Murphy v. Wheaton, 74 C 405.
| Decision Date | 20 September 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 74 C 405.,74 C 405. |
| Citation | 381 F. Supp. 1252 |
| Parties | Johnny MURPHY, Plaintiff, v. Travis WHEATON et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
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Johnny Murphy, pro se.
William J. Scott, Atty. Gen., State of Ill., Chicago, Ill., for defendants.
The plaintiff, an inmate at the Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, brings this action for declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985(3). This court's jurisdiction is based on 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3). The plaintiff's claims for relief are based upon the following allegations set out in his complaint.
Beginning September 6, 1973, the plaintiff was confined to his cell twenty-four hours daily for a period of 187 days during which entire time he was allowed only three showers, no outdoor exercise, no shaves, no haircuts and no access to the prison's educational programs. This confinement followed a riot on September 6 in which nine prison guards were tied, blindfolded, and held as hostages in cell-house B by inmates. During the incident, the hostages were locked in several cells while the cell doors of over 300 inmates were unlocked and the inmates freed, allowing them to wander around the prison premises. On the evening of September 6, the hostages were freed and the inmates restored to their respective cells. Prison officials immediately instituted a general lock-up.
On December 2, 1973, plaintiff, Johnny Murphy, was released from his cell for the first time since the initiation of the lock-up to appear before the Disciplinary Committee consisting of three prison officials. He was informed that he had been identified as a member of the B-House revolt and that he had been seen carrying weapons on that day. The plaintiff requested and was denied the opportunity to question the accusing officers and to call witnesses to testify on his behalf. The Disciplinary Committee prescribed fifteen days of isolation, already served beginning September 6, as punishment for plaintiff's activities.
Murphy was transferred from the Disciplinary Committee to the Assignment Committee where he was assigned to Segregation without being afforded the opportunity to call witnesses and to question his accusers. He remained in segregation for 100 days (December 2, 1973 to March 13, 1974).
Similar proceedings were held with respect to the other 300 inmates involved in the incident of September 6. These resulted, plaintiff alleges, in the confinement to Segregation of approximately fifty black and one white inmate.
Plaintiff appeared before the Merit Staff January 23, 1974, where he was informed that he would be demoted and denied statutory good time. He again requested and was denied the opportunity to call witnesses and to question his accusers.
Plaintiff allegedly was not allowed outdoor exercises, was confined to his cell twenty-four hours per day, and was allowed only three showers during this period of confinement. Additionally, he is allegedly currently suffering constant drowsiness and headaches.
Based on the above facts, the plaintiff makes the following claims: 1) the denial of an opportunity to call witnesses and to question his accusers before the Prison Disciplinary Committee, Assignment Committee, and Merit Staff constituted violations of his constitutional right to procedural due process; 2) the confinement of fifty blacks and one white to Segregation was a denial of equal protection, when fifty whites and 250 blacks, he alleges, engaged in the same activity; 3) the conditions of plaintiff's confinement constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Additionally, the plaintiff seeks injunctive relief against the defendants' alleged practice of writing a "multitude of false discipline reports" on the plaintiff as well as other inmates who file suits in the federal courts.
The defendants have moved for dismissal of due process allegations and the equal protection claim for failure to state a cause of action or for summary judgment if such claims are considered on the merits, and for dismissal of the cruel and unusual punishment allegation for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.
Plaintiff puts forth two due process claims resulting from his confinement from September 6, 1973 to March 13, 1974. The first is based on his twenty-four hour daily confinement from September 6 to December 2 without advance notice and a hearing; the second is founded upon the denial of an opportunity to call witnesses and cross-examine his accusers before the Disciplinary, Assignment, and Merit Committees.
It is well-settled that prisoners retain the protections of the Due Process Clause. Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935, Decided June 26, 1974; Miller v. Twomey, 479 F.2d 701 (7th Cir. 1973); Burns v. Swenson, 430 F.2d 771 (8th Cir. 1970). The nature of incarceration imposes certain restrictions on the scope of due process protection, however, and the Seventh Circuit has held that, with respect to disciplinary proceedings, the Constitution requires only advance written notice of the proceeding, a dignified hearing in which the accused may be heard, an opportunity to request that other witnesses be called or interviewed, and an impartial decision-maker. Miller v. Twomey, supra, 479 F.2d at 716.
The plaintiff's challenge to his daily twenty-four hour confinement between September 6 and December 2 without advance notice and a hearing could prevail under a literal interpretation of the Miller holding. As reflected in the following language, that decision stands for the broad proposition that an accommodation must be reached between institutional needs and objectives and the constitutional due process mandate:
Nevertheless, it does not inevitably follow that procedural safeguards must apply wherever an inmate is removed from the general population. Before such a conclusion is justified in any given set of circumstances, there must be an identification of the precise nature of the government interest as well as the private interest affected. . . . A good faith determination that immediate action is necessary to forestall a riot outweighs the interest in accurate determination of individual culpability before taking precautionary steps. Miller v. Twomey, supra, at 717.
The confinement of the plaintiff and the other inmates who were out of their cells during the incident of September 6, was the institution's response to circumstances that threatened the security of the prison complex. The accommodation proposed in Miller v. Twomey, supra, might, in the circumstances, operate to suspend the minimum requirements set out in Miller.
The court in Burns v. Swenson, supra, faced with a challenge to the placing of an inmate in segregation prior to hearing, held the following:
The Constitution does not require that every inmate must in every instance be given a formal hearing prior to segregation in maximum security. This course of procedure although desirable, is not always practical. The exigencies of unusual or emergency situations dictate that an inmate be unilaterally segregated first, with a hearing provided later. . . . Here, a violent stabbing and several contemporaneous assaults manifesting racial hatred among the inmates had occurred. The prison authorities apparently had reason to believe that Burns and other inmates had participated in the incident. Exigent circumstances known only to the prison officials may have required the foregoing of any hearing at the time of Burns' segregation. The remaining delay must have related to the necessities of investigation of the incident and the continued tension in the prison. We cannot hold that the six month delay before Burns' case was reviewed and he was allowed a hearing amounts per se to a deprivation of any constitutional right. Burns v. Swenson, supra, 430 F.2d at 779.
A prison riot is certainly as grave a circumstance as the stabbing and assaults which lead to the segregation of Burns for a six months period prior to his hearing. Furthermore, the period of Murphy's segregation was a good deal shorter (approximately three months). We conclude that plaintiff's claim that his daily twenty-four hour confinement for an eighty-six day period prior to disciplinary proceedings violated procedural due process is without merit and should be dismissed.
Plaintiff also claims due process violations resulting from the defendants' refusal of his request to call witnesses and to cross-examine his accusers before the Disciplinary, Assignment, and Merit Committees. In Miller v. Twomey, supra, the court set out the minimum procedural requirements for due process in disciplinary proceedings. Inmates in such proceedings are entitled to advance written notice, a dignified hearing in which the accused may be heard, an opportunity to request that other witnesses be called or interviewed, and an impartial decision-maker. Not only does Miller not guarantee the right to call witnesses or to cross-examine accusers, it expressly reserves to the discretion of prison administrators the reasonable determination of which specific procedural advantages are to be accorded to inmates in particular disciplinary proceedings:
We do not think it appropriate for us to try to define constitutional requirements with greater specificity at this time. Rather, we defer in the first instance to the greater expertise of the state officials to specify the appropriate time and form of written notice for various offenses; the extent to which evidence must be disclosed; the method for enabling a prisoner to explain or rebut the charges, including, if appropriate, an indication of the situations in which he may insist that witnesses be called or at least interviewed and the extent to which a written statement of the disposition of the charge should be...
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Turner v. Godinez, Case No. 2015-CV-0343
...against one person in favor of another with no rational basis for the differentiation in treatment must be shown. Murphy v. Wheaton, 381 F.Supp. 1252; Burns v. Swenson, 430 F.2d 771; Oyler v. Boles, 82 S.Ct. 501, 505-06; Whren, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 1774. 5. It is settled that a void judgment is ......
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