Olatunji v. DeBruyn

• Decision Date: 20 February 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-3702,94-3702
• Citation: 78 F.3d 587
• Parties: NOTICE: Seventh Circuit Rule 53(b)(2) states unpublished orders shall not be cited or used as precedent except to support a claim of res judicata, collateral estoppel or law of the case in any federal court within the circuit. Akono G. Olatunji, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. H. Christian DeBRUYN, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 587

78 F.3d 587

NOTICE: Seventh Circuit Rule 53(b)(2) states unpublished orders shall not be cited or used as precedent except to support a claim of res judicata, collateral estoppel or law of the case in any federal court within the circuit.

Akono G. Olatunji, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. H. Christian DeBRUYN, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 94-3702.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Submitted Feb. 20, 1996. ^*

Decided Feb. 27, 1996.

Before PELL, FLAUM and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges.

ORDER

According to Akono Olatunji's complaint, prison officials violated his constitutional rights by transferring him from the Indiana State Prison to the Maximum Control Complex (MCC). At the MCC prisoners spend all but six hours per week in their cells, have little or no contact with outsiders or other prisoners, and endure constraints on possessions and commissary purchases. When allowed outside their cells, prisoners at the MCC are shackled and escorted by two guards. Perhaps worse, they cannot watch television. By sending him to the MCC without a hearing, Olatunji contends, the defendants violated the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. The district court dismissed the complaint under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), and we affirm.

Prisoners lack liberty or property interests in the choice of penal institution. Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215 (1976); Montanye v. Haymes, 427 U.S. 236 (1976). Olatunji believes that Meachum and Montanye do not apply because the MCC is a "super-maximum" prison, with conditions more severe than the norm for penal confinement. He analogizes placement at the MCC to long-term segregation, which therefore, he insists, must follow notice and an opportunity for a hearing. But we rejected an equivalent objection to placement at Marion, which until the opening of the new prison in Florence, Colorado, was the most secure and restrictive prison in the nation. See Ramirez v. Turner, 991 F.2d 351 (7th Cir.1993). Olatunji does not offer, and we cannot imagine, a principled argument for distinguishing Indiana's MCC from Marion.

Olatunji does say that Indiana created a liberty interest, but his argument appears to be that Indiana has not authorized a "super-maximum" prison along the lines of Marion and therefore that there is no authority at all to send him there. What Olatunji's rights may be under state law do not, however, define his constitutional entitlements. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 202 (1989); Archie v. Racine, 847 F.2d 1211, 1215-18 (7th Cir.1988) (en banc). Olatunji has not identified a statute or regulation creating a substantive rule governing who may be assigned to which prison, and therefore has not established a liberty or property interest under the Supreme Court's approach to those terms. See Kentucky Department of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 460-63 (1989); Wallace v. Robinson, 940...