Freeman v. Rideout, 1513

• Decision Date: 30 December 1986
• Docket Number: D,No. 1513,1513
• Citation: 808 F.2d 949
• Parties: Gary Wayne FREEMAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Richard RIDEOUT, Defendant-Appellant. ocket 86-2153.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 949

808 F.2d 949

Gary Wayne FREEMAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Richard RIDEOUT, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 1513, Docket 86-2153.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued Aug. 15, 1986.

Decided Dec. 30, 1986.

David W. Curtis, Defender General (Steven W. Gould, Defender), Correctional Facilities, Montpelier, Vt., for plaintiff-appellee.

Andrew W. MaClean, Asst. Atty. Gen., Waterbury, Vt., for defendant-appellant.

Before PRATT and MINER, Circuit Judges, and RE, Chief Judge, United States Court of International Trade, sitting by designation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 293(a).

RE, Chief Judge:

The defendant, Richard Rideout, a prison correctional officer, appeals from a judgment entered against him by the District Court for the District of Vermont, which held him liable for damages under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 (1982). The district court found that Rideout filed unfounded or false charges against plaintiff, Gary Wayne Freeman, a state prison inmate. The charges, which accused Freeman of having assaulted another inmate, were the basis for a prison disciplinary hearing, after which Freeman was found guilty, and sentenced to 30 days of "segregation."

Rideout contends that "the district court erred by improperly holding that Freeman's liberty interest was deprived without due process of law at the time the assault charges were filed."

Two questions are presented on this appeal: first, whether the filing of unfounded or false charges by a prison correctional officer against a prison inmate constitutes a deprivation of a constitutional right which permits recovery under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983; and, second, whether the prison disciplinary hearing provided the plaintiff prison inmate with due process of law.

Since the Court holds that the filing of unfounded charges is not per se a constitutional violation under section 1983, and that the prison disciplinary hearing provided plaintiff with all the due process rights to which he was entitled, the judgment of the district court is reversed.

Facts

On October 5, 1981, institutional disciplinary charges were presented against plaintiff-appellee, Gary Wayne Freeman, a prisoner at the Woodstock Correctional Facility. Freeman was accused of assaulting another prison inmate, Jeffrey Price. The charges were filed by defendant-appellant, Richard Rideout, a prison correctional officer at the Facility. As a result of the charges filed by Rideout, a prison disciplinary hearing was conducted on the institutional charges the following day. Freeman was not informed of the identity of his accuser, nor was the alleged assault victim allowed to testify at the hearing. In part, because of the perceived need to protect Price from retaliation, Price was not permitted to testify at the disciplinary hearing.

After the prison disciplinary hearing, Freeman was found guilty, and was sentenced to 30 days of "segregation" from the general prison population. The evidence upon which the finding of guilty was based consisted of three documents: an incident report written by defendant-appellant, Richard Rideout; a report written by Correctional Officer John Honymar; and the unsworn statement of Douglas Pratt, another prison inmate.

Thereafter, on July 12, 1982, Freeman sued Rideout in the District Court for the District of Vermont for compensatory damages pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Freeman contended that the charges filed against him by Rideout were unfounded and false, and that the filing of false charges constituted a per se violation of the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment.

At the trial, Freeman introduced into evidence a deposition of the alleged assault victim, Jeffrey Price, which stated that he had not been assaulted by Freeman, and that he had not told Rideout that he had been assaulted by Freeman.

After trial, the district court found that the charges filed by Rideout against Freeman were unfounded, and concluded that "[t]he filing of unfounded charges against an inmate offends clearly established constitutional rights...." In addition, the district court found that "the reasons given by the chairman of the committee for refusing to allow [Freeman] to confront Price [were] not acceptable." Based on these findings and conclusions, the court awarded Freeman damages of $1500, plus costs. See Freeman v. Rideout, No. 82-234 Civ. (D. Vt. Jan. 2, 1986). Rideout has appealed the judgment of the district court.

Discussion

In 1871, in response to continued acts of vigilante terrorism committed by the Ku Klux Klan, Congress passed "An Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other Purposes." Civil Rights Act of 1871, 17 Stat. 13; see Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 98-99, 101 S.Ct. 411, 416-17, 66 L.Ed.2d 308 (1980). This Act, presently codified at 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, provides for a broad and comprehensive civil rights jurisdiction, and was intended "to ensure that individuals whose federal constitutional or statutory rights are abridged may recover damages or secure injunctive relief." Burnett v. Grattan, 468 U.S. 42, 55, 104 S.Ct. 2924, 2932, 82 L.Ed.2d 36 (1984). For many years, however, the Act was narrowly construed and rarely applied. In 1961, in the seminal case of Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), the Supreme Court gave new life to the long dormant statute. Since then, section 1983 has been one of the nation's most frequently litigated statutes, and has been established as a primary source for relief to persons who believe that they have been deprived of a constitutional right under color of state law.

The historical origins of section 1983, and the role it has played in the federal protection of individual rights, were recently discussed by Justice Blackmun. See Blackmun, Section 1983 and Federal Protection of Individual Rights--Will the Statute Remain Alive or Fade Away?, 60 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1 (1985). The cases and materials cited by Justice Blackmun reveal that a statute that enshrines constitutional values and protections should not be made to suffer by an unwarranted application or expansion.

Section 1983 provides:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress....

42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983.

In this case, Freeman alleges that the filing of unfounded charges against him by Rideout, which resulted in his being placed in punitive segregation for 30 days, deprived him of a constitutionally protected liberty interest. Rideout concedes that Freeman had a constitutionally protected right not to be placed in punitive segregation without due process. See, e.g., Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 470-72, 103 S.Ct. 864, 870-72, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983); Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 555-57, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2974-75, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974). Rideout, however, also contends that the disciplinary hearing provided Freeman with all the procedural due process to which he was entitled.

Freeman maintains that, even if procedural due process was provided by the disciplinary hearing, the filing of unfounded charges is per se a violation of a constitutionally protected right. The district court agreed, and, having found that the disciplinary charges against plaintiff were false or unfounded, held that the defendant "deprived [plaintiff] of [a] liberty interest without due process when he filed unfounded charges." Freeman v. Rideout, No. 82-234 Civ., slip op. at 5 (D. Vt. Jan. 2, 1986).

There appears to be a confusion between the existence of a constitutionally protected right, and the deprivation of that right without procedural safeguards or due process. The constitutionally protected interest in this case is the right of liberty. The fourteenth amendment does not prohibit every deprivation of liberty. It does, however, prohibit the deprivation of liberty without due process of law. See Patterson v. Coughlin, 761 F.2d 886, 892 (2d Cir.1985), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 879, 88 L.Ed.2d 916 (1986).

The prison inmate has no constitutionally guaranteed immunity from being falsely or wrongly accused of conduct which may result in the deprivation of a protected liberty interest. The plaintiff, as all other prison inmates, has the right not to be deprived of a protected liberty interest without due process of law. As is shown by the facts of this case, before Freeman could be placed in segregation, due process required that he be granted a hearing on whatever charges had been made against him. See, e.g., Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308, 323, 96 S.Ct. 1551, 1560, 47 L.Ed.2d 810 (1976); Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 571 n. 19, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2982 n. 19, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974); Sher v. Coughlin, 739 F.2d 77, 81 (2d Cir.1984).

In his brief on this appeal, as before the district court, Rideout relies on the case of Hanrahan v. Lane, 747 F.2d 1137 (7th Cir.1984), as support for his contention that the mere filing of false charges does not constitute a per se constitutional violation. In the Hanrahan case, the plaintiff, a prison inmate, brought suit, pursuant to section 1983, against three prison guards, the members of a prison disciplinary committee, and various other prison officials. The three prison guards had "planted" contraband in the prisoner's cell after he had refused to pay to the guards "shake down" or extortion money. On the basis of this planted or false evidence, the plaintiff, after a prison disciplinary hearing, lost 15 days of good conduct credit.

Plaintiff-Hanrahan's section 1983 claim was predicated upon the contention or assertion that ...