Louis v. Dept. of Correctional Serv. Of Nebraska
| Decision Date | 03 February 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-1211.,05-1211. |
| Citation | 437 F.3d 697 |
| Parties | Mosheh Malik LOUIS, also known as Harry James Starks; Dearle Alexander, Jr.; David Allen; Billy Billups; Dennis S. Black; Donald L. Boggess; Rickey E. Bringus; Manuel J. Cabrera; George E. Carter; Vincent A. Carter; Trentelle A. Clifton; William Ray Cole; Anthony W. Coleman; Gerry D. Crawford; Carey G. Creelman; Eric L. Crudup; Ricky R. Davenport; Jaron Dean; Nuha Refid; Michael Fonville; Ronald N. Fort; Jerome J. Gilmore; Lester L. Glantz; Andre M. Gomez; David A. Graves; Larry D. Hardin; Marc Herrera, also known as Anthony Herrera; Larry D. James; Marvel Jones; Vincent Jones, Jr.; Elijah Jones; Leonard Jordan; John L. Lewis, also known as Rod Frazier; Reko Mitchell; Elezar Moreno; Charles Overguard; Robert W. Parker; Donald Patz, also known as Donald Scott; Leroy Parmer; Stanley A. Poe; Corey J. Prater; Kenneth N. Rhodes; Samuel L. Sanders; Larry B. Scott; Lord Shabazz; Tyrus T. Shelly; John D. Shemat; Larcell L. Starks; Robert Venable; Robert Dean Wiese; Fred White; Martize A. Williams; Harvey Cass, Appellants, v. DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES OF NEBRASKA; Harold W. Clarke; Frank Hopkins; Mike Kenny; Teresa Predmore; Dallen E. Johnson; Pamela Hillman; Susan Phinney; Kelly Wubbels; Mark Danner; Matthew Hinrichs; Scott Marshall; Michelle Rose-Seeman; Brad Exstrom; Randy Crosby; Joseph Posposol; Scott Isherwood; Todd Haussler; Ronald Bailey; Douglas Diltz; Karen Foster; Michael Edison; George Green; Claude R. Rinke; James Pierce; Brad Hausen; Robert Treptow; Daniel T. Higgins; Larry Stroud; Linda Leonard; Matthew Galvin; Robert Madsen; Daniel Schumaucher; Richard Brittenham; Melvin Rouf; Barry W. Loock; Diane Sabatka; Dennis Colyer; Ronald L. Petersen; Unknown Cockrell, in their individual and official capacities, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Adam J. Sipple, argued, Oakland, NE, for appellant.
Timothy P. Sullivan, Assistant Attorney General, argued, Lincoln, NE, for appellee.
Before MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, BEAM, and RILEY, Circuit Judges.
Inmates and former inmates of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (DCS) appeal the judgment of the district court1 denying their claim that DCS's method of collecting and testing urine samples for drug use violated their constitutional right to procedural due process. We affirm.
This suit arises out of a program to eradicate drug use in the Nebraska State Penitentiary (NSP). The program requires inmates to provide urine samples to be tested for drug use. The samples are collected by correctional officers or case workers and submitted to a laboratory adjacent to the NSP hospital. The collector takes a sealed cup, shows it to the inmate, breaks the seal, and labels the cup with the inmate's correct name and number. The inmate then urinates in the cup in the presence of the collector and returns the cup to the collector. After the sample has been tested for specific gravity, the collector places a form reflecting receipt of the urine sample in an evidence box and takes the sample cup and its corresponding evidence card, which is used to record the chain of custody, to the NSP hospital, where the sample is refrigerated pending lab testing.
Trained laboratory technicians then test the urine using the fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA) method. According to Dr. David Black, an expert witness testifying for the defendants, the FPIA test is approximately ninety-five percent accurate. If FPIA testing indicates that an inmate's sample contains drug metabolites, the technician reruns it. If a second such test confirms the presence of drugs and the inmate's medical records do not reflect the use of prescribed medications that could provide a false-positive result, the technician sends the specimen report and the evidence card to the prison disciplinary board. Nebraska law allows an inmate to request an independent test of his urine sample. That test is performed in a private laboratory using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). GC/MS testing is more accurate and more expensive than the FPIA method and typically costs $30, although it can cost as much as $90, depending on the drug at issue. The inmate pays the cost of confirmatory GC/MS testing if the sample tests positive for drug metabolites. If a disciplinary complaint is filed against an inmate, a hearing before the disciplinary committee follows. While the inmate may call witnesses at this hearing, he may not call the laboratory technician who carried out the FPIA test. Instead, the technician provides a written statement of the procedures used in the lab.
The plaintiffs filed a complaint against NSP and prison officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that the drug-testing procedures followed at NSP violate their right to procedural due process because they impose a risk that inmates will be wrongfully deprived of good-time credits or placed in disciplinary segregation. We agree with the district court that NSP's procedures adequately protect the inmates' due process rights.
We assess the constitutionality of the procedures used to collect and analyze the inmates' urine samples by balancing the competing interests in play: "the private interest that will be affected by the official action; ... the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail." Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 334-35, 96 S.Ct. 893, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976).
The inmates possess a protected liberty interest in not being arbitrarily deprived of their good-time credits, and thus NSP must observe due process when the credits are in issue. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 556-58, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974). Although due process rights are limited in the prison disciplinary context, they require, inter alia, that good-time credits may be revoked only if the revocation is supported by "some evidence in the record." But due process requirements "are flexible and depend on a balancing of the interests affected by the relevant government action." Superintendent v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 454, 105 S.Ct. 2768, 86 L.Ed.2d 356 (1985). Here, the prison has an interest in reducing drug use by inmates, but there are practical limits on how much money it can spend.
The plaintiffs first maintain that due process requires that the collection procedures be altered to allow the inmate himself to sign and seal the specimen after the prison collects it. The plaintiffs, however, offered no evidence that the current training and collection protocols have resulted in erroneous deprivations of good-time credits. The alterations in collection procedures that the plaintiffs request are small and would contribute only marginally to the accuracy of the test results, and the prison would incur costs for retraining if it...
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