Curley v. Perry
| Decision Date | 18 April 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 00-2152,00-2152 |
| Parties | (10th Cir. 2001) GEORGE MICHAEL CURLEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ROB PERRY, Secretary of Corrections, New Mexico Department of Corrections; JOHN SHANKS, Director of Adult Prisons, New Mexico Department of Corrections; RON LYTLE, Warden, Central New Mexico Correctional Facility; NEW MEXICO CORRECTIONS DEPARTMENT, and all adult prisons acting under legal concert with the State of New Mexico Corrections Department, individually and in their official capacities, Defendants-Appellees. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Intervenor |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico. (D.C. No. CIV-00-334-JC/LFG) [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
Submitted on the briefs:*
George Michael Curley, pro se.
Richard J. Banta and Lisa A. Vanderhoof, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Patricia A. Madrid, Attorney General, State of New Mexico and Patricia Gandert, Assistant Attorney General, State of New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico, for Defendants-Appellees.
David W. Ogden, Assistant Attorney General; Norman C. Bay, United States Attorney; Barbara L. Herwig, Attorney, Department of Justice; and Jonathan H. Levy, Attorney, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Intervenor.
Before SEYMOUR, EBEL and BRISCOE, Circuit Judges.
George Michael Curley filed this pro se civil-rights action seeking to restrict inmate-to-inmate correspondence in the New Mexico prison system. Acting sua sponte under 28 U.S.C. 1915(e)(2) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), the district court dismissed his complaint with prejudice because it failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. We granted Curley's motion for leave to proceed on appeal without prepayment of costs or fees, appointed counsel, and directed supplemental briefing on the constitutionality of 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii). (Order of October 10, 2000.) We also granted the United States's motion to intervene to defend the constitutionality of a congressional act. (Order of January 24, 2001.) We now affirm.
Curley is a state prisoner in New Mexico. Due to unspecified threats, he has been placed in administrative segregation for his own safety. He alleges that he is being targeted by members of the "Security Threat Group," allegedly a group of inmates in the New Mexico prison system who take retaliatory action against other inmates. He asserts that members of the Security Threat Group plan their violent activities through inmate-to-inmate correspondence. While in segregation, Curley received a threatening letter from an inmate at another facility, which he turned over to a prison official. Although we do not have a copy of that letter, Curley alleges it revealed that he was being targeted by the Security Threat Group because of his perceived assistance to the authorities in some way.
Curley seeks, by this lawsuit, to prohibit all inmate-to-inmate mail except for correspondence between immediate family members or involving legal issues. His complaint asks for a declaratory judgment and an injunction that (among other things) would require Defendants to "investigate" and ultimately implement more restrictive correspondence regulations. He does not seek monetary damages.
The district court granted Curley's motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis. The court, acting sua sponte, then dismissed the complaint with prejudice for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted under both 28 U.S.C. 1915(e)(2) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).
On appeal, Curley challenges both the district court's dismissal decision on the merits and the constitutionality of the court's procedure in sua sponte dismissal. We address the merits first because we need to address the constitutional procedural challenge only if we affirm on the merits the dismissal under 1915(e)(2) and Rule 12(b)(6).
The district court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1331. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1291.
We review de novo the district court's decision to dismiss a complaint under 1915(e)(2) for failure to state a claim. See Perkins v. Kansas Dep't of Corrections, 165 F.3d 803, 806 (10th Cir. 1999). We must accept the allegations of the complaint as true and view them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. See id. We further construe a pro se complaint liberally. See id. "Dismissal of a pro se complaint for failure to state a claim is proper only where it is obvious that the plaintiff cannot prevail on the facts he has alleged and it would be futile to give him an opportunity to amend." Id. Similarly, dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) without affording the plaintiff notice or an opportunity to amend is proper only "when it is 'patently obvious' that the plaintiff could not prevail on the facts alleged, and allowing him an opportunity to amend his complaint would be futile." Hall v. Bellmon, 935 F.2d 1106, 1110 (10th Cir. 1991).
Like the district court in this case, we construe Curley's complaint as asserting a violation of the Eighth Amendment. He argues that the prison officials created unconstitutional conditions of confinement by failing to prevent or monitor inmate-to-inmate correspondence, which is an alleged mechanism that inmates use to plan violence against other inmates.
A prison official's failure to prevent harm "violates the Eighth Amendment only when two requirements are met." Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). First, the prison official's act or omission must be "objectively, sufficiently serious" and Id. (quotation marks and citations omitted). Second, the "prison official must have a sufficiently culpable state of mind," in this case "deliberate indifference to inmate health or safety." Id. (quotation marks omitted). Deliberate indifference requires actual knowledge of the risk to inmate safety. See id. at 837.
The complaint in this case does not meet either requirement. While "prison officials have a duty to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners," id. at 833 (citations, quotations marks, and alteration omitted), Curley has not alleged facts to show that the vague threat he received, without more, poses a substantial risk of serious harm to him. More significantly, Curley has not alleged that any of the Defendants are acting with deliberate indifference to his safety. To the contrary, he alleges that he has been placed in administrative segregation for his own protection. Therefore, the complaint as it stands did not state a claim upon which relief can be granted.
We can conceive of amendments to the complaint that would satisfy the first prong of Farmer, if Curley could show that the letter he received was so threatening and credible that the prison officials' failure to act is objectively, sufficiently serious. We do not believe, however, that any amendment could establish that the officials are acting with deliberate indifference to Curley's safety. By placing Curley in administrative segregation, the officials have demonstrated concern for his safety. Even if it is negligent of them not to take further protective actions, it cannot be said that they have shown deliberate indifference. Cf. McGill v. Duckworth, 944 F.2d 344, 350 (7th Cir. 1991) ( ), overruled in part on other grounds by Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994). Because no amendment could cure this defect, it was appropriate for the district court to dismiss the complaint with prejudice.
We therefore affirm the district court's decision dismissing Curley's complaint for failure to state a claim.
Curley argues that the district court violated his Fifth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection of the laws by dismissing his complaint without providing notice or an opportunity to amend it. We review this constitutional question de novo. See White v. Colorado, 157 F.3d 1226, 1232 (10th Cir. 1998) ().
At our request, the parties have briefed the constitutionality of sua sponte dismissal under 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii)1 without notice or opportunity to amend. Upon further review, we conclude that Curley's original constitutional claim is broad enough to encompass a similar challenge to the constitutionality of sua sponte dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6)2 without notice or an opportunity to amend. For the purposes of the Due Process Clause, the standard for dismissal for failure to state a claim is essentially the same under both provisions. Compare Perkins, 165 F.3d at 806 , with Hall, 935 F.2d at 1109-10 . We therefore find it appropriate to address the constitutionality of both procedures employed by the district court in this case.3
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