Rivera v. Coyne-Fague

• Decision Date: 30 September 2021
• Docket Number: C. A. 19-458-WES
• Parties: JULIO E. RIVERA, Plaintiff, v. PATRICIA COYNE-FAGUE, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Rhode Island

JULIO E. RIVERA, Plaintiff,
v.
PATRICIA COYNE-FAGUE, et al., Defendants.

C. A. No. 19-458-WES

United States District Court, D. Rhode Island

September 30, 2021

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

WILLIAM E. SMITH, DISTRICT JUDGE

Pending before the Court is Defendants' Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 13, Plaintiff Julio E. Rivera's Complaint, ECF No. 1. Rivera, a prisoner at the Adult Correctional Institutions (“ACI”), has brought a civil rights action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Defendants Director Coyne-Fague, Assistant Director Kettle, Deputy Warden Cloud, Lieutenant Freeman, Investigator Raposa, and Investigator Cabral (collectively “Defendants”), all of whom are sued in their individual and official capacities. Defendants seek dismissal of the Complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. For the reasons that follow, the Motion to Dismiss is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part.

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I. BACKGROUND

For purposes of this Memorandum and Order, the Court accepts as true the allegations in Rivera's Complaint.

Rivera is an inmate at the ACI in Cranston, Rhode Island. Compl. ¶ 3, ECF No. 1. Defendants are officials and/or officers at the ACI. Id. ¶¶ 4-7. In his pro se Complaint, Rivera alleges violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and the “Morris Rules.” Id. ¶¶ 20-22. In brief, Rivera alleges that he was investigated and booked for drug trafficking without physical evidence, found guilty by a one-person disciplinary board, again without evidence, and was sanctioned to 365 days in disciplinary confinement and loss of 365 days of good time. Id. ¶¶ 9-13. His appeals were denied. Id. ¶¶ 14-15. Rivera seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, compensatory and punitive damages, and costs. Id. ¶¶ 24-28.

On January 17, 2019, Rivera was removed from his cell and escorted to disciplinary confinement pending an investigation into narcotics trafficking at the ACI. Id. ¶ 9. Defendants Raposa and Cabral conducted an investigation and on January 29, 2019, booked Rivera for trafficking narcotics. Id. ¶ 10. Rivera went before the Disciplinary Board, which was conducted by Defendant Freeman, on February 1, 2019. Id. ¶ 12. During the hearing, Rivera asked to see the evidence but was informed there was no evidence. Id.

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¶ 13.^[1] Defendant Freeman found that Rivera was guilty as charged and sanctioned him to 365 days' disciplinary confinement as well as loss of 365 days of good time. Id. Rivera appealed the decision to the Warden through his designee, Defendant Cloud. Id. ¶ 14. His appeal was denied. Id. Rivera then exhausted his administrative remedies by appealing the denial to Defendant Kettle and, subsequently, Defendant Coyne-Fague, both of whom denied the appeals. Id. ¶ 15.

Rivera filed the instant Complaint on August 29, 2019.^[2]Defendants filed the Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 13, on November 15, 2019. On December 2, 2019, Rivera filed an Objection to Defendants' Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 14. Defendants thereafter filed a Reply Memorandum, ECF No. 15, in support of their Motion to Dismiss.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556

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U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). A complaint which “pleads facts that are merely consistent with a defendant's liability” is insufficient. Id. at 678 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In considering a motion to dismiss a prisoner's claim that his constitutional rights have been violated, the court must be guided by the principle that, while “prison officials are to be accorded substantial deference in the way they run their prisons, this does not mean that [courts] will rubber stamp or mechanically accept the judgments of prison administrators.” Spratt v. R.I. Dep't of Corr., 482 F.3d 33, 40 (1st Cir. 2007) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). The Court holds the allegations of a pro se litigant “to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers . . . .” Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972).

III. DISCUSSION

A. Individual Capacity Claims

Pursuant to § 1983:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress . . . .

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42 U.S.C. § 1983. “In order to maintain a section 1983 action, the conduct complained [of] must be committed by a ‘person' acting under color of state law and the conduct must have deprived the plaintiff of a constitutional right or federal statutory right.” Hewes v. R.I. Dep't of Corr., C. A. No. 00-205 S, 2003 WL 751027, at *2 (D.R.I. Feb. 11, 2003) (citing Gomez v. Toledo, 446 U.S. 635, 640 (1980)).

Rivera alleges that all Defendants violated his rights under the Eighth Amendment, Compl. ¶¶ 20-22; that Defendant Freeman violated his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, Id. ¶ 21; and that Defendant Freeman also violated his rights under the Morris Rules, Id. ¶¶ 12, 21. Defendants argue that Rivera's Complaint fails to state a claim under which relief may be granted and that it should be dismissed pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Mot. to Dismiss 1, ECF No. 13; Defs.' Mem. Law in Supp. Mot. to Dismiss (“Defs.' Mem.”) 1, 4-9, ECF No. 13-1. The Court addresses each of Rivera's claims, albeit in different order.

Rivera claims that Defendant Freeman violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process “when he did not dismiss the booking for lack of evidence . . . .” Compl. ¶ 21.

In Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472 (1995), the Supreme Court described the limited instances in which a prison inmate can make out a claim that a liberty interest has been taken without due

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process and acknowledged that under certain circumstances a state may create liberty interests which are protected by the Due Process Clause. Id. at 483-84. However, the interests generally are limited to those which impose “atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.” Id. at 484. Assuming that Rivera intends to include the punishment resulting from the allegedly unsupported booking in his claim, at this, the pleading stage, he has plausibly identified a liberty interest. See DuPonte v. Wall, 288 F.Supp.3d 504, 509 (D.R.I. 2018) (“Prisoners held in segregation may have liberty interests protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”); see also Id. (noting that “[c]ourts have recognized that extreme length of disciplinary confinement can be a significant factor in implicating liberty interest” and citing cases).^[3] Thus, the Court turns to the process due Rivera.

The Supreme Court described the process due a prisoner accused of a disciplinary infraction in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539 (1974), as follows: (1) he must receive written notice of the charges; (2) he must be “allowed to call witnesses and present documentary evidence in his defense when permitting him to do so will not be unduly hazardous to institutional safety or

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correctional goals”; and (3) “there must be a written statement by the fact finder as to the evidence relied on and reasons” for the decision. Id. at 564, 566 (internal citation omitted).

In his Complaint, Rivera does not dispute that the above procedures were followed. Indeed, in his memorandum supporting his Objection to the Motion to Dismiss, he acknowledges that he was given notice, received a hearing within twenty-four hours of receiving such notice, and was able to speak with a counselor before the hearing. Pl.'s Mem. Law in Supp. Obj. to Defs.' Mot. To Dismiss (“Obj Mem.”) 3, ECF No. 14-1. Rivera claims, however, that he was not given the opportunity to properly defend himself due to the vagueness in the description of the booking. Id. As Defendants correctly note, Rivera has included additional facts and documents in the Objection that were not part of the Complaint. Defs.' Reply Mem. Law in Supp. of Mot. to Dismiss (“Defs.' Reply Mem.) 2, ECF No. 15. The documents, for the most part, are sufficiently referenced in the Complaint, and, in fact, support that the Wolff requirements were met and demonstrate that Rivera was able to defend himself during the hearing. See Obj. Mem. Attach. 1, Offender's Report 2-3, 6, ECF No. 14-2.

“The Federal Constitution does not require evidence that logically precludes any conclusion but the one reached by the disciplinary board. Instead, due process in this context requires only that there be some evidence to support the findings made in

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the disciplinary hearing.” Superintendent, Mass. Corr. Inst., Walpole v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 457 (1985). “Ascertaining whether this standard is satisfied does not require examination of the entire record, independent assessment of the credibility of witnesses, or weighing of the evidence. Instead, the relevant question is whether there is any evidence in the record that could support the conclusion reached by the disciplinary board.” Id. at 455-56.

Here, as noted above, there was some evidence-in the form of an ongoing investigation, phone monitoring, interviews, and confidential information-to support Defendant Freeman's guilty finding. See Offender's Report at 2. Thus, the standard has...