David Watts v. Kevin Jones

── David Watts v. Kevin Jones ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Date: May 29, 2026 Category: General In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 25-1046 DAVID W. WATTS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. KEVIN JONES and MARK SMIT, Defendants-Appellants. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. No. 23-cv-87-wmc — William M. Conley, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 — DECIDED MAY 29, 2026 ____________________ Before BRENNAN, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and SYKES, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Two detectives investigating an inmate at the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility tried to speak with David Watts, another inmate, who had sent letters suggesting that he had valuable information about a murder and an attempted murder. One detective appeared at Watts’s cell. He feared that the inmate under investigation would get wind of anything he said, so he refused to talk. Watts relates that, even so, he was threatened and harassed. Though no 2 No. 25-1046 physical harm came to him, Watts filed this suit under 42 U.S.C. §1983 seeking damages from the detectives for expos- ing him to risk. Watts asked the district court to conduct the litigation un- der seal, and it largely obliged. Many papers were withheld from the public record, and others were heavily redacted. Af- ter the district court denied the defendants’ motion for sum- mary judgment, they took an immediate appeal to argue for qualified immunity. Watts asked us to conduct the appeal un- der seal. A motions judge of this court declined but author- ized redactions so severe that the case was docketed—and the briefs were captioned—as “Appellee v. K.J. and M.S.” The use of pseudonyms was explored at oral argument, during which the defendants consented to the disclosure of their names. Watts continued to assert a right to anonymity, but this court found secrecy unjustified and entered an order (reproduced as an appendix to this opinion) giving him a choice between withdrawing the suit and having his name placed in the public record. After that time passed without ac- tion on his part, the court revised the docket to use the parties’ real names. The facts that matter are few: defendants allowed other in- mates to learn (or suspect) that Watts furnished information valuable to an ongoing investigation. They asked Watts to meet them in an interview room, but he refused. That led one detective to appear at Watts’s cell and ask about a letter (but without referring to the letter’s contents). Watts refused to talk with the detective. He submits, however, that just by coming to the cell and mentioning a letter, the detective put him in danger—and Watts contends that the detective wanted the other inmate to learn that he was willing to talk. No. 25-1046 3 Watts suggests that we lack appellate jurisdiction, but an interlocutory appeal is proper when the public officials con- fine attention to the question whether the claim rests on clearly established law. Green v. Newport, 868 F.3d 629, 632 (7th Cir. 2017). The detectives have accepted all of the district judge’s conclusions about what facts a jury could find, and having done this they are entitled to present arguments about the state of the law. We know from Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), that prison guards may not inflict punishment by allowing in- mates to harm each other. We may assume that the same rule applies to detectives visiting a prison and that these detectives were deliberately indifferent to the risk that appearing at Watts’s cell door would lead other prisoners to harm Watts. But physical harm did