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PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 25-1185
TIFFANY ADELE KING, as Administratrix of the Estate of Maurice Antoine King,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
CHARLES S. BLACKWOOD, in his official capacity as Sheriff of Orange County;
TRAVELERS CASUALTY AND SURETY COMPANY OF AMERICA, official
bond for Defendant Sheriff Blackwood; WILLIAM D. BERRY, JR., in his
individual capacity; THOMAS E. LINSTER, III,
Defendants – Appellants,
and
ORANGE COUNTY; WILMER A. GOMEZ, in his individual capacity; STEFAN
H. HOOKER, in his individual capacity; KENDRICK R. MOORE, in his individual
capacity; ANTONIO R. CARTNAIL, in his individual capacity; ANGELA K.
SPEAR, in her individual capacity; JERRY R. HAWKINS, in his individual
capacity; JAMISON R. SYKES, in his individual capacity,
Defendants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, at
Greensboro. Catherine C. Eagles, Chief District Judge. (1:21-cv-00383-CCE-JEP)
Argued: December 10, 2025 Decided: July 2, 2026
Before AGEE, RICHARDSON, and BENJAMIN, Circuit Judges.
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Affirmed in part and dismissed in part by published opinion. Judge Richardson wrote the
opinion, in which Judges Agee and Benjamin joined.
Sonny Sade Haynes, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Brian Florencio Castro, WOMBLE
BOND DICKINSON (US) LLP, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellants. Liedeke Allyn
Sharp, ALLYN SHARP LAW, PLLC, Carrboro, North Carolina, for Appellee.
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RICHARDSON, Circuit Judge:
Two detention officers heard an inmate, Maurice Antoine King, moaning in his cell
and suspected he had been beaten. Then, to avoid extra paperwork, they waited twenty
minutes before checking on him. Several other inmates had assaulted King in his cell, and
he ultimately died as a result. His estate sued the County, the Sheriff, and several detention
officers and supervisors, alleging that Defendants allowed King to be beaten and failed to
help him.
The district court denied two of the officers’ motion for summary judgment on
qualified immunity grounds. We affirm. Taking the evidence in the light most favorable
to King, the district court found that the officers suspected an assault, heard sounds of
distress, and delayed responding to avoid paperwork. Accepting those findings, we agree
that a reasonable jury could find the officers consciously disregarded a substantial risk of
serious harm. And we agree that such disregard would violate clearly established law.
I. BACKGROUND
A. King’s Assault And Death
After pleading guilty to federal drug charges, Maurice King was housed in the BPod 1 of the Orange County Detention Center as he awaited sentencing. Each cell door bore
a rectangular window. Doors were locked at night but stayed unlocked during the day.
Cameras watched the common areas and cell entrances but could not see inside the cells.
1
B-Pod is a segregation block, kept apart from the general population.
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And a two-way intercom ran into every cell. Jailhouse policy required officers to
periodically inspect inmates visually.
At 6:38 p.m. on March 4, 2020, video surveillance shows King leading another
inmate, Grantz, upstairs to his second-floor cell and Grantz closing the cell door behind
them. Within a minute, video shows two other inmates—Salters and Stephens—entering
the cell and the cell door opening to reveal a physical altercation at the cell’s threshold.
Another inmate, Bradford, then entered the cell and closed the door. Then, Bradford,
Salters, and Stephens left the cell. A few minutes later, at 6:45 p.m., Grantz left the cell
and Bradford closed the door, so only King remained inside.
Two minutes later, Officer Berry entered B-Pod to conduct his round. He passed
King’s cell twice, but he never turned his head toward the cell. Officer Berry later claimed
he used his “peripheral vision” to look through the cell window. J.A. 1521 n.7. Thirty
minutes after Officer Berry finished his round, Officer Linster came in for the next round
at 7:19 p.m. He too walked past King’s cell twice without looking inside. Officer Linster
later claimed he had seen King and Grantz sitting on different bunks in King’s cell. But
the cell had only one bunk, and the video showed that Grantz had already left King’s cell
at 6:45 p.m.
Between 7:20 and 7:47 p.m., inmates Bradford, Grantz, Stephens, and Salters cycled
in and out of King’s cell. At 7:34 p.m., an inmate pulled a towel that had partially covered
the cell-door window over the rest of the window to fully block it.
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At 7:47 p.m., Officer Linster returned for another round. He passed King’s cell yet
again without looking inside. On his way out, he heard a “concerning noise” from the cell. 2
But he kept walking.
Three minutes later, at 7:50 p.m., Officers Berry and Linster used the intercom to
listen in on King’s cell. Berry later told investigators that they thought they heard “a moan
or a groan.” J.A. 1523 n.9. Elsewhere, Berry said he heard “someone talking” to King as
they listened through the intercom.
After this, the pair waited roughly twenty-three minutes. Officer Berry did not go
to check on King until 8:13 p.m. He explained the delay to investigators: “[W]e had to
wait until about five minutes after [8 p.m.] or our punch won’t count.” J.A. 922. A “punch”
is the touch of a wall sensor that the Detention Center uses to log supervisory rounds. The
sensors had to be hit on schedule. A missed punch meant extra paperwork, as Officer Berry
explained in his deposition: “[I]f you go in 1 minute early you got to fill out that damn
paper . . . at 5 o’clock in the morning before you go home that you missed a punch.” J.A.
922–23. Berry had heard the noise. He waited anyway. He did not want to do paperwork.
When speaking with investigators after the fact, both officers described their
thoughts during the incident. Both men indicated that after hearing the sounds from King’s
cell—and before checking on him—they suspected that King had been assaulted. King v.
Blackwood, No. 1:21-CV-383, 2025 WL 487233, at *3 (M.D.N.C. Feb. 13, 2025). Officer
2
Officer Linster also claimed he thought this noise was “someone ask[ing] for
soap.” J.A. 811, 1302–04. But Lieutenant Spear, who supervised the officers, testified
that Officer Linster told her that he had heard “labored breathing.” J.A. 1457, 1523 n.9.
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Berry explained that when he finally entered King’s cell, he was “looking for some kind
of, like, injuries,” because “somebody [could have] hit him in the face.” Id. And Officer
Linster recounted telling Berry, before the cell check, that he wanted “to be for sure”
because “I don’t want to accuse nobody of something they ain’t done.” Id.
Before entering King’s cell, Officer Berry stopped at the nurse’s station and picked
up an inhaler—King was known to have asthma. But Berry would later tell a different
story. In both his deposition and discussion with investigators, he said that he checked on
King first and only then retrieved the inhaler at King’s request. The surveillance footage
shows the opposite. He had the inhaler before he ever opened the cell door.
Inside, Officer Berry found King soaking wet. The area above his left eye was
bruised, bleeding, and swollen. He could not speak. He struggled to breathe. Berry
radioed Officer Linster. Linster called Sergeant Cartnail, a supervisor. Bringing the nurse
into B-Pod required locking down every inmate first, which would take about thirty
minutes. So they brought King to the nurse instead. Lieutenant Spear later acknowledged
that, in hindsight, the officers should have called 911.
At 8:56 p.m., officers wheeled King out of B-Pod to the on-site nurse. By 9:06 p.m.,
the nurse had called 911. EMS arrived at 9:13 p.m. At first, King insisted he was only
having an asthma attack. But in the ambulance, he changed his story: “They” had
“stomped him in the head” and “choked him out.” J.A. 1526. He also identified the
assailant as someone named “Grant.” An EKG showed he had suffered a heart attack.
King died at Duke Hospital at 10:22 p.m. The cause: “hypertensive cardiovascular
disease in the setting of a physical altercation.” J.A. 821, 826. The death was classified a
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homicide. The attending physician and the local medical examiner agreed that King’s
injuries might not have been fatal if he had received treatment sooner.
B. Procedural History
King’s estate, administered by his mother, Ms. King, brought four claims: (1) a
§ 1983 individual-capacity claim against eight detention officers and supervisors for
deliberate indifference to King’s safety and medical needs; (2) a Monell municipal liability
claim against Orange County and Sheriff Blackwood; (3) a state-law wrongful death claim;
and (4) a state-law claim on Sheriff Blackwood’s $250,000 official bond from Travelers
Casualty and Surety Company of America.
On summary judgment, the magistrate judge evaluated qualified immunity under
the subjective Eighth Amendment standard—the standard applicable to King in 2020,
when these events took place. 3 The magistrate judge recommended dismissing the
3
Pretrial detainees bring deliberate indifference claims under the Fourteenth
Amendment, see Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389, 391 (2015), while convicted
prisoners bring them under the Eighth Amendment, see Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825,
828 (1994). Before 2023, we assessed both types of claims under the same, subjective
standard. See Mays v. Sprinkle, 992 F.3d 295, 301–02 (4th Cir. 2021). Then, in Short v.
Hartman, this Court eliminated the subjective element for Fourteenth Amendment
deliberate-indifference claims brought by pretrial detainees, adopting an objectivereasonableness test instead. 87 F.4th 593, 611 (4th Cir. 2023).
Both the magistrate judge and the district court correctly applied the pre-Short
subjective standard, because the relevant events took place in 2020, before we decided
Short. Post-Short, whether detainees like King, convicted but awaiting sentencing,
constitute pretrial detainees or convicted prisoners remains an open question in this Circuit.
But here, regardless of which category King falls into, the result is the same because the
subjective standard still applied to both categories back in 2020. See Mays, 992 F.3d at
301–02.
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individual-capacity § 1983 claims but allowing the Monell claim and the bond-statute
claim to proceed.
The district court adopted these recommendations with one important exception: It
rejected the recommendation to grant summary judgment on the § 1983 individualcapacity claims. In a subsequent order, the court denied summary judgment to Officers
Berry and Linster, concluding that a jury could find they “ignored obvious risks to
Mr. King’s health for over an hour” and “intentionally delayed checking on Mr. King for
some twenty minutes in order to avoid extra paperwork . . . despite knowing that no one
had looked into Mr. King’s cell or monitored the video for well over an hour.” King, 2025
WL 487233, at *3, *4. The court limited King’s § 1983 claim to Officers Berry and
Linster’s conduct from the time of Berry’s first failed cell check after the assault to Berry’s
entry into the cell.
Defendants Blackwood, Travelers, Berry, and Linster filed a timely notice of appeal.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Jurisdiction
We start with jurisdiction. United States ex rel. Oberg v. Nelnet, Inc., 105 F.4th
161, 168 (4th Cir. 2024).
1. We possess jurisdiction over the qualified immunity appeal
The denial of qualified immunity is immediately appealable under the collateral
order doctrine to the extent it turns on a question of law. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511,
530 (1985). Officers Berry and Linster challenge the district court’s ruling insofar as it
rests on the legal conclusion that the evidence, as found by the district court in the light
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most favorable to King, reveals a violation of clearly established law. That presents an
appealable legal question. See Rambert v. City of Greenville, 107 F.4th 388, 396 (4th Cir.
2024); Winfield v. Bass, 106 F.3d 525, 529–30 (4th Cir. 1997). So we have jurisdiction
over this appeal.
2. We lack pendent jurisdiction over the Monell claim
Sheriff Blackwood also appeals the denial of summary judgment on King’s Monell
claim. That order is not independently appealable. So we may review it only if we have
pendent appellate jurisdiction. The Sheriff argues that we should exercise pendent
jurisdiction because the Monell claim is “inextricably intertwined” with the properly
appealable qualified immunity order. See Swint v. Chambers Cnty. Comm’n, 514 U.S. 35,
51 (1995); Bellotte v. Edwards, 629 F.3d 415, 427 (4th Cir. 2011).
Sheriff Blackwood contends that the claims are inextricably intertwined because an
agent’s constitutional violation is a necessary predicate for Monell liability. See Atkinson
v. Godfrey, 100 F.4th 498, 509 (4th Cir. 2024) (“[A] municipality cannot be liable in the
absence of a constitutional violation by one of its agents.” (quoting Altman v. City of High
Point, 330 F.3d 194, 207 n.10 (4th Cir. 2003))). Thus, he argues, if we conclude on the
qualified immunity appeal that Officers Berry and Linster committed no constitutional
violation, then the Monell claim necessarily fails. See Evans v. Chalmers, 703 F.3d 636,
654 n.11 (4th Cir. 2012).
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We decline to exercise pendent jurisdiction because our resolution of qualified
immunity for King’s § 1983 claim does not necessarily resolve the Monell claim. 4 See
Swint, 514 U.S. at 51. Specifically, the answer to the qualified-immunity question does
not depend on whether the Fourteenth Amendment or the Eighth Amendment applied to
King as a convicted-but-unsentenced inmate, while the resolution of the Monell claim does.
Qualified immunity “protects reasonable officers who try to comply with the law.”
Harrold v. Hagen, 174 F.4th 393, 407 (4th Cir. 2026) (Richardson, J., dissenting). Indeed,
the doctrine shields “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the
law.” Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986). So we conduct the inquiry based on the
clearly established law at the time of the violation—an officer cannot be expected to know
how the law might develop. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818–19 (1982). In
2020, when the events of this case occurred, a reasonable officer could have concluded that
the subjective standard applied to a deliberate-indifference claim regardless of whether it
was brought by a pretrial detainee, governed by the Fourteenth Amendment, or by a
convicted prisoner, governed by the Eighth Amendment. See Mays, 992 F.3d at 301–02
(explaining in 2021 that “a pretrial-detainee-medical-deliberate-indifference claim
required both an objectively serious medical condition and subjective knowledge of the
4
Pendent jurisdiction might be appropriate where resolution of the first prong of
qualified immunity in Defendants’ favor—i.e., a finding of no constitutional violation—
would necessarily defeat the Monell claim. See Evans, 703 F.3d at 654 n.11; Atkinson, 100
F.4th at 509. But that is not this case. As we explain below, we do not find in Officers
Berry and Linster’s favor. And the claim against them rests on a different factual theory
than the Monell claim, which is premised on the Sheriff’s alleged custom of failing to
ensure visual inspections during rounds.
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condition and the excessive risk posed from inaction”). In other words, for qualified
immunity purposes, we need not resolve which amendment governs, 5 because from the
perspective of a reasonable officer at the time, the subjective standard could have applied
to both. Id.
Not so for the Monell claim. Because municipalities cannot assert qualified
immunity, Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622, 638 (1980), Ms. King simply must
show that a custom or practice violated King’s constitutional rights without the clearly
established overlay. So we would base a Monell decision on the law as it is today, not the
law as it might seem in the mind of a reasonable officer at the time of the relevant events.
And today, in light of this Court’s decision in Short, we use different standards depending
on whether the claim arises under the Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment. See 87 F.4th at
611. Thus, unlike the § 1983 claim against Officers Berry and Linster, the outcome of the
Monell claim could differ depending on which constitutional provision applies. See Sharpe
v. Winterville Police Dep’t, 59 F.4th 674, 684 (4th Cir. 2023). So we could not resolve the
claim without deciding which amendment governs convicted-but-unsentenced detainees.
Therefore, the Monell claim is not necessarily resolved by our disposition of the qualified
5
Compare Fuentes v. Wagner, 206 F.3d 335, 341 (3d Cir. 2000) (holding that the
Fourteenth Amendment applies until a sentence is imposed) and Lewis v. Downey, 581
F.3d 467, 473–74 (7th Cir. 2009) (same), with Berry v. City of Muskogee, 900 F.2d 1489,
1493 (10th Cir. 1990) (holding that the Eighth Amendment applies after a conviction);
Whitnack v. Douglas Cnty., 16 F.3d 954, 957 (8th Cir. 1994) (same); Resnick v. Hayes, 213
F.3d 443, 448 (9th Cir. 2000) (same); and Tilmon v. Prator, 368 F.3d 521, 523–24 (5th
Cir. 2004) (same).
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immunity appeal, and we dismiss the appeal of the Monell claim for lack of appellate
jurisdiction.
3. We lack pendent jurisdiction over the state-law bond claim
Sheriff Blackwood and Travelers Casualty and Surety Company also appeal the
denial of summary judgment on King’s claim under North Carolina’s bond statute, N.C.
Gen. Stat. § 58-76-5. But to exercise pendent jurisdiction over the bond claim would be
even further afield. This claim requires only a showing of negligence. See Stafford v.
Barker, 502 S.E.2d 1, 6 (N.C. Ct. App. 1998). But “[d]eliberate indifference describes a
state of mind more blameworthy than negligence.” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 835. So even if
we ruled in Defendants’ favor on qualified immunity—finding that Officers Berry and
Linster were not deliberately indifferent—that would not establish that the officers were
not negligent. Therefore, resolving the qualified immunity appeal has no necessary bearing
on the bond claim. See Indus. Servs. Grp., Inc. v. Dobson, 68 F.4th 155, 167 (4th Cir.
2023). So we dismiss this portion of the appeal.
B. Officers Berry And Linster Are Not Entitled To Qualified Immunity At
This Stage
Qualified immunity shields government officials from civil liability unless a
plaintiff shows both (1) that the official violated a constitutional right and (2) that the right
was clearly established at the time of the violation. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223,
232 (2009). And since interlocutory appeals of the denial of qualified immunity “are
limited to legal questions,” we do not second-guess the district court’s factual findings as
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we conduct our analysis. Hicks v. Ferreyra, 965 F.3d 302, 309 (4th Cir. 2020). 6
Accordingly, we decide only whether, on those assumed facts and inferences, the officers
violated clearly established law.
1. Officers Berry and Linster violated a constitutional right
For the reasons discussed above, we evaluate whether Officers Berry and Linster
violated a constitutional right, for qualified immunity purposes, by applying the subjective
deliberate-indifference standard. This standard requires proof of both an objective
component—the deprivation must be “objectively serious”—and a subjective one—the
officer must have had “a sufficiently culpable state of mind.” Mays, 992 F.3d at 300
(quoting Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834). An objectively serious medical need is one “diagnosed
by a physician as mandating treatment” or one “so obvious that even a lay person would
easily recognize the necessity for a doctor’s attention.” Iko v. Shreve, 535 F.3d 225, 241
(4th Cir. 2008) (quoting Henderson v. Sheahan, 196 F.3d 839, 846 (7th Cir. 1999)). The
6
The scope of our interlocutory review is limited, extending only to “abstract issues
of law.” Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 317 (1995). It does not extend to challenges to
a district court’s determination of “whether or not the pretrial record sets forth a ‘genuine’
issue of fact for trial.” Id. at 319–20. Therefore, we “take, as given, the facts that the
district court assumed when it denied summary judgment,” id. at 319, and decide only
whether, on those facts, the officers violated clearly established law. That said, “we are
[not] strictly confined to the four corners of the district court’s order” as we conduct our
review. Williams v. Strickland, 917 F.3d 763, 768 n.3 (4th Cir. 2019). When the district
court does not explicitly state a fact, “we may assume some facts . . . provided that we draw
all inferences in the plaintiff’s favor.” Id.; see also Thurston v. Frye, 99 F.4th 665, 675 n.9
(4th Cir. 2024). So when conducting interlocutory review of the denial of qualified
immunity, we must accept the facts “as the district court gives them to us, . . . view those
facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff,” and ask whether “the defendant officers
[are] still entitled to qualified immunity.” Hicks, 965 F.3d at 309 (quoting Williams, 917
F.3d at 768) (cleaned up).
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subjective prong requires that the officer actually knew of a substantial risk of serious harm
and consciously disregarded that risk. Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837.
That background frames the core of King’s claim: Officers Berry and Linster’s
conduct during the roughly twenty minutes between 7:50 p.m., when they first heard
sounds of distress from King’s cell, and 8:13 p.m., when Berry finally opened the cell
door. 7
Here, the objective component is satisfied. This inquiry is keyed to King’s medical
situation as known by the officers at the time of the alleged indifference, not to whatever
injuries were revealed afterward. So the relevant medical need is not the hematoma that
the officers eventually discovered or the cardiac event diagnosed at the hospital. Rather, it
is the situation that the officers confronted around 7:50 p.m. The district court
characterized the situation as follows: Officers Berry and Linster were stationed at a
segregation pod known to house violent inmates, presenting “a high risk of inmate-oninmate violence,” King, 2025 WL 487233, at *2; during one of his rounds, Officer Linster
heard a “concerning sound” come from an inmate’s cell, and reported this to Officer Berry;
soon thereafter, they heard—via the intercom—moaning, groaning, and labored breathing
coming from the same cell. A reasonable lay person presented with those facts—a
King’s counsel contends that the district court improperly narrowed the surviving
7
claim to exclude the Officers’ response after discovering King’s condition at 8:13 p.m. But
King did not seek to cross-appeal the grant of summary judgment as to that period. See
Bellotte, 629 F.3d at 427. Although an appellee may defend the judgment below on any
ground supported by the record, he may not attack it to enlarge his rights absent a crossappeal. Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U.S. 237, 244–45 (2008); Morley Constr. Co. v.
Md. Cas. Co., 300 U.S. 185, 191 (1937); see also El Paso Nat. Gas Co. v. Neztsosie, 526
U.S. 473, 479 (1999).
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concerning sound followed by moans, groans, and labored breathing from an inmate in a
highly violent unit—would have recognized the need for medical attention. 8 See Iko, 535
F.3d at 241.
King also satisfies the subjective prong. The district court evaluated the record,
made a number of factual findings, and decided that based on these findings, a reasonable
jury could conclude that Officers Berry and Linster actually knew of and consciously
disregarded a substantial risk to King. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 842. On interlocutory
appeal, we do not review whether the record supports that assessment of the facts a
reasonable jury could find and the inferences it could draw. Rather, accepting that
assessment, we ask whether those facts and inferences would fulfill the legal standard:
actual knowledge and conscious disregard of a substantial risk.
First, the district court found that the officers suspected that King had been
assaulted. In interviews on the day after the attack, “both officers stated or at least implied
8
Defendants resist this conclusion by relying on cases addressing whether asthma
qualifies as a serious medical need. Appellants’ Br. at 41–42 (citing Sledge v. Kooi, 564
F.3d 105 (2d Cir. 2009)). Reliance on such cases misconceives the question before us. For
one, such an argument depends on a characterization of the situation not adopted by the
district court. The district court did not find that Officers Berry and Linster suspected only
an asthma attack; it found that the officers heard sounds of distress from an inmate in
circumstances reasonably suggesting that the inmate had been the victim of a violent
assault. The fact that these sounds might also have been consistent with an asthma attack
does not detract from the objective seriousness of what the officers heard. That’s because
the inquiry here does not turn on whether one possible explanation for the sounds, standing
alone, would qualify as a serious medical need. Instead, the objective prong asks whether
a reasonable lay person would have recognized the need for medical care given the
particular situation the officers faced: Here, that means considering whether alarming
sounds from a cell in a violence-prone prison block indicate an objectively serious medical
need, not whether King’s asthma was in and of itself a serious medical condition.
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that after they heard sounds coming from Mr. King’s cell, they suspected he had been
assaulted.” King, 2025 WL 487233, at *3. Officer Berry told investigators that when he
entered the cell, he “was looking for some kind of, like, injuries” in the event that
“somebody [had] hit [King] in the face.” Id. Officer Linster told investigators that before
Berry checked King’s cell, he said to Berry: “I want to be sure before, you know, . . . cause
I don’t want to accuse nobody of something they ain’t done.” Id. Whether a jury may
draw that inference is not ours to decide in this interlocutory appeal. The district court did
draw it; we must credit it. See Johnson, 515 U.S. at 319–20; Hicks, 965 F.3d at 309. But
we do review whether such suspicion, along with the district court’s other factual findings
detailed below, would together permit a reasonable jury to conclude the officers actually
knew of and consciously disregarded a substantial risk to King.
Second, the district court found that Berry and Linster “intentionally delayed
checking on Mr. King for some twenty minutes in order to avoid extra paperwork.” King,
2025 WL 487233, at *2. Officer Berry’s deposition supplied the basis for this finding:
“[W]e had to wait until about five minutes after [8 p.m.] or our punch won’t count,” and
“[i]f you go in 1 minute early you got to fill out that damn paper the next morning . . . that
you missed a punch.” J.A. 922–23. From these statements, the district court factually
concluded that the officers did not take action for twenty minutes, despite suspecting King
had been assaulted, because they wanted to avoid an administrative inconvenience the next
morning. And the court came to the legal conclusion, which we review, that from this
factual conclusion, a reasonable jury could find conscious disregard of a substantial risk to
King. King, 2025 WL 487233, at *4.
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Third, the district court found that before Officer Berry finally went to King’s cell,
he stopped at the nurse’s station and retrieved an inhaler. The court understood this conduct
as “showing that he knew that medical care was needed.” King, 2025 WL 487233, at *2.
Finally, the district court found that Officers Berry and Linster “both made
inconsistent and arguably false material statements in their reports, interviews, depositions,
and declarations, all tending to indicate they knew they had violated Mr. King’s rights.”
King, 2025 WL 487233, at *3. Officer Berry told investigators multiple times that he had
retrieved King’s inhaler only after initially checking on him, but surveillance video shows
he brought the inhaler on his first visit to King’s cell. Officer Linster claimed he had seen
King and Grantz sitting on separate bunks during his 7:19 p.m. round, but the cell had only
one bunk, and video shows Grantz leaving the cell before that time. From these
inconsistencies, the district court inferred the officers knew their response was
inadequate—another fact from which a jury could conclude that the officers violated
King’s constitutional rights. King, 2025 WL 487233, at *3.
Taken together, the district court’s factual findings—audible distress from an inmate
suspected of having been assaulted, a twenty-minute delay motivated by paperwork
avoidance, and post-incident statements supporting an inference of contemporaneous
awareness—would permit a reasonable jury to find that Officers Berry and Linster
subjectively appreciated a substantial risk of serious harm to King and consciously
disregarded it. Again: Whether a jury could, much less would, draw the factual inferences
that the district court did is not our judgment to make on interlocutory review. Where the
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district court drew a factual inference, we must credit it. See Johnson, 515 U.S. at 319–20.
We find the subjective prong is satisfied based on the facts as the district court found them.
Officers Berry and Linster’s arguments to the contrary fail, because each depends
on a characterization of the record that the district court did not adopt. First, they argue
that they lacked actual knowledge of a substantial risk—that they believed King was
experiencing, at most, an asthma attack, and that their delay perhaps reflects poor
judgment, but not deliberate indifference to a known serious risk. And they contend that
Officer Berry’s retrieval of the inhaler confirms their good-faith belief that King was
merely experiencing an asthma attack. See Koon v. North Carolina, 50 F.4th 398, 407 (4th
Cir. 2022) (“[G]ood-faith efforts to remedy the plaintiff’s problems will prevent finding
deliberate indifference, absent extraordinary circumstances.”).
Whatever else the officers may have suspected, the district court found that they
suspected King had been assaulted. King, 2025 WL 487233, at *2–*4. That finding
controls here, and it is enough. The officers contend that Berry’s retrieval of the inhaler
shows they thought the trouble was asthma. But the court did not treat the inhaler as a
benign diagnostic guess; it treated Berry’s detour to fetch it—before he ever opened the
door and saw King—as evidence he already “knew that medical care was needed.” King,
2025 WL 487233, at *2. A suspicion of assault and a belief that asthma might be involved
are not mutually exclusive, and the officers need not have settled on a diagnosis to be on
notice of a substantial risk. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 842. Koon protects officers who
recognize a problem and take genuine, if imperfect, steps to meet it. 50 F.4th at 407. Here,
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the district court found the opposite: For twenty minutes these officers did nothing to spare
themselves a form.
Next, the officers argue that their post-incident inconsistent statements are “just as
consistent with a scenario where the officers did not realize the severity of the situation
initially and, upon seeing the tragic result, attempted to justify their actions after the fact.”
Appellants’ Reply Br. at 15. That is a jury argument, not a summary-judgment argument.
The district court—construing all reasonable inferences in King’s favor—drew the
contrary inference and made the factual determination that the officers’ “inconsistent and
arguably false statements” indicated “that they knew their response to Mr. King’s medical
need was inadequate.” 9 King, 2025 WL 487233, at *3. We may not credit Defendants’
preferred inference over the district court’s on interlocutory review of a denial of qualified
immunity. See Hensley ex rel. North Carolina v. Price, 876 F.3d 573, 579–80 (4th Cir.
2017). 10
9
The officers say their later misstatements show only after-the-fact embarrassment
and that a plaintiff cannot reach a jury merely by inviting disbelief. See Anderson v. Liberty
Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 256–57 (1986). The premise fails on its own terms. This is not
a credibility contest in which King asks a jury to doubt the officers’ word. The surveillance
video establishes the falsity directly: Officer Berry had the inhaler before he initially
entered the cell, though he swore he retrieved it afterward; Officer Linster says he saw two
inmates on two bunks in a one-bunk cell after one of the inmates had already left. The
district court was entitled to infer from demonstrably false exculpatory accounts that the
officers knew at the time their response was inadequate.
10
The officers also point out that when EMTs finally attended to King, they found
him “awake, alert, and oriented” with a level of distress classified as “mild.” J.A. 176–77.
But King’s apparent lucidity at 9:13 p.m. says nothing about what Berry and Linster knew
or suspected at 7:50 p.m.
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2. The violated right was clearly established
Having concluded that the district court’s findings would permit a reasonable jury
to find that Officers Berry and Linster violated King’s constitutional right to be free from
deliberate indifference to a serious medical need, we turn to whether that right was clearly
established at the time of their conduct. 11 It was.
Our Circuit “require[s] less specificity when defining the right in the Eighth
Amendment context than when the Fourth Amendment is implicated.” King v. Riley, 76
F.4th 259, 266 (4th Cir. 2023); Pfaller v. Amonette, 55 F.4th 436, 453 (4th Cir. 2022).
Thus, in cases like the one before us, this Court has identified the applicable clearly
established right as “[a] prisoner’s right to adequate medical care and freedom from
deliberate indifference to medical needs.” Scinto v. Stansberry, 841 F.3d 219, 236 (4th
Cir. 2016); see also Tarashuk v. Givens, 53 F.4th 154, 164 (4th Cir. 2022). The governing
principle here has been settled since the Supreme Court’s decision in Estelle v. Gamble:
When “prison guards . . . intentionally den[y] or delay[] access to medical care,” they
violate the Eighth Amendment. 429 U.S. 97, 104–05 (1976); see Scinto, 841 F.3d at 236.
The district court found that a jury could conclude that Officers Berry and Linster
did precisely that. After hearing sounds that made them suspect King had been assaulted,
they intentionally delayed his access to medical care in order to avoid paperwork. This
11
Whether a “right was clearly established at a particular time . . . presents a
question of law, not one of ‘legal facts.’” Elder v. Holloway, 510 U.S. 510, 516 (1994).
That legal question is ours to decide, and it is distinct from the factual predicate, i.e., what
the officers knew and did. As already explained, the latter question is for the jury, whose
role we respect on interlocutory appeal by accepting the district court’s view of what the
record would permit the jury to find.
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Court has repeatedly applied Estelle to deny qualified immunity in analogous
circumstances. See, e.g., Scinto, 841 F.3d at 232 (reversing grant of summary judgment
based on qualified immunity where officials failed to provide treatment to an inmate
“experiencing evident physical distress”); Mays, 992 F.3d at 305 (reversing dismissal based
on qualified immunity where officers jailed an intoxicated inmate without providing
medical care despite knowing that he had ingested large quantities of prescription drugs);
see also Brice v. Va. Beach Corr. Ctr., 58 F.3d 101, 106 (4th Cir. 1995) (explaining that
courts should not treat an officer’s “contrived obliviousness” to an obvious medical need
as a lack of subjective awareness).
True, the cases just cited involved officers who already knew the nature of the
medical conditions they confronted, whereas Officers Berry and Linster had not yet
confirmed the nature of King’s injuries. But that distinction makes no difference, because
an officer can know a condition is serious without a diagnosis. An officer is liable when
he is aware of facts from which the need for medical care is obvious and he recognizes that
need. Farmer, 511 U.S. at 842; cf. Cooper v. Dyke, 814 F.2d 941, 944–46 (4th Cir. 1987).
The district court found that these officers heard King moaning, groaning, and laboring to
breathe, suspected he had been beaten, and knew he needed medical attention. An officer
who knows that much cannot escape Estelle merely because he couldn’t yet catalogue the
nature of the inmate’s injuries.
Officers Berry and Linster advance three more arguments for why the right was not
clearly established. All three depend on a version of the facts that the district court did not
adopt, so none succeeds.
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First, they argue that our decision in Riley demonstrates that the right at issue here
was not clearly established. We disagree. If anything, Riley confirms our analysis here.
There, an officer made supervisory rounds without looking inside the cells, and we held
that he had not violated clearly established law “because there is no clearly established
constitutional right to properly conducted security checks.” 76 F.4th at 264–68. But the
officer in Riley had heard nothing from the cells and had no reason to suspect that any
particular inmate had been harmed; his fault lay only in failing to take the prophylactic
steps that might have revealed an emergency. Id. at 266–68. Without clear precedent, a
reasonable officer could have been uncertain about whether conducting rounds without
peering into each cell was a constitutionally adequate response to the general risk of inmate
violence. Id. at 265–66. Officers Berry and Linster stood in a different position. The
district court found that they possessed concrete, contemporaneous, inmate-specific
knowledge: They heard King moaning and groaning and suspected he had been assaulted.
The duty to respond to a particular suspected emergency is not the same as the duty to
conduct rounds carefully enough to discover emergencies in the first place. Riley
concerned a failure to discover an emergency. This case concerns an intentional failure to
respond to a suspected one. 12
12
Moss v. Harwood highlights this distinction. 19 F.4th 614, 624–25 (4th Cir.
2021). Moss recognized that delay can constitute deliberate indifference only if the gravity
of the injury is apparent. Id. But in that case, nothing conveyed to the officers that
immediate medical intervention was required, and there was no “record evidence” that the
officers “subjectively appreciated any” substantial risk of serious harm. Id.; see also
Danser v. Stansberry, 772 F.3d 340, 347–49 (4th Cir. 2014). In contrast, here, the district
court made the opposite finding on both points: It found that the officers heard sounds of
(Continued)
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Second, the officers contend that no clearly established law required them to
respond to labored breathing, which they perceived as suggestive of nothing more than a
routine asthmatic episode. Appellants’ Br. at 41–42; Reply Br. at 8–9. But the district
court did not find that Officers Berry and Linster believed King was only having an asthma
attack or that the sounds they heard were ambiguous. Rather, it found that they actually
suspected an assault on the basis of the moaning and groaning that they heard through the
intercom. To prevail on this argument, the officers would have us set aside this finding
and credit instead their preferred characterization of their perceptions and suspicions.
But—once again—that is precisely the kind of factual revision that interlocutory review of
a qualified-immunity denial does not permit. Johnson, 515 U.S. at 319–20. Taking the
facts as the district court found them, the answer is straightforward: An officer who hears
an inmate moaning and groaning and thereby suspects that the inmate has just been
violently assaulted has fair notice that deliberately deferring any response in order to avoid
paperwork violates the inmate’s constitutional rights.
Third, Officers Berry and Linster argue that they did respond—albeit slowly—and
invoke Koon’s good-faith principle. 50 F.4th at 407. Once again, the officers’ argument
requires us to adopt a characterization of their conduct that the district court rejected. Koon
protects officers who recognize a problem and take imperfect but genuine steps to address
it. Id. The district court did not find that Officers Berry and Linster took such steps.
distress over the intercom and that they subjectively suspected that King had been
assaulted. King, 2025 WL 487233, at *2–*3; see also Pressly v. Hutto, 816 F.2d 977, 979
(4th Cir. 1987) (indicating that an officer must be aware of a particularized risk to the
specific inmate, not merely of a general risk to the unit).
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Rather, it found that for some twenty minutes they did nothing while waiting out the roundpunch interval in order to avoid a minor administrative inconvenience. The officers’ later
efforts—administering the inhaler, radioing for help, arranging transport, etc.—do not
retroactively transform their prior deliberate inaction into a good-faith response. The goodfaith principle protects officers who made some effort; the district court found that Officers
Berry and Linster made none during the relevant period.
Because the district court’s findings would permit a reasonable jury to conclude that
Officers Berry and Linster violated King’s clearly established constitutional right to be free
from deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs, they are not entitled to qualified
immunity at this stage. 13
* * *
We dismiss the Monell and bond-statute appeals for lack of jurisdiction. On the
§ 1983 claim against Officers Berry and Linster for their twenty-minute delay in
responding, we affirm. Officers who suspect an inmate has been beaten, hear him
13
King also alleged that Officers Berry and Linster were deliberately indifferent by
failing to look through the window of King’s cell while performing rounds before they
heard concerning sounds coming from King’s cell. Berry passed King’s cell twice during
his 6:47 p.m. round without looking inside; Linster did the same during his rounds at 7:19
and 7:47 p.m. While perhaps relevant to King’s other claims, this conduct cannot sustain
a deliberate-indifference claim under the subjective standard. These rounds were deficient
as a matter of jailhouse policy (which required visually observing inmates). But before
Officers Berry and Linster heard the concerning noises, they had no reason to suspect that
King had been assaulted. King had never reported threats. The assault occurred inside a
closed cell, and nothing suggests officers saw suspicious activity in person or on video.
An officer’s failure to inspect, without evidence that the officer subjectively appreciated a
risk of harm, does not satisfy the subjective prong. See Riley, 76 F.4th at 266 n.7.
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struggling, and choose to delay checking on him—to avoid extra paperwork—are not
entitled to qualified immunity.
AFFIRMED IN PART,
DISMISSED IN PART
25