Rimmer-Bey v. Brown
| Decision Date | 09 August 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 93-2082,RIMMER-BE,P,93-2082 |
| Citation | 62 F.3d 789 |
| Parties | Rickylaintiff-Appellant, v. Robert BROWN; Kenneth McGinnis; Daniel Bolden; Raymond Palmer; Bruce Wood; Z. Tyszkiewicz; John Hawley; Robert Wood; and Kenneth Epps, in their individual and official capacities, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Daniel E. Manville (argued and briefed), Ann Arbor, MI, for Ricky Rimmer-Bey.
Thomas A. Kulick, Asst. Atty. Gen. (argued and briefed), Office of Atty. Gen., Corrections Div., Lansing, MI, for Robert Brown, Jr., Daniel Bolden, Dennis Dyke, Z. Tyszkiewicz, John W. Hawley, Kenneth Epps, Bruce Wood and Raymond Palmer.
Before: KRUPANSKY, NELSON, and DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff, a prisoner in the Michigan state prison system, brought suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 against various officials within the Michigan Department of Corrections ("MDOC"), alleging that they violated his procedural due process rights by placing him in administrative segregation without a formal reclassification hearing and violated his substantive due process rights by failing to grant him meaningful reviews of his classification status thereafter. After a trial before a magistrate judge, a judgment was returned in favor of all defendants. The plaintiff filed a motion to amend or reconsider the decision, which the trial court denied. The plaintiff filed a timely notice of appeal.
The events giving rise to plaintiff's complaint are as follows. On October 15, 1987, Bey was an inmate in the general prison population at the Jackson state prison, serving four concurrent life sentences for murder and armed robbery. On that day, Correctional Officer Robert Wright was stabbed twice in the base of the neck by two hooded inmates. State law enforcement officials conducted a criminal investigation, and MDOC officials conducted an internal prison investigation of the incident. A prisoner informant identified plaintiff as one of the parties who was involved in the planning and commission of the assault. Pursuant to prison regulations, Bey was charged with a major prison misconduct, conspiracy to commit assault and battery. 1
Bey received a hearing before prison officials on his major misconduct charge and was found guilty of conspiracy to commit assault and battery. He was sentenced to 30 days punitive detention, which was the maximum period of punitive detention allowed under Michigan regulations. Mich.Admin.Code r. 791.5505(1). Bey served the punitive detention from November 2 to December 2, 1987, and thereafter was placed into administrative segregation. Bey charged that Michigan Prison Regulations required that, after the 30 days of punitive detention, he should have been returned to the general prison population or granted a hearing on his reclassification to administrative segregation. 2 Bey asserted that the mandatory language of the regulations created a liberty interest and that he was entitled to notice and a hearing as a condition precedent to his being placed into administrative segregation. Consequently, he commenced this action asserting that the failure to grant him a reclassification hearing violated his state-created liberty interest.
Bey's arguments are without merit for two reasons. First, Bey relies solely upon the mandatory language of Michigan prison regulations concerning placement into administrative segregation to support his claim of a liberty interest. However, the Supreme Court in Sandin v. Conner, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995), instructed that a state regulatory scheme does not create a liberty interest merely because the regulations incorporate "language of an unmistakably mandatory character." Id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2298. Apart from any mandatory language in a regulation, the plaintiff must also prove that he suffered restraint which imposed an "atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life." Id. at ---- - ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2295. The plaintiff's placement in administrative segregation was not an atypical and significant hardship, as intended by Sandin, within the context of his life sentence. 3
Furthermore, even if plaintiff had possessed a state-created liberty interest, he received the procedural protections required by the Due Process Clause. The procedure to classify...
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...the action was so arbitrary (in the constitutional sense) as to shock the conscience.' ") (citations omitted). 58. Rimmer-Bey v Brown, 62 F3d 789, 791 n 4 (CA 6, 1995) (describing the task of showing conscience-shocking conduct as "a virtually insurmountable uphill struggle"). See also Cruz......
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...in state laws or prison regulations no longer creates a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. Rimmer-Bey v. Brown, 62 F.3d 789, 790-91 (6th Cir.1995). Rather, from now on, when analyzing due process claims federal courts look neither to state laws or regulations to ascertain......
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