Bonner v. Parke

• Decision Date: 27 February 1996
• Docket Number: No. 3:95-CV-0851 AS.,3:95-CV-0851 AS.
• Parties: Louis BONNER, Petitioner, v. Al C. PARKE, Superintendent, and Indiana Attorney General, Respondents.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

918 F. Supp. 1264

Louis BONNER, Petitioner, v. Al C. PARKE, Superintendent, and Indiana Attorney General, Respondents.

No. 3:95-CV-0851 AS.

United States District Court, N.D. Indiana, South Bend Division.

February 27, 1996.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Louis Bonner, Michigan City, IN, Pro Se.

Susan B. Klineman, Department of Correction, Legal Services Division, Indianapolis, IN, for respondents.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ALLEN SHARP, Chief Judge.

This is a challenge under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 to a prison Conduct Adjustment Board ("CAB") proceeding by pro se prisoner Louis Bonner. Mr. Bonner is currently an inmate at the Indiana State Prison ("ISP") in Michigan City, Indiana, and filed his petition for writ of habeas corpus on October 19, 1995.

I. BACKGROUND

A conduct report written on June 12, 1995, by Doug Ayres, the internal affairs investigator at ISP, charged Mr. Bonner with fighting where injury occurs. According to the report of conduct, Mr. Ayres initiated an investigation into allegations that offender Michael Broyles and Mr. Bonner were involved in a fight on June 9, 1995. According to Ayres' report, Mr. Broyles struck Mr. Bonner with a pipe as Bonner left the electric shop, resulting in Bonner sustaining an injury to the back of his neck. Mr. Bonner's statement indicated that Mr. Broyles acted without provocation and warning. Mr. Broyles' statement indicates facts to the contrary. He admitted striking Mr. Bonner, but claimed to do so only in the "heat of the incident" after confronting and arguing with Bonner. Another offender, Mr. Stahl, also witnessed the incident, and Ayres summarized Stahl's statement as follows:

The offender stated he saw the whole incident. This witness stated, offender Broyles confronted offender Bonner about stuff from the desk in the electric shop. They had a verbal altercation and Bonner left the office. He returned a short time later, asking for a light, knowing no one in the office smoked. While in the office, offender Bonner threatened to shank offender Broyles. After another short verbal altercation, offender Bonner started out of the office, past a tool box. When he reached the tool box, he opened the drawer, which contained a 8" screw driver. Offender Bonner was turning toward offender Broyles with the screw driver held in a threatening manner. At that time, offender Broyles struck him with pipe.

See Respondents' Memorandum in Support of Response to Order to Show Cause, Ex. A.

Also on June 12, Mr. Bonner received a copy of the report of conduct and his notice of a disciplinary hearing to be held on June 13, 1995. For the hearing, Mr. Bonner requested and was provided a lay advocate, and requested that offender Stahl be made available to testify. The hearing was held before a hearing officer on June 16, 1995. Based upon the conduct report, the testimony of the offender and Offender Stahl's statement, the hearing officer found Mr. Bonner guilty of fighting where injury occurs. As a result, the hearing officer disciplined Mr. Bonner by sanctioning him with placement into disciplinary segregation for three (3) years.

Mr. Bonner appealed the hearing officer's decision to Al Parke, Superintendent of ISP, on June 19, 1995. On July 19, 1995, Mr. Parke denied Mr. Bonner's appeal, finding that Bonner had not provided substantial evidence to establish that the hearing officer's decision was incorrect. Mr. Bonner subsequently appealed his conviction and sanction to the Disciplinary Review Manager of Adult Operations of the Indiana Department of Correction. On August 14, 1995, the Disciplinary Review Manager found that there was no evidence of procedural or due process error in the hearing and that the sanctions imposed were well within the guidelines of the Disciplinary Code for Adult Offenders. Thus, this appeal was denied.

Mr. Bonner filed his petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 on October 19, 1995. In his petition, Mr. Bonner claims that he was denied due process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The respondents filed their response to order to show cause on January 11, 1996, demonstrating the necessary compliance with Lewis v. Faulkner, 689 F.2d 100 (7th Cir.1982). In their response, the respondents argue first that no protected liberty interest was at stake in the CAB hearing. In the alternative, the respondents argue that should the court find that a liberty interest does indeed exist in this case, Mr. Bonner was not deprived of due process when he was found guilty by the hearing officer. Mr. Bonner has failed to file a traverse in this action.

II. ISSUES

The issues now properly before the court are the following: (1) under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, should this court recognize that Mr. Bonner has a state-created liberty interest in remaining in the general population of the Indiana State Prison by virtue of his sanction placing him in disciplinary segregation for three years as a result of his CAB conviction; and, if such a liberty interest does exist; (2) did Mr. Bonner receive the due process protections required by the Supreme Court of the United States in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974), in his prison disciplinary proceeding.

III. DISCUSSION

There are some basics involved in this court's collateral review of CAB proceedings under § 2254. First, this court must examine this record for alleged constitutional errors. See Bell v. Duckworth, 861 F.2d 169 (7th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1088, 109 S.Ct. 1552, 103 L.Ed.2d 855 (1989). Secondly, this court does not sit as a trier de novo in these prison disciplinary proceedings and does not sit as court of general common law review. Cain v. Lane, 857 F.2d 1139, 1145 (7th Cir.1988); Hanrahan v. Lane, 747 F.2d 1137, 1140 (7th Cir.1984). Third, this court does not sit merely to determine questions of state law. Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 112 S.Ct. 475, 116 L.Ed.2d 385 (1991); Kraushaar v. Flanigan, 45 F.3d 1040 (7th Cir.1995).

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." U.S. Const. amend. XIV. Thus, when a petitioner brings an action under § 2254 for a violation of procedural due process, he must establish that the state deprived him of a constitutionally protected interest in "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law. Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 125, 110 S.Ct. 975, 983, 108 L.Ed.2d 100 (1990) (citing Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 537, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 1914, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981)). A liberty interest may arise from state law or from the Due Process Clause itself. Pardo v. Hosier, 946 F.2d 1278, 1281 (7th Cir.1991). In this case, although Mr. Bonner's claims are not the model of clarity, the court construes his argument as one claiming that he has a state-created liberty interest in remaining in the general prison population by virtue of his placement into disciplinary segregation for three (3) years by the CAB, and that the hearing officer denied him the due process protections to which he is entitled under the Wolff.¹ Thus, Mr. Bonner's claims fall squarely within the realm of the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Sandin v. Conner, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995).

Prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Sandin, an inmate retained a liberty interest in remaining free from confinement in segregation where the state created a protected liberty interest through the use of "language of an unmistakenly mandatory character" in its prison administrative regulations. See Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 471-72, 103 S.Ct. 864, 871, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983). Thus, before Sandin, when a state's prison regulations created a liberty interest in remaining free from disciplinary segregation, an inmate was entitled to the procedural due process protections set forth in Wolff prior to his placement into disciplinary segregation. See Rasheed-Bey v. Duckworth, 969 F.2d 357, 361 (7th Cir.1992). However, in Sandin, the Supreme Court held that state prison regulations will now create enforceable liberty interests only in limited situations. Sandin, ___ U.S. at ___, 115 S.Ct. at 2300; Whitford v. Boglino, 63 F.3d 527, 531 (7th Cir.1995).² In Sandin, the Supreme Court held:

The time has come to return to the due process principles we believe were correctly established and applied in Wolff and Meachum. Following Wolff, we recognize that States may under certain circumstances create liberty interests which are protected by the Due Process Clause. But these interests will be generally limited to freedom from restraint which, while not exceeding the sentence in such an unexpected manner as to give rise to protection by the Due Process Clause of its own force, nonetheless imposes atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. (Citations omitted) (Emphasis added)

Sandin, ___ U.S. at ___, 115 S.Ct. at 2300. Applying this holding to the facts in Sandin, the Supreme Court concluded that sanctioning a prisoner to 30 days in disciplinary segregation "did not present the type of atypical, significant deprivation in which a state might conceivably create a liberty interest." Id. at ___, 115 S.Ct. at 2301.

IV. POST-SANDIN ANALYSIS

As this court pointed out in its memorandum and order in McKinney v. Hanks, supra, the task of determining where the new fences are now located in the spectrum of prison disciplinary cases dealing with the determination of protected liberty interests for inmates will fall to the United States district judges and United States magistrate judges. Federal courts around the United States have been testing the judicial waters in an attempt to grasp the meaning of the Supreme Court's holding in Sandin. This court has already published opinions dealing...