand that the work was protected under attorney-client and work product privileges. The judge found the documents to be privileged and also denied this request. See: Estate of Bronson Nunuha v. State of Hawaii, U.S.D.C. (D.C. Haw.), Case no. 1:12-cv-00147-DXW-RLP.

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