Beo v. District of Columbia, 93-7155

• Decision Date: 27 January 1995
• Docket Number: No. 93-7155,93-7155
• Parties: Johnny BEO, Appellee, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Walter B. Ridley, Director, and Bernard L. Braxton, Administrator, Occoquan Facility, Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 1026

44 F.3d 1026

310 U.S.App.D.C. 137

Johnny BEO, Appellee, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Walter B. Ridley, Director, and Bernard L. Braxton, Administrator, Occoquan

Facility, Appellants.

No. 93-7155.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Nov. 14, 1994.

Decided Jan. 27, 1995.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (91cv2264.)

Donna M. Murasky, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Washington, DC, argued the cause, for appellants. With her on the briefs were Vanessa Ruiz, Corp. Counsel, Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corp. Counsel, and Lutz A. Prager, Asst. Deputy Corp. Counsel, Washington, DC. John Adolphus Payton, Washington, DC, entered an appearance, for appellants.

David Ober, Washington, DC, argued the cause, for appellee. With him on the brief was Douglas K. Spaulding, Washington, DC.

Before: WALD, SILBERMAN, and RANDOLPH, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SILBERMAN.

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge:

The District of Columbia appeals from a district court judgment that it violated appellee Johnny Beo's constitutional rights by transferring him from one prison to another in breach of a settlement agreement. We reverse.

I.

Beo was convicted of rape in the D.C. superior court in 1978 and subsequently incarcerated. In 1987, he began a series of legal challenges to his prison conditions; he sued in our district court protesting his circumstances at Lorton (the D.C. Maximum Security Facility). A settlement was reached between Beo and the District whereby the latter agreed to transfer Beo to Occoquan and keep him there as long as he complied with Occoquan's regulations and his transfer from Occoquan was not otherwise warranted under the District's regulations governing transfer among its prisons. Four years later, in 1991, Beo sued in superior court alleging, inter alia, that he had been transferred back to Lorton in violation of the settlement agreement. Shortly thereafter, on August 8, 1991, this suit too was settled by the District's agreement to transfer to and house Beo at Occoquan "when space becomes available." Later that month, on the 26th, Beo wrote Judge Peter Wolf of the D.C. superior court complaining that he had not yet been transferred to Occoquan. Judge Wolf directed the District to indicate that it was in compliance with the settlement agreement, but by September 6th Beo had already sued again, this time back in federal district court.

Beo's third suit claimed that the District had not only breached both previous settlement agreements but also violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Beo's allegations focused on the seven times he had been transferred to Lorton subsequent to the first agreement. The case was put to a jury, which determined that none of the transfers violated the first agreement because each was consistent with the District's rules and regulations (i.e., attributed to appellee's disciplinary misconduct, psychiatric problems, or voluntary requests for protective custody). The jury did find, however, that a transfer back to Lorton on November 21, 1991, after the complaint had been filed, violated the second settlement agreement. Beo was awarded $100 damages for his due process claim and another $100 for his supplemental breach of contract claim. The district judge issued an injunction barring Beo's return to Lorton and denied the District's motion for j.n.o.v. based on the argument that no federal constitutional claim had been made out (it had argued that at most the District had breached its contract with Beo under D.C. law). The court held that "a stipulation of settlement between an inmate and prison official creates rights under the due process clause enforceable in district court...." The District now appeals, concerned that any future settlement reached with a litigating inmate challenging his or her conditions of confinement in superior court would create a liberty interest implicating the Due Process Clause and thus giving rise to a federal cause of action. It should also be noted that, by virtue of his constitutional claim, Beo has sought in excess of $100,000 in attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988 (1988).

II.

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments' Due Process Clauses guarantee a level of procedural protection before a person's life, liberty, or property can be impinged upon by government. Much of twentieth- century constitutional jurisprudence has focused on expanding traditional concepts of property and liberty interests, which, in turn, significantly broadened the reach of those clauses. Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 162-63, 71 S.Ct. 624, 643, 95 L.Ed. 817 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring); see also Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 601, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 2699, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972); Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 556-57, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2974-75, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974). Even so, an inmate in a state or federal prison does not ordinarily have a constitutionally protected liberty interest in his assignment to a particular prison. Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 225, 96 S.Ct. 2532, 2538, 49 L.Ed.2d 451 (1976). Such a liberty interest, however, can stem from state (or federal) statutes or regulations that contain "explicitly mandatory language" restricting prison authorities' discretion to impose conditions on the confinement of inmates or to assign them to particular prisons. See Kentucky Dep't of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 462-63, 109 S.Ct. 1904, 1909-10, 104 L.Ed.2d 506 (1989) (quoting Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 471-72, 103 S.Ct. 864, 871, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983)). Beo's claim is that the settlement agreements, as contracts between himself and the District, are legal obligations like statutes or regulations, and that they therefore also give rise to a constitutionally protected liberty interest. He, as did the district court in ruling on appellant's j.n.o.v. motion, relied on a First Circuit opinion, Rodi v. Ventetuolo, 941 F.2d 22, 26-28 (1st Cir.1991), and a New Jersey district court case, Dozier v. Hilton, 507 F.Supp. 1299, 1310-11 (D.N.J.1981).

Beo does not really argue, however, that D.C. did not provide adequate process before transferring him to Lorton. (The District points out that he has not asked for any administrative process nor did he pursue fully his legal remedies in the D.C. courts.) Rather, appellee claims that, at least by virtue of the second settlement agreement, the District was obliged to transfer him from Lorton to Occoquan--and, apparently, thereafter not subsequently transfer him back to Lorton for any reason. That contract right against removal, Beo claims, is not only unequivocal and constitutionally protected as a liberty interest, but actually has become a substantive due process right. It falls, in other words, among those few rights that the Supreme Court has described as "fundamental" and therefore may not be abridged regardless of the procedure used. See Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172-73, 72 S.Ct. 205, 209-10, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952); Planned Parenthood v. Casey, --- U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 2804-06, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992).

Although the district court was not precise on the point--the jury found only a "due process violation"--it does appear that the district judge, at least implicitly, accepted Beo's claim that the District abridged a substantive due process right. We think, however, that Beo's argument is quite farfetched and, accordingly, reject it. The Supreme Court, recognizing that "the guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this unchartered area are scarce and open-ended," as a result, "has always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process" and therefore its protections "have for the most part been accorded to matters relating to marriage, family, procreation and the right to body integrity." Albright v. Oliver, --- U.S. ----, ----, 114 S.Ct. 807, 812, 127 L.Ed.2d 114 (1994) (quoting Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 1068, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992)). Whether or not Beo has a contractual right not to be...