## Facts

- On May 27, 1991, Konerak Sinthasomphone, a 14-year-old Laotian boy, escaped naked and injured from Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment and was found in the street by bystanders who called 911.
- Dahmer arrived and told responding officers that Sinthasomphone was his “friend” and that they were involved in a consensual relationship.
- Officers Joseph Gabrish and John Balcerzak responded to the call; rescue personnel indicated Sinthasomphone should receive medical treatment, but the officers ultimately sent the ambulance away.
- Two women at the scene expressed suspicion that Dahmer had harmed the boy and that the boy appeared to be trying to get away; the officers threatened arrest, and the women left.
- Additional officers, including Richard Porubcan, assisted in escorting Sinthasomphone back to Dahmer’s apartment.
- At the apartment, the officers reported no obvious signs of a struggle and observed items they interpreted as consistent with a consensual relationship, including photographs; the officers left Sinthasomphone with Dahmer.
- Dahmer murdered Sinthasomphone shortly after the officers departed.
- The estate and family sued the City of Milwaukee and the officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging Fourteenth Amendment violations, including substantive due process failure-to-protect and related theories.

## Issues

1. Whether the officers’ conduct violated substantive due process under a “special relationship” (custody) theory requiring the state to protect an individual from private violence.
2. Whether the officers’ actions could constitute a substantive due process violation under a “state-created danger” theory by increasing Sinthasomphone’s vulnerability to Dahmer.
3. Whether, as of May 27, 1991, any such substantive due process duty was clearly established such that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity.

## Decision

- The court granted summary judgment for the officers on the substantive due process claims.
- The court held the officers were entitled to qualified immunity because the asserted due process duty was not clearly established in 1991.
- The ruling narrowed the case by removing individual-officer liability on substantive due process grounds, leaving other theories (including equal protection and related municipal issues) for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- The Due Process Clause generally does not impose an affirmative duty on state actors to protect individuals from harm inflicted by private parties, absent a custodial “special relationship.”
- A “special relationship” duty arises when the state takes a person into custody or otherwise restrains liberty so as to limit the person’s ability to act on their own behalf.
- A “state-created danger” theory, to the extent recognized, requires affirmative state action that places an individual in a worse position than if the state had not acted; for qualified immunity purposes, the theory must have been clearly established at the time of the conduct.
- Qualified immunity shields officials from damages unless their conduct violated clearly established constitutional rights that a reasonable officer would have known at the time.
- Qualified immunity is assessed based on the circumstances as reasonably perceived by the officers at the time, not by hindsight informed by later-discovered facts.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that, under then-existing due process doctrine, the officers had no clearly established constitutional duty to protect Sinthasomphone from Dahmer or to refrain from returning him to Dahmer, and therefore the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on the substantive due process claims.


Estate of Sinthasomphone v. City of Milwaukee, 838 F. Supp. 1320 (E.D. Wis. 1993)