Haverty v. Commissioner of Correction
| Decision Date | 10 October 2002 |
| Citation | 776 N.E.2d 973 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
| Parties | William HAVERTY & others<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL> v. COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION & another<SMALL><SUP>2</SUP></SMALL> (and a companion case<SMALL><SUP>3</SUP></SMALL>). |
Joel J. Berner, Boston, for defendants. Phillip Kassel for plaintiffs.
Present: MARSHALL, C.J., GREANEY, IRELAND, SPINA, COWIN, SOSMAN, & CORDY, JJ.
This appeal presents, in yet another form, the chronic controversy generated by the tension between efforts by the Commissioner of Correction (commissioner) to manage our prison system, and claims by prisoners to protection from alleged violations of their constitutional and statutory rights.4 This clash also arises, as here, in efforts to reconcile the interests served by punishment: deterrence, isolation and incapacitation, retribution and moral reinforcement, and reformation. See Cepulonis v. Commonwealth, 384 Mass. 495, 499, 427 N.E.2d 17 (1981), citing Commonwealth v. O'Neal, 369 Mass. 242, 251 & n. 11, 339 N.E.2d 676 (1975) (Tauro, C.J., concurring). See also Fried, Reflections on Crime and Punishment, 30 Suffolk U.L.Rev. 681 (1997).
At issue is whether the defendants — the commissioner and the superintendent of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction (Cedar Junction) (superintendent) — can ignore regulations, duly enacted and still in effect, which govern the placement of prisoners in segregated confinement for nondisciplinary reasons.
Litigation, commenced in 1985, resulted in a single justice of this court ordering the adoption of regulations that require procedural protections before a prisoner can be isolated for nondisciplinary reasons. See Hoffer vs. Fair, No. SJ-85-0071 (Mar. 3, 1988). See also 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 421.00 (1993). In 1995, the commissioner attempted to repeal those regulations in the wake of a lockdown of Cedar Junction following a disturbance. The commissioner was unsuccessful, and a single justice enjoined the repeal of the regulations on September 26, 1995. Notwithstanding the 1995 injunction, the commissioner and the superintendent thereafter implemented certain operational changes at Cedar Junction, the effect of which was to place a substantially increased number of prisoners in segregated confinement for nondisciplinary reasons under conditions substantially similar to those that existed in 1985, without complying with the applicable regulations. For reasons we shall explain, the prisoners now in or who may be in such confinement, although more in number, are entitled to the protections contained in the regulations promulgated in response to the 1988 order unless and until the applicable regulations are amended or repealed. Such action would not be warranted unless the defendants assert meritorious grounds different from those presented to the single justice in 1995. The defendants did not seek any such relief in this action.
The plaintiffs are a certified class of "all prisoners who are now confined or may at some point be confined" at Cedar Junction "in any housing unit other than the Departmental Disciplinary Unit" (DDU). Prisoners are housed in the DDU for disciplinary reasons, and we are concerned here only with those prisoners who are segregated unrelated to any reason of discipline.5 The plaintiffs challenge the severely restrictive conditions of their confinement in the East Wing of Cedar Junction, alleging violations of various regulations and statutes, as well as of the equal protection and due process provisions of the Massachusetts and United States Constitutions. They claim that their nondisciplinary segregation in the so-called East Wing of the prison, tantamount to indefinite solitary confinement in many cases, constitutes confinement comparable to that in the former departmental segregation unit (DSU), and that they are, therefore, entitled to the procedural due process protections applicable to prisoners segregated for nondisciplinary reasons, including those housed in the former DSU. See 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 421.00.
The defendants contend that the DSU at Cedar Junction has been abolished and the DSU regulations are therefore no longer of any force or effect. They further argue that the plaintiffs' liberty interests are adequately protected by a six-month "classification" review every prisoner in every prison under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections (department) receives pursuant to 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 420.00 (1995).
A judge in the Superior Court, acting on cross motions for summary judgment, allowed the plaintiffs' motion with respect to their due process claim. After thoroughly reviewing the record evidence, the motion judge in a carefully reasoned memorandum of decision and order concluded that there were no disputed issues of material fact and that (1) the conditions in the East Wing imposed an "atypical and significant hardship," Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 484, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995), on the prisoners confined there; (2) the conditions of confinement in the East Wing are substantially similar to the conditions in the former DSU; and (3) the DSU regulations "must be fully complied with before inmates may be subjected to the restrictive conditions" of the East Wing. The judge later stayed the effectiveness of the third item pending appellate review.
For the reasons set forth below, we reject the defendants' claims and affirm, in substantial part, the allowance of summary judgment because the record does not disclose any disputes of material fact concerning the plaintiffs' due process claim. We do so, however, for reasons different from those relied on by the Superior Court judge. We agree with the judge that the conditions of nondisciplinary segregation about which the plaintiffs complain are substantially similar to the conditions in the former DSU. The regulations that govern placement in such restrictive conditions, 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 421.00, have not been repealed, and have the full force of law. Royce v. Commissioner of Correction, 390 Mass. 425, 427, 456 N.E.2d 1127 (1983). Those regulations must therefore be complied with before any prisoner is placed for nondisciplinary reasons in the East Wing under the segregation conditions of confinement operative there. It is accordingly not necessary to reach the constitutional claims or to apply the analysis of Sandin v. Conner, supra, as the motion judge did.
The disposition of this case necessitates a thorough recitation of the background to the litigation, the operation of Cedar Junction, and the conditions of confinement in the East Wing. We summarize the undisputed material facts on the summary judgment record.
The plaintiffs commenced this litigation on June 30, 1995, in the wake of two changes the defendants made in the operation of Cedar Junction during a lockdown of the prison.6 The first change occurred when the commissioner notified prisoners that those deemed "members" or a "leader" of "security threat groups" (gangs), or those "involved in a security threat group incident" would be "subject to transfer to restrictive housing at MCI-Cedar Junction." The plaintiffs claim that the defendants7 application of this gang policy results in racially discriminatory long-term segregation placements in violation of the equal protection clause. The plaintiffs' equal protection claim is not before us.8
Second, the superintendent notified all prisoners at Cedar Junction that the prison was undergoing "a number of changes both physically and operationally," and that the housing units in the prison would be divided into two "phases" that are now known as the "East Wing" and the "West Wing." The conditions of confinement in the East Wing would be significantly more restrictive than those in the West Wing. The defendants' placement of prisoners in the East Wing gave rise to the plaintiffs' due process claim, which is now before us on the allowance of the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment.9
Cedar Junction is a maximum security prison, the only one in the Commonwealth. It has long consisted of two physically distinct "wings," both of which house prisoners under conditions of maximum security. The West Wing is comprised of three housing units, each containing seventy-two one-man cells. The East Wing contains eight housing units, each having forty-five one-man cells. Four of the eight East Wing units are called "Plymouth" units and now house prisoners who have been labeled as gang members under the department's gang policy. Thus, in 1995, when this litigation commenced, this maximum security prison housed some 858 of the 10,835 prisoners in the department's custody, by definition the most violent and dangerous, presenting the most difficult and oftentimes hazardous challenges of prison management.10 Both the East and West Wings also contain an identified "segregation unit," where prisoners are placed for various reasons, such as discipline or pending the outcome of an investigation or a disciplinary hearing.11 The conditions in the segregation units and in the DDU are not at issue here.12
In connection with the 1995 policy changes, the physical configuration of the two wings was not changed. Rather, the defendants implemented what they term operational changes directed at the prisoners themselves. The parties do not dispute that, for prisoners in the East Wing, conditions are now vastly more restrictive than those in the West Wing. Prisoners in the East Wing experience nondisciplinary segregated conditions that are essentially solitary confinement, while housed in the same one-man cells that existed before the department's 1995 operational changes. In the Plymouth units, for example, prisoners are released from their cells for only sixty minutes each day, while those in the other East Wing units receive only ninety minutes of "out of cell" time each day. During their out-of-cell time, East Wing prisoners must, for example, schedule...
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