Peterson v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 24 May 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–1845.,11–1845.
• Citation: 714 F.3d 905
• Parties: Toran V. PETERSON, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Richard JOHNSON; Larry Lindy; Ruo, identified on initiating document as Unknown Lindy, Defendants–Appellees, Unknown Klinesmith, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

714 F.3d 905

Toran V. PETERSON, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v. Richard JOHNSON; Larry Lindy; Ruo, identified on initiating document as Unknown Lindy, Defendants–Appellees,Unknown Klinesmith, et al., Defendants.

No. 11–1845.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

April 12, 2013.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied May 24, 2013.^*

ON BRIEF: Toran Peterson, Ionia, Michigan, pro se.

Before: BATCHELDER, Chief Judge; SUHRHEINRICH and DONALD, Circuit Judges.

BATCHELDER, C.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which SUHRHEINRICH, J., joined. DONALD, J. (pp. 918–20), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Chief Judge.

Appellant Toran Peterson is a prisoner in Michigan's Ionia Correctional Facility, a maximum-security penitentiary. He appeals, inter alia, the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants on his claim that Appellees Richard Johnson and Larry Lindy, officers of the Michigan Department of Corrections, violated his Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. His appeal turns on a single question: Where a disputed issue of fact is resolved at a Michigan major misconduct hearing as a necessary part of the hearing's judgment, does that factfinding have preclusive effect in collateral litigation brought by the prisoner under 42 U.S.C. § 1983? Because we are persuaded that, in this case, it does, we AFFIRM the district court's judgment.

I

Peterson filed a complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against sixteen Department of Corrections officials at his prison, including Officers Johnson and Lindy. The district court either dismissed or granted summary judgment against him on all of his claims, and Peterson failed to properly appeal most of those claims. Of the claims he does appeal, we have carefully reviewed the district court's opinion and the record, and we conclude that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment. Because, with the exception of Peterson's Eighth Amendment claim, the district court correctly set out the applicable law and correctly applied that law to the undisputed material facts contained in the record, we affirm its judgment for every claim but the Eighth Amendment claim on the grounds stated in its well-reasoned opinion.

As to the Eighth Amendment claim, the district court reached the right result but did not adequately identify the basis for that result. We now supply that missing basis.

A

Peterson's Eighth Amendment claim arises from an incident in which Officers Johnson and Lindy were attempting to put Peterson in his cell. Johnson's hand became stuck in the cell just as the door began to close. Johnson's frantic shouts alerted Lindy to stop the door from shutting on Johnson's hand. The sole factual dispute in this case—and the fact on which this case hinges—is why Johnson's hand was in the cell. Peterson says Johnson put his hand in the cell as an excuse to pull Peterson out and assault him; Johnson maintains that Peterson grabbed Johnson's hand and pulled it into the cell.

Either way, what happened next is not in dispute: as a result of Johnson's effort to pull his hand out of the cell, Peterson also came out of the cell. At that point, after pulling Peterson back and forth, Johnson and Lindy pushed him to the ground and pinned him there until other prison staff helped them place Peterson back in his cell. This brief scuffle left no marks on Peterson and is the only use of force that Peterson claims was excessive.

As a result of the melee, Peterson claims that he “suffered from pain, shock, fright, anguish, anger, and humiliation.” He also alleges injury to his right wrist, where he says the handcuffs dug into his skin painfully during the scuffle. This injury allegedly caused 100 days of “shooting nerve pain” running from Peterson's wrist to his shoulder. The injury would occasionally make his hand lock up and caused particular discomfort if he raised his arm over his head.

The day after the hand-grabbing incident, Johnson filed a major misconduct report against Peterson, alleging that Peterson had committed assault and battery. Two weeks later, a hearing officer conducted a major misconduct hearing to resolve the charge. By state law, a major misconducthearing must, as we detail below, accord the accused prisoner a number of rights. See, e.g.,Mich. Comp. Laws § 791.252. Peterson exercised several of those rights. He appeared at his hearing, heard all the evidence against him, pled not guilty to the charge, provided several sworn statements to support his account of the facts, called five witnesses in his defense and had their affidavits read into the record, and moved to have the hearing officer disqualified for bias.

The only evidence in the case that the hearing officer did not permit Peterson to view was the video of the event. Upon motion from the Department of Corrections, the hearing officer had exercised his statutory authority to keep that evidence confidential. SeeMich. Comp. Laws § 791.252(h). As required by the statute, though, the hearing officer entered into the record the reason for his holding—“to allow [the video's] actual viewing would reveal the limitations and capabilities of the fixed security device” that recorded the tussle. Further, the hearing officer gave Peterson a detailed description of what the video depicted, down to the time-stamped second of each relevant recorded activity. That description included the following account of the altercation:

At 1826:22 [Peterson] is back at his cell. [At] 1826:27 [Johnson] bends forward, the door is closing and Officer Lindy is pulling it open. There is a struggle, at 1826:30 [Peterson's] hands can be seen out of the door, and Peterson comes out of his cell and he and the officers go to the floor. Other staff respond and Peterson is put back in his cell at 1828:11.

After considering all of the evidence, the hearing officer rejected Peterson's motion that he disqualify himself for bias and explained the basis for that rejection. The hearing officer then issued a finding of fact that “once Peterson was in his cell, he grabbed [Johnson] by the right hand and pulled [Johnson's] hand into the cell as the door was closing.” Based on this finding, the hearing officer issued a written final decision finding Peterson guilty of assault and battery and sentencing him to thirty days of detention. Nothing in the final decision purported to affect the validity of Peterson's underlying conviction for murder or the length of the sentence that he was, and is, serving as a result of his underlying conviction.

A copy of the written final decision was delivered to Peterson. The decision was subsequently upheld upon administrative review. Peterson did not exercise his statutory right to state judicial review of the final decision.

B

Two years later, Peterson filed the § 1983 lawsuit that is the subject of this appeal, seeking financial damages for Johnson's alleged use of excessive force. As the basis for his Eighth Amendment claim, he maintained, as before, that Johnson had put his hand into Peterson's cell as an excuse to pull Peterson out of his cell and abuse him. Johnson and Lindy responded with a motion for summary judgment, arguing, inter alia, that the hearing officer made a specific finding of fact that Peterson had “instigated the incident” by grabbing Johnson's hand, and that the court should not “substitute its judgment for that of the hearing officer on factual issues.” In addition to a number of state court decisions discussing deference paid by state courts to administrative decisions on direct review, the defendants cited Shelly v. Johnson, 684 F.Supp. 941, 945 (W.D.Mich.1987), aff'd,849 F.2d 228 (6th Cir.1988) (per curiam), a federal district court decision holding, in the context of a § 1983 action, that on collateral review federal courts could not disturb the factual findings of Michigan prison hearing officers.

The case was assigned to a magistrate judge, who held that Peterson had to prove both that he objectively suffered serious pain as a result of Johnson and Lindy's use of force and that they used the force out of a subjective sadistic intent to harm Peterson. See, e.g., Williams v. Curtin, 631 F.3d 380, 383 (6th Cir.2011). The magistrate recommended finding that Peterson failed to meet either burden because Peterson had not suffered documented physical injuries and the force used against Peterson was de minimis. In his view, the former fact showed that Peterson could not meet the objective suffering prong, and the latter fact showed that he could not prove the subjective sadistic-intent prong.

Peterson objected, arguing that at the summary judgment stage the magistrate was required to assume the truth of his allegations. The district court overruled Peterson's objection and adopted the magistrate's conclusion, albeit on crucially different grounds. The district court held that it could not accept Peterson's factual allegation that Johnson grabbed him because that allegation conflicted with the hearing officer's finding of fact. Because it could not “ignore the factual findings made at [Peterson's] major misconduct hearing,” the district court concluded that Peterson could not establish the subjective-intent prong of his claim. In other words, because Peterson had grabbed Johnson, the resulting “force applied by Defendants was a good faith effort to maintain or restore discipline and was not an unnecessary or wanton infliction of pain.” The district court accordingly found that it did not need to reach whether Peterson could prove the objective suffering prong.

On appeal, Peterson argues that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to who grabbed whom and that the issue should be resolved by a jury. He does not dispute that the force used against him was fairly minor and that he suffered no visible physical injuries, but argues that any use of real force for purely malicious and sadistic purposes is...