Nolan v. Scafati, Civ. A. No. 69-1256.

• Decision Date: 02 December 1969
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 69-1256.
• Citation: 306 F. Supp. 1
• Parties: Daniel NOLAN v. Palmer C. SCAFATI.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

306 F. Supp. 1

Daniel NOLAN v. Palmer C. SCAFATI.

Civ. A. No. 69-1256.

United States District Court D. Massachusetts.

December 2, 1969.

OPINION

WYZANSKI, Chief Judge.

This Court received November 29, 1969 from Daniel Nolan, his letter dated November 22. The letter asks that it be treated as a complaint filed against Palmer C. Scafati, Superintendent of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, Walpole, seeking relief under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, and presumably invoking this Court's jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1343. (See page 12, line 5, and page 11, last four lines.)

The following paragraph summarizes the allegations of the letter. Nolan is now a prisoner in Walpole serving a sentence imposed by a court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A Walpole guard charged Nolan, while in prison, with threatening the warden and causing a disturbance. On that charge, Nolan was brought before a Walpole prison disciplinary committee, which had ostensible authority to order that he be placed in solitary confinement. Each day's solitary confinement is itself a punishment and also operates to reduce a prisoner's good conduct credit by three days. The good conduct credit is established by a Massachusetts statute, and is determinative of the prisoner's release date, and affects his parole. The procedure customarily adopted by the disciplinary committee is to receive a written report from the guard or other person complaining of a prisoner's supposed misconduct. The committee then hears the prisoner in person. The prisoner does not have the right to counsel, nor the right to cross-examine the complaining guard, nor the right to call his own witnesses. When he was charged and brought before the committee, Nolan seasonably asked to have those three alleged rights, on the ground that he regarded each right as guaranteed to him by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The committee denied Nolan's claims to those supposed rights. But (it may fairly be inferred from Nolan's letter) the committee informed Nolan of the contents of the guard's report, identified the author of the report, and gave Nolan ample opportunity to state his version of the events in question. Thereafter, the committee found that Nolan was guilty of the conduct charged by the guard, and ordered him to solitary confinement, where Nolan now is.

No doubt, a prisoner does have rights under the United States Constitution, and if a state prison superintendent, under color of any State statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage, subjects, or causes to be subjected, a prisoner to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the United States Constitution, the superintendent is liable to the injured prisoner, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.S. 546, 84 S.Ct. 1733, 12 L.Ed.2d 1030; Brown v. Brown, 368 F.2d 992, 993, 9th Cir.; Howard v. Smyth, 365 F.2d 428, 4th Cir.

But that truism leaves unsettled the question as to whether, under the United States Constitution, a state prisoner has the right to counsel, to cross-examination, and to summon witnesses at a prison hearing which may result in his being isolated in solitary confinement or in a postponement of his release date, the delay being attributed either to want of good conduct credits or to a poor prison record considered by the parole authorities.

So far as this Court knows, this issue has not been adjudicated heretofore.

Of course, the general rule is that under ordinary circumstances prison authorities have a large discretion as to matters of prison administration and that, therefore, neither under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 nor otherwise, will a federal court grant relief to a state prisoner complaining against his state warden because of the latter's disciplinary orders. Douglas v. Sigler, 386 F.2d 684, 688, 8th Cir.; Cooper v. Pate, 382 F.2d 518, 523-524, 7th Cir.; Negrich v. Hohn, 379 F.2d 213, 215, 3rd Cir. But there are exceptional cases, as when a substantive constitutional right is involved. Examples are unconstitutional denials of religious liberty. Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.S. 546, 84 S.Ct. 1733, 12 L. Ed.2d 1030; Howard v. Smyth, 365 F. 2d 428, 4th Cir.

Here, however, the state prisoner seeks vindication of what he regards as his procedural, not his substantive, rights. Procedural rights vary according to the forum which is using the procedure, the relationship of that forum's tribunal and the claimant, and the entire context in which the proceedings are conducted. As Hannah v. Larche, 363 U.S. 420, 442, 80 S.Ct. 1502, 1515, 4 L.Ed.2d 1307 teaches:

"* * * as a generalization, it can be said that due process embodies the differing rules of fair play, which through the years, have become associated with differing types of proceedings. Whether the Constitution requires that a particular right obtain in a specific proceeding depends upon a complexity of factors. The nature of the alleged

...