Ishaaq v. Compton

• Decision Date: 04 October 1995
• Docket Number: No. 95-2015-M1/Bre.,95-2015-M1/Bre.
• Citation: 900 F. Supp. 935
• Parties: ISHAAQ, Plaintiff, v. Billy COMPTON, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Tennessee

900 F. Supp. 935

ISHAAQ, Plaintiff, v. Billy COMPTON, et al., Defendants.

No. 95-2015-M1/Bre.

United States District Court, W.D. Tennessee, Western Division.

October 4, 1995.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Ishaaq, pro se.

ORDER OF DISMISSAL

McCALLA, District Judge.

Plaintiff, who changed his name from Alonzo Stewart to Ishaaq, an inmate at Brushy Mountain State Prison (Brushy) who was formerly confined at West Tennessee High Security Facility (WTHSF) in Henning, Tennessee, filed this third complaint under U.S.C. § 1983.

Plaintiff sues former Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) Commissioner Christine Bradley, former assistant commissioner Linda Dodson, WTHSF warden Billy Compton, WTHSF unit manager Charles Piphus, WTHSF correctional officer Charles Lawson, and WTHSF corporal Norman Layne. On March 30, 1994, Piphus refused plaintiff's request for a telephone call because he had insufficient funds in his inmate trust fund account. Between April and August of 1994, plaintiff pursued a series of grievances at various levels of TDOC over this refusal, but the grievances were all denied. He alleges the refusal of a telephone call interfered with his right of access to the courts.

During those same months, plaintiff pursued a series of grievances regarding the condition of paint on the shower walls in his unit. Although Piphus and Compton investigated the condition of the showers, plaintiff remained convinced that they were too dirty and was dissatisfied with their responses to his grievances.

On July 18, 1994, while the inmates in plaintiff's unit were agitated over the shower's condition, he and a number of other inmates were kicking their cell doors. Lawson charged plaintiff and four other inmates with destroying state property, allegedly solely because they were kicking the doors. A disciplinary board convicted plaintiff of this prison disciplinary offense and imposed a penalty of five days punitive segregation. Compton denied his appeal and Dodson rejected his further appeal on procedural grounds.

In August of 1994, Lawson seized plaintiff's radio.

In September of 1994, plaintiff commenced a hunger strike to protest the above situations. While he was refusing food, he was taken from his maximum security unit in handcuffs to the recreation yard. The yard contains individual recreation cages where maximum security inmates are permitted separate recreation. Another inmate in a closed cage yelled threats at plaintiff and put his arm, with a knife in his hand, through the cage door. Lawson allegedly pushed him a little towards the other inmate but another guard pulled him back. That same day, September 28, Piphus called him "Slim," said he looked like a ghost, and asked if he needed to go to the hospital. On September 30, the same inmate had another knife in his recreation cage. Plaintiff does not allege that he was ever harmed. On October 5 he was transferred to Brushy.

Plaintiff alleges the denial of grievances, disciplinary conviction, verbal threats, and transfer violated his First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and that the defendants have engaged in a conspiracy to retaliate against him.

Plaintiff's due process claims are frivolous. An inmate has no right not to be charged with or even convicted of prison disciplinary offenses, only a right to due process if the conviction deprives him of a liberty interest recognized by federal law. See generally Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 564-71, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2978-82, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974) (defining scope of due process application to prison disciplinary hearings).¹ In general,

"as long as the conditions or degree of confinement to which the prisoner is subjected is within the sentence imposed upon him and is not otherwise violative of the Constitution, the Due Process Clause does not in itself subject an inmate's treatment by prison authorities to judicial oversight."

Montanye v. Haymes, 427 U.S. 236, 242, 96 S.Ct. 2543, 2547, 49 L.Ed.2d 466 (1976). Thus, there is no federal constitutional right to be held in a prison system's general population, or in a particular part of a prison. See Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 468-69, 103 S.Ct. 864, 869-70, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983); Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. at 556-57, 94 S.Ct. at 2974-75.

Until recently, prison disciplinary cases were analyzed by considering whether "the repeated use of explicitly mandatory language in connection with requiring specific substantive predicates demands a conclusion that the State or federal government has created a protected liberty interest." Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. at 472, 103 S.Ct. at 871.

Quite recently, however, in Sandin v. Conner, ___ U.S. ____, ____ _ ____, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 2300-02, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995), the Supreme Court, without explicitly over-ruling Hewitt, returned to the question left open in Wolff: whether inmates even have a liberty interest in freedom from segregation, punitive or administrative. The court concluded that they do not.

The time has come to return to the due process principles we believe were correctly established and applied in Wolff and Meachum. Following Wolff, we recognize that States may under certain circumstances create liberty interests which are protected by the Due Process Clause. See also Board of Pardons v. Allen, 482 U.S. 369 107 S.Ct. 2415, 96 L.Ed.2d 303 (1987). But these interests will be generally limited to freedom from restraint which, while not exceeding the sentence in such an unexpected manner as to give rise to protection by the Due Process Clause of its own force, see, e.g., Vitek, 445 U.S. 480 at 493 100 S.Ct. 1254 at 1263-1264, 63 L.Ed.2d 552 (transfer to mental hospital), and Washington, 494 U.S. 210 at 221-222 110 S.Ct. 1028 at 1036-1037, 108 L.Ed.2d 178 (involuntary administration of psychotropic drugs), nonetheless imposes atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.

* * * * * *

Conner asserts, incorrectly, that any state action taken for a punitive reason encroaches upon a liberty interest under the Due Process Clause even in the absence of any state regulation. Neither Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), nor Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651 97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977), requires such a rule.... We hold that Conner's discipline in segregated confinement did not present the type of atypical, significant deprivation in which a state might conceivably create a liberty interest.... We hold, therefore, that neither the Hawaii prison regulation in question, nor the Due Process Clause itself, afforded Conner a protected liberty interest that would entitle him to the procedural protections set forth in Wolff. The regime to which he was subjected as a result of the misconduct hearing was within the range of confinement to be normally expected for one serving an indeterminate term of 30 years to life.

Sandin, ___ U.S. at ____ _ ____, 115 S.Ct. at 2300-02 (footnotes and some citations omitted). Sandin thus focuses not on the content of regulations, but on the "nature of the deprivation" visited upon the inmate. Id., ___ U.S. at ____, 115 S.Ct. at 2299. Absent "atypical and significant hardship," a change in the conditions of confinement simply does not inflict a cognizable injury that merits constitutional protection, regardless of the motivation of the official when making the change. Id., ___ U.S. at ____, 115 S.Ct. at 2300-01. Thus from now on the federal courts look neither to state laws or regulations to ascertain whether they create a liberty interest in connection with confinement to disciplinary or administrative segregation or transfers, nor to the subjective motives of prison officials for effecting such changes. Instead, the court focuses first on the nature of the deprivation itself.

After Sandin, mere confinement to segregation, punitive or administrative, and mere transfers do not constitute "atypical and significant hardships" "in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life" for an inmate, and thus cannot amount to the deprivation of a liberty interest. As plaintiff has not alleged any atypical and significant hardship, he is not entitled to any of the procedural protections enunciated in Wolff or its progeny. He thus has no due process claim.

Examined in this light, Ishaaq's claim that his rights were violated by the transfer also fails. He alleges no harm or hardship from the transfer, regardless of the motivation of the prison officials who ordered it. Indeed, he was actually better situated in that he was no longer confined near an inmate who had threatened him. His subjective displeasure at the transfer is irrelevant. As plaintiff suffered no atypical or significant change in the conditions of his sentence, he suffered no cognizable injury, regardless of the motivation of the prison officials in transferring him.

Moreover, even before Sandin TDOC inmates had no protected right to be housed in a particular TDOC institution. Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238, 103 S.Ct. 1741, 75 L.Ed.2d 813 (1983); Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 96 S.Ct. 2532, 49 L.Ed.2d 451 (1976); Montanye v. Haymes, 427 U.S. 236, 96 S.Ct. 2543, 49 L.Ed.2d 466 (1976). Sandin's rejection of the entire Hewitt mandatory-language liberty-interest-creation paradigm, ___ U.S. at ____, 115 S.Ct. at 2300-02, reemphasizes the absence of any constitutional claim over the prison to which an inmate is sent.

This conclusion is underscored by Sandin's reliance on Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238, 249-50, 103 S.Ct. 1741, 1747-48, 75 L.Ed.2d 813 (1983), in which the court held that an inmate's transfer to California from a Hawaii prison did not work a substantial hardship or deprive him of a constitutional right. If a six-thousand mile transfer is not atypical and significant, neither is a four-hundred mile intra-state transfer.

As is clear from the above discussion, plaintiff has no retaliation claim because he has not suffered...