Jones v. Manson
| Decision Date | 07 May 1975 |
| Docket Number | Civ. No. H-75-61. |
| Citation | 393 F. Supp. 1016 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut |
| Parties | Vernon JONES v. John MANSON, Commissioner of Correction, et al. |
Richard Cramer, Legal Assistance to Prisoners, Hartford, Conn., for plaintiff.
Stephen J. O'Neill, Asst. Atty. Gen., Hartford, Conn., for defendants.
The plaintiff is an inmate at the Connecticut Correctional Institution at Somers (hereinafter "Somers") where he is serving a sentence of not less than eight nor more than sixteen years for violation of the state narcotics law. He alleges that his due process rights were violated by the defendants' actions in summarily transferring him without a hearing from the Community Correctional Center at New Haven (hereinafter "New Haven jail") to Somers, not providing him with a post-transfer hearing for a period of two months, and not providing him with use immunity for his testimony at the hearing and/or allowing him assistance of counsel at the hearing finally provided. He brings his claim pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1970) and its jurisdictional counterpart 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3) (1970). A trial was held to this court and post-trial briefs have been submitted by the parties. The case is therefore ready for decision.
The basic facts are largely not in dispute. On January 9, 1975, the plaintiff was incarcerated in the New Haven jail where he was serving his eight-to-sixteen-year sentence.1 On that date a serious but short-lived incident occurred at the jail and the plaintiff and several others were accused of having attacked one or more guards. Defendant Manson, the Commissioner of Correction, was informed of the incident and decided that jail security required the immediate transfer of these men from the New Haven facility. In addition, the state police were called in to investigate the incident, creating the likelihood that criminal charges would be lodged against the individuals involved. In fact, on January 20, 1975, a warrant charging the plaintiff with assault in the second degree was issued by the Court of Common Pleas in New Haven and was lodged as a detainer at Somers. That warrant was superseded on February 26, 1975, by a bench warrant from the Superior Court for New Haven County which was also filed at Somers as a detainer against the plaintiff.
The plaintiff was transferred to Somers on the night of the incident. It is undisputed that he was not told the reasons for his transfer nor provided a hearing prior to this action. In fact, it was not until several days later that he was orally informed by one of the Somers guards of the reasons for the transfer.
At Somers, he was immediately placed in administrative segregation where all new transferees are housed for a minimum thirty-day period. The plaintiff, however, remained in segregation for a period in excess of thirty days and is still there. Through March 7, the day on which a hearing was finally conducted, it appears that he was kept there by order of the defendants. However, at the hearing he was offered the opportunity to return to the general prison population or accept transfer to an out-of-state facility; he chose instead to remain in segregation. His declination of the defendants' offer was based on his fear, well known to the defendants, that he risked attacks from other inmates because of the assistance he had provided the state in their prosecution of several Somers inmates in 1972. See note 1, supra. The plaintiff suffered some rather pronounced deprivations as a result of his transfer. These shall be considered in greater detail infra.
On February 25, 1975, the plaintiff filed his original complaint in this action in which he sought an injunction compelling the defendants to conduct a hearing. A hearing was scheduled in this court for March 10 on the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction. That hearing was rendered unnecessary, however, by the defendants' action in granting the plaintiff an institutional transfer hearing on March 7.
Two days prior to that hearing, the plaintiff was provided with a written notice of the charges against him. On the morning of the hearing, he requested, through his retained counsel, that said counsel be permitted to represent him at the hearing in order to protect his fifth amendment rights. The request was denied. Furthermore, the plaintiff was not offered use immunity for any testimony which he might have wished to present at the hearing. As a result, he remained silent. The hearing panel found him guilty of the assault and thereby held that his transfer to Somers was justified. However, as noted above, they did offer the plaintiff an opportunity to be placed in the general prison population or to be transferred to an out-of-state facility, both of which options the plaintiff refused.
On April 2, 1975, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint which charges that his due process rights were violated by the failure of the defendants to conduct a hearing prior to his transfer or expeditiously thereafter and in refusing to provide him with use immunity and allow him the assistance of counsel at the hearing that was ultimately held. It is to those claims that I now turn.2
The first step in the analysis of this case must be a consideration of whether the plaintiff was entitled as a matter of constitutional law to a hearing as a result of his transfer from the New Haven jail to Somers; only if that question is answered in the affirmative do the issues of the timing of that hearing and the need for use immunity or the presence of counsel present themselves.
Two recent opinions of the Second Circuit, United States ex rel. Haymes v. Montanye, 505 F.2d 977 (2d Cir. 1974), petition for cert. filed, 43 U.S.L.W. 3282 (U.S. Nov. 1, 1974) (No. 74-520) and Newkirk v. Butler, 499 F.2d 1214 (2d Cir. 1974), cert. granted sub nom. Preiser v. Newkirk, 419 U.S. 894, 95 S.Ct. 172, 42 L.Ed.2d 138 (1974), clearly hold that in many prison transfer situations prison officials are obligated to provide transferees with some form of due process protections. The defendants argue that these decisions do not control the instant case and that their ultimate decision to grant the plaintiff a hearing was purely a matter of administrative grace and not constitutionally compelled. Thus, they argue, any alleged deficiencies in the timing or conduct of the hearing would not rise to the level of a constitutional wrong.
I disagree with the defendants' conclusion. Newkirk clearly established that "where the prisoner suffers substantial loss as a result of the transfer he is entitled to the basic elements of rudimentary due process, i.e., notice and an opportunity to be heard." 499 F.2d at 1217. This is true whether the transfer is viewed by the prison authorities as being for disciplinary or security purposes; the nature of the loss determines the quantum, if any, of the process which is due.3 Cf. Bloeth v. Montanye, 514 F.2d 1192 (2d Cir. 1975). In Newkirk the loss suffered by the inmate as a result of the transfer involved, inter alia, being located a significantly further distance away from his family and the denial of certain job and training opportunities which were only available at his original institution. When an inmate suffers a loss of that nature, the court held, he is entitled to be informed of the reason for the transfer and be afforded an opportunity to tell his side of any incident which may have precipitated the transfer.4
In the instant case, the loss suffered by the plaintiff, although different, is, if anything, more severe. Upon arriving at Somers, the plaintiff was immediately placed in a cell in the administrative segregation unit in which all recent transferees are housed for a minimum period of thirty days. During that period he was locked in his cell for twenty-four hours a day and denied all privileges accorded inmates in the general population at Somers. At the New Haven jail, he was permitted out of his cell from eight o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night. After that initial thirty-day period he was allowed out of his cell for one hour of exercise daily. After the March 7 hearing he was offered the option of returning to the general population. His decision to refuse that offer, however, did not eliminate his claim of continued deprivation. At the New Haven jail, he enjoyed both a sense of personal security and the freedom to leave his cell during waking hours and take advantage of institutional programs. At Somers, he is forced to sacrifice one or the other.5
The plaintiff was also substantially injured in several other respects. For a period of sixty days, he was automatically denied the right to earn meritorious good time which he had been earning throughout his tenure at the New Haven jail. In addition, he was provided a parole hearing in February and not surprisingly was denied parole. Although there is no direct evidence on this point, it is not unreasonable to infer that this decision was at least partially influenced by notations in the plaintiff's record relating to his alleged involvement in the New Haven jail incident and his subsequent transfer to Somers. Finally, the transfer did make it more difficult for his daughter and cousins, residents of New Haven, to visit him. However, the seriousness of this particular hardship is minimized by the relatively short distance between Somers and New Haven and the availability of a free weekend bus service between these locations.
In the face, then, of these elements of loss, it is quite clear that the defendants were obligated to provide the plaintiff with the due process rights recognized in Newkirk, to wit, notice and an opportunity to be heard. However, it is equally clear that such a hearing was not necessarily required prior to the transfer.
The court in Newkirk recognized that:
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