Eichwedel v. Chandler
| Decision Date | 29 August 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 09–1031.,09–1031. |
| Citation | 696 F.3d 660 |
| Parties | Paul N. EICHWEDEL, Petitioner–Appellant, v. Nedra CHANDLER, Warden, Respondent–Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Kyle Steinmetz (argued), Attorney, Mayer Brown LLP, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner–Appellant.
Eric M. Levin, Sheri L. Wong (argued), Attorneys, Office of the Attorney General, Criminal Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Respondent–Appellee.
Before RIPPLE, MANION and SYKES, Circuit Judges.
Paul Eichwedel is an inmate in the Dixon Correctional Center (“DCC”), a prison operated by the Illinois Department of Corrections (“IDOC”) in Dixon, Illinois. During the course of unrelated civil litigation in federal court against various IDOC officials, Mr. Eichwedel, who was proceeding pro se, filed two motions for sanctions that the district court denied as “frivolous.” Thereafter, the State sought to revoke some of Mr. Eichwedel's good-conduct credits under a provision of Illinois law that provides for penalties for prisoners who file frivolous motions in litigation against the State. See730 ILCS 5/3–6–3(d). After the State revoked six months of Mr. Eichwedel's good-conduct credits, he challenged the revocation in state court; the state trial court denied relief, and the Appellate Court of Illinois concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to hear Mr. Eichwedel's appeal because of an error attributable to Mr. Eichwedel in filing his appeal.
After unsuccessfully seeking relief in state court for a second time, Mr. Eichwedel filed this petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court concluded that the Supreme Court never has recognized a First Amendment right to file frivolous motions and that the revocation of Mr. Eichwedel's good-conduct credits was supported by “some evidence in the record.” See Superintendent, Massachusetts Corr. Inst., Walpole v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 454, 105 S.Ct. 2768, 86 L.Ed.2d 356 (1985). The district court addressed several other issues as well, but Mr. Eichwedel appeals only those two conclusions.
The district court correctly disposed of the right-of-access claim. Because Mr. Eichwedel's sufficiency of the evidence claim turns on an unresolved question of state law, specifically, the interpretation of 730 ILCS 5/3–6–3(d), and because that question is likely to reoccur frequently and affects the administration of justice in both the state and federal courts, we respectfully seek the assistance of the Supreme Court of Illinois by certifying this controlling question of law.
On February 12, 2001, Mr. Eichwedel, proceeding in forma pauperis, brought a pro se civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois against twenty-three IDOC officials. Several months later, the defendants moved to dismiss Mr. Eichwedel's complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Mr. Eichwedel, however, believed that, because the court had not dismissed his complaint under the screening provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, the district court already had concluded that his complaint stated a claim upon which relief could be granted. See28 U.S.C. § 1915A. Mr. Eichwedel arrived at this conclusion after reviewing a “MEMORANDUM TO ALL INMATE LITIGANTS RE: PRISON LITIGATION REFORM ACT,” 1 which had been prepared by the chief judge of the federal district and which had been posted in the DCC library. This memorandum instructed that “federal Courts must deny leave to proceed in forma pauperis if the complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.” 2 After reading this memorandum, Mr. Eichwedel concluded that the district court must have determined earlier that his complaint stated a claim upon which relief could be granted because he had been allowed to proceed in forma pauperis. Therefore, on September 4, 2001, Mr. Eichwedel filed a motion to sanction the defendants and their attorney under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, asserting that their motion to dismiss was frivolous. Mr. Eichwedel filed a second motion for sanctions on September 22, 2001, in which he asserted that the defendants had mischaracterized the facts and the law in their response to his first motion for sanctions.
The district court denied Mr. Eichwedel's first motion for sanctions “as frivolous” on October 9, 2001, stating:
The plaintiff essentially argues that the defendants should be sanctioned because this court's granting of in forma pauperis status to the plaintiff amounts to a favorable screening under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. This argument is frivolous. The court has not yet conducted a merit review of the plaintiff's complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. Such a review may be conducted before docketing, “if feasible,” or “as soon as practicable after docketing.” 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a). Given the court's heavy caseload, a merit review of this case will not likely be practicable until the court rules on the defendants' motion to dismiss. The fact that the plaintiff has been granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the defendants have been served means nothing with regard to the merit of the plaintiff's claims.[3]
The district court denied Mr. Eichwedel's second motion for sanctions “as frivolous” by minute entry on October 29, 2001.4
On October 23, 2001, Mr. Eichwedel filed a motion in the district court to alter or amend its ruling on his first motion for sanctions. The court denied the motion on November 8, 2001. It reasoned:
The plaintiff maintains that he had reasonable grounds, albeit mistaken, to file his motion for sanctions, making it non-frivolous. The court does not doubt that the plaintiff believed he had grounds for his motion, but his subjective beliefs do not determine whether his motion was legally frivolous. A filing is legally frivolous if it “lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact.” Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325 [109 S.Ct. 1827, 104 L.Ed.2d 338] (1989). Finding that the plaintiff's motions for sanctions were frivolous has no bearing on the ultimate merit of the plaintiff's claims in this case.[ 5]
Certain of Mr. Eichwedel's claims ultimately survived the defendants' motion to dismiss, and the case subsequently was settled.
On November 1, 2001, IDOC issued two disciplinary reports against Mr. Eichwedel, which alleged that each of Mr. Eichwedel's motions for sanctions constituted a separate violation of 730 ILCS 5/3–6–3(d). Simply put, that statute authorizes IDOC to revoke up to 180 days of a prisoner's good-conduct credit if, during the course of litigation brought against the prison, “the court makes a specific finding that a pleading, motion, or other paper filed by the prisoner is frivolous.” 6 On November 4, 2001, Mr. Eichwedel sent a letter to the district court, inquiring as to whether the court intended its use of the word “frivolous” to be the same as the definition of “frivolous” set forth in 730 ILCS 5/3–6–3(d).
The Adjustment Committee held a hearing regarding these disciplinary reports on November 14, 2001. The only witnesses were Mr. Eichwedel and Carolyn Zee, a prison librarian. According to the Adjustment Committee's Final Summary Reports, Zee testified that she had posted Judge Mihm's memorandum about the Prison Litigation Reform Act in the prison library. The Final Summary Reports also state that Mr. Eichwedel testified that “he relied on a memorandum posted on [sic] July of 1996 by Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm entitled: Memorandum to all Inmate Litigants Re; [sic] Prison Litigation Reform Act” in filing his motions for sanctions.7 Mr. Eichwedel also noted that the district court did not sanction him for filing these motions. The Final Summary Reports further provide that Mr. Eichwedel sought the testimony of the district judge who had employed the word “frivolous” in denying Mr. Eichwedel's motions for sanctions. The committee did not allow Mr. Eichwedel to call Judge Baker to testify because the “[t]estimony would be cumulative.” 8
Following this hearing, the Adjustment Committee found that each of Mr. Eichwedel's motions for sanctions constituted a violation of 730 ILCS 5/3–6–3(d). The Committee's stated basis for finding that the first motion for sanctions was a violation of this statute was:
Evidence in [the disciplinary report 9] that inmate is in violation of 730 ILCS 5/3–6–3(d) as Judge Harold A. Baker of the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois has denied motion 01–CV3044 filed by above named inmate as frivolous and the physical evidence of the order issued by Judge Baker the committee finds him guilty.[ 10]
The Committee's stated basis for finding that the second motion for sanctions was a violation of the statute was substantially the same, relying on “the physical evidence of the minute entry by Judge Baker.” 11 Based on these findings, the Adjustment Committee recommended that six months of Mr. Eichwedel's good-conduct credit be revoked: two months for his first motion for sanctions and four months for the second. The Prisoner Review Board approved these recommendations on appeal.
On January 23, 2002, the district court took up Mr. Eichwedel's November 4 letter requesting that the court clarify its findings of frivolousness, which the court denominated “as a motion to reconsider the court's description of the plaintiff's motions for sanctions as frivolous.” 12 “The court s[tood] by its use of the word frivolous to describe the motions, because they had no basis in law or fact, as explained in the October 9, 2001 order.” 13 It continued:
As to the revocation of the plaintiff's good time credit under 730 ILCS 5/3–6–3(d), the court has made no finding its characterization of the plaintiff's motions as frivolous means the same as the term frivolous under ...
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