Brooks v. DiFasi
| Decision Date | 09 April 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 772,D,772 |
| Citation | 112 F.3d 46 |
| Parties | James BROOKS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Michael A. DiFASI, Corrections Officer, employee of the N.Y.S. Department of Correctional Services, separately and in his personal capacities, et al., Defendants, Cheryl Lee, employee of the N.Y.S Department of Correctional Services, separately and in her personal capacities, Donald Selsky, employee of the N.Y.S. Department of Correctional Services, separately and in his official capacities, Defendants-Appellees. ocket 96-2559. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Robert C. Weissflach, Buffalo, NY (Jaeckle, Fleischmann & Mugel, Buffalo, NY, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellant.
Martin A. Hotvet, Assistant Attorney General, Albany, NY (Dennis C. Vacco, Attorney General of the State of New York and Peter H. Schiff, Deputy Solicitor General, Albany, NY, of counsel), for defendants-appellees.
Before: VAN GRAAFEILAND, LEVAL, and CABRANES, Circuit Judges.
James Brooks, a prisoner at the Elmira Correctional Facility, appeals from a grant of summary judgment by the United States District Court for the Western District of New York (John T. Elfvin, Judge ), dismissing his civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Brooks alleges that defendants Cheryl Lee and Donald Selsky, who are prison officials, deprived him of procedural due process in disciplinary proceedings. Lee presided over a hearing at which Brooks was sentenced to 365 days of segregated cell confinement with loss of privileges. Brooks appealed that sentence to Selsky, director of the Department of Corrections' Special Housing/Inmate Disciplinary Program, who affirmed the imposition of discipline, although reducing the period of confinement to 180 days. Brooks claims that he was denied his due process right to call witnesses at the disciplinary hearing.
The district court ruled, without considering the duration or conditions of the punishment imposed, that Brooks had no liberty interest in being free of disciplinary confinement because it did not impose a hardship that is "atypical and significant" under Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995). Because we disagree with the district court's interpretation of Sandin, we reverse and remand for further proceedings.
In October 1990, Brooks had a physical altercation with four prison guards. Afterwards, all four guards filed written reports, and two filed additional misbehavior reports charging Brooks with refusal to obey a direct order, violation of frisk procedures, and possession of a weapon (a broken razor). Brooks claims that the guards attacked him without provocation and then filed false complaints to cover up their own misbehavior.
Brooks was charged with a disciplinary infraction, and defendant Lee, a corrections officer at the Elmira facility, presided over the disciplinary hearing. Brooks asked to call all four guards and two inmates as witnesses. After taking the testimony of one inmate and one guard, Lee told Brooks that she was denying his request for additional witnesses because "their testimony would be redundant." Lee found Brooks guilty on all charges and imposed a penalty of one year in keeplock with the loss of privileges and good time credit. Brooks appealed to Selsky in his capacity as Director of the Special Housing/Inmate Disciplinary Program. In his appeal Brooks claimed he was denied his right to call witnesses. Selsky responded by affirming imposition of the discipline, but reduced Brooks's time in keeplock to 180 days.
Brooks then filed an Article 78 petition in New York State Supreme Court, Chemung County. The state court, in an opinion dated November 12, 1991, concluded that Brooks was denied "his constitutional and regulatory rights to call witnesses on his behalf" and ordered his good time credits restored and his disciplinary record expunged. The court thus annulled the disciplinary finding. By this time Brooks had completed the service of the 180-day confinement.
In 1993 Brooks filed this lawsuit pro se, claiming that his constitutional rights had been violated by the guards' use of excessive force, by Lee's refusal to allow him to call witnesses at his hearing, and by Selsky's affirmance of the imposition of discipline. Counsel was appointed for Brooks and filed an amended complaint. In January 1996, the district judge granted Lee's and Selsky's motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case against them. In May 1996, the court heard a jury trial of Brooks's claims against the guards. The jury found for Brooks against two of the guards and awarded token damages of one dollar against each. Judgment was entered on these awards. In this appeal, Brooks challenges only the summary dismissal of his claims against Lee and Selsky.
In granting summary judgment, the district court did not decide whether the procedure at Brooks's hearing would satisfy constitutional due process. Instead, the court ruled that Brooks's discipline did not implicate any due process right. The court held that, under Sandin, prisoners in New York have no liberty interest in avoiding disciplinary confinement, regardless the duration. The judge reasoned that because New York regulations permit extended administrative, or protective, confinement--subject to periodic review--even lengthy disciplinary confinement could not constitute an "atypical and significant hardship." Id. Accordingly, Judge Elfvin dismissed Brooks's claim.
The district court correctly found that, after Sandin, a prisoner has no constitutional right to any procedural safeguards--regardless what state statutes or regulations provide--unless the deprivation complained of imposed an "atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life." 515 U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2300. Brooks argues, however, that Judge Elfvin failed to determine factual issues necessary for an assessment of whether his disciplinary confinement constituted such a hardship under Sandin. We agree.
In reaching his decision, Judge Elfvin did not have the benefit of our recent opinion in Miller v. Selsky, 111 F.3d 7 (2d Cir.1997). In that case, we held that "Sandin did not create a per se blanket rule that disciplinary confinement may never implicate a liberty interest." Id., at 9...
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