Elkin v. Fauver
| Decision Date | 03 March 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. 91-5896,91-5896 |
| Citation | 969 F.2d 48 |
| Parties | Michael J. ELKIN v. William H. FAUVER, E. Calvin Neubert, Donald Mee, Jr., Appellants. . Submitted Under Third Circuit Rule 12(6) |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Robert J. Del Tufo, Atty. Gen. of N.J., Trenton, N.J., (Joseph L. Yannotti, Asst. Atty. Gen., of counsel; Brett D. Rickman, Deputy Atty. Gen., on the brief), for appellants.
Michael J. Elkin, pro se.
Before: BECKER, ALITO, and ROTH, Circuit Judges.
A. In order to understand the present case it is necessary to examine several previous cases in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey concerning procedures for ensuring the accuracy of drug tests administered to state prisoners. In 1984, in Denike v. Fauver, Civ. Action No. 83-2737 (D.N.J. filed May 14, 1984), a class of inmate plaintiffs and New Jersey officials entered into a consent decree specifying detailed drug testing procedures; these procedures are now embodied in state regulations, N.J.Admin.Code tit. 10A § 3-5.9 to 5.11. For present purposes, only one provision of the consent decree is significant. This provision states that after a urine sample is collected it must be placed in a refrigerator and
the officer who receives custody of the urine sample shall make a written record of the date and time he received the sample, the officer from whom it was received, and the date and time of its placement into the evidence locker and/or locked refrigerator.
App. at 159. See also N.J.Admin.Code tit. 10A § 3-5.10(c)(2).
After the Denike consent decree, prisoners who failed drug tests began filing section 1983 suits claiming that the procedures set out in the decree had not been followed. In one such case, Duffy v. Fauver, Civ. Action No. 90-1450 (D.N.J. filed Sept. 24, 1990), the district court held that the chain-of-custody form used by the Department of Corrections (Form 172-I--"Continuity of Evidence--Urine Specimen Form") did not comply with the above quoted provision of the decree. This form, the same one used in the present case, contains spaces for recording the names of (a) the corrections officer who witnesses the voiding, (b) the officer who places the sample in the "satellite" refrigerator (i.e., the refrigerator near the prison unit where the sample was voided), (c) the officer who removes the sample from the satellite refrigerator, (d) the officer who places the sample in the main prison evidence refrigerator, (e) the officer who removes the sample from that refrigerator, (f) the officer who transports the sample to the department laboratory, (g) the officer who receives the sample at the department laboratory, (h) the officer who transports the sample from the department laboratory to a private laboratory for confirmatory testing, and (i) the person who receives the sample at the private laboratory. The district court faulted this form, however, because it lacks spaces for the names of the officers who transport a sample from the place of voiding to the satellite refrigerator and from the satellite refrigerator to the main refrigerator. Thus, if officer A collects a sample, officer B takes the sample from A and carries it to the satellite refrigerator, and officer C takes the sample from B and places it in the refrigerator, officer B would have no place on the form to sign his name. The court therefore entered an order in late September 1990 requiring the defendants in that case to revise the form "to add a space for identification of the officer from whom a urine sample is received when it is placed in the evidence refrigerator." Duffy at 12.
The Department of Corrections prepared such a revised form by December 1990 but, as the district court explained, this matter "was lost in the bureaucratic shuffle and the form was not ultimately revised until early summer 1991." Elkin v. Fauver, Civ. Action No. 91-2092 (D.N.J. filed Sept. 27, 1991) at 7. In the meantime, the events giving rise to the present case took place.
B. On March 12, 1991, a syringe was found in a common area of cottage 3 at Bayside State Prison. As a result, Elkin and the other prisoners assigned to that cottage were ordered to provide urine samples for drug testing. All of the significant events that followed were recorded on a copy of Form 172-I. In addition, these events were confirmed by testimony at trial before the district court.
At 7:23 p.m. on March 14, Officer Murray witnessed Elkin's voiding of the sample. Officer Murray and Elkin both signed spaces on the form indicating that Murray had closed, sealed, and labeled the jar in Elkin's presence. Officer Murray then put the jar in a plastic bag and heat sealed the jar. At 7:30 p.m., Officer Murray placed the sample in the satellite refrigerator.
After completing the process of collecting samples from the other inmates in the cottage, Officer Murray removed the sealed bag containing Elkin's sample from the satellite refrigerator. He then took the sample to the main evidence refrigerator and placed it in that refrigerator at 10:25 p.m.
On March 20 at 7:40 a.m., the sample was removed from the refrigerator by another corrections official, and at 8:50 a.m. the sample was taken to the Department laboratory, where it arrived at 12:00 p.m. Tests performed at the Department laboratory yielded positive results. On April 3, the sample was removed from the Department laboratory at 5:40 p.m. and taken to a private laboratory for additional testing. These tests confirmed the presence of opiates.
Elkin was then charged with a disciplinary infraction, using illegal narcotics in prison, in violation of N.J.Admin.Code tit. 10A § 4-4.1(a)(.204). After a proceeding before Hearing Officer Donald Mee, Jr., Elkin was found guilty. As a sanction, he was given a period of administrative segregation, and he lost commutation credits.
He then filed this action. By this time, the state had begun to use the new chain-of-custody form required in Duffy. Nevertheless, the court, after a bench trial, held the defendants in civil contempt for failing to use such a form with respect to Elkin's sample. The court rejected the defendants' harmless error argument, although the court did not dispute that the chain of custody for Elkin's sample was unbroken and that the only effect of complete compliance with Duffy in this case would have been that Officer Murray "would have signed his name in another space." Elkin at 5. The court reasoned that "if the information was unimportant, this court would not have ordered that space be provided for it to be recorded." Id. The court also rejected the defendants' argument that the delay in complying with the Duffy order did not justify contempt sanctions.
The court concluded that the state had "failed to demonstrate that it exercised reasonable diligence" in complying with the Duffy order. Id. at 7. The court therefore ordered that all of Elkin's sanctions be vacated and that the infraction be expunged from his records. In addition, the court fined Commissioner Fauver $825 in his official capacity and ordered that the fine be paid to Elkin as compensation for time spent in disciplinary detention and administrative segregation. The defendants appealed.
A. Elkin's complaint attempted to state a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and alleged that the defendants had violated his rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Under our decision in Thompson v. Owens, 889 F.2d 500 (3d Cir.1989), however, it is clear that the evidence in Elkin's disciplinary proceeding regarding the chain of custody of his urine sample amply satisfied constitutional requirements. In Thompson, we held that these requirements are met if there is "some evidence" in the record of the disciplinary proceeding showing that the sample belonged to the inmate charged with the disciplinary infraction. Id. at 502. We wrote that the "due process requirements in this context are minimal." Id. at 501. In the present case, not only was there "some evidence" that the sample was Elkin's, but the state's chain-of-custody evidence Elkin argues that the state did not comply with its own regulations regarding documentation of the chain of custody. An alleged violation of state law, however, does not state a claim under section 1983. See, e.g., Kasper v. Board of Election Comm'rs, 814 F.2d 332, 342 (7th Cir.1987).
fully satisfied the standards applicable in a court proceeding. See Fed.R.Evid. 901; United States v. Hon, 904 F.2d 803, 809-10 (2d Cir.1990), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 789, 112 L.Ed.2d 851 (1991); United States v. Ladd, 885 F.2d 954, 956-57 (1st Cir.1989). Thus, it is clear that there was no constitutional violation
B. The district court did not base its decision on a violation of the Constitution or any other provision of federal law, but on violations of the orders entered in Denike and Duffy. The...
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