Smith v. Collins

• Citation: 964 F.3d 266
• Decision Date: 10 July 2020
• Docket Number: No. 18-7313,18-7313
• Parties: Elbert SMITH, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. Dennis COLLINS; Anthony Gilbert ; Richard Light ; Leslie Fleming ; Marcus Elam, Defendants - Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

964 F.3d 266

Elbert SMITH, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.Dennis COLLINS; Anthony Gilbert ; Richard Light ; Leslie Fleming ; Marcus Elam, Defendants - Appellees.

No. 18-7313

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: April 24, 2020

Decided: July 10, 2020

ARGUED: Noah McCullough, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Martine Elizabeth Cicconi, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA, Richmond, Virginia for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Erica Hashimoto, Director, Nicolas Sansone, Supervising Attorney, Ariel Dukes, Student Counsel, Appellate Litigation Program, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Mark R. Herring, Attorney General, Victoria N. Pearson, Deputy Attorney General, Margaret Hoehl O'Shea, Assistant Attorney General, Laura Haeberle Cahill, Assistant Attorney General, Toby J. Heytens, Solicitor General, Michelle S. Kallen, Deputy Solicitor General, Jessica Merry Samuels, Assistant Solicitor General, Zachary R. Glubiak, John Marshall Fellow, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellees.

Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, and FLOYD and THACKER, Circuit Judges.

Vacated and remanded by published opinion. Judge Floyd wrote the opinion in which Chief Judge Gregory and Judge Thacker joined.

FLOYD, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-Appellant Elbert Smith spent over four years in solitary confinement at Wallens Ridge State Prison, a supermax correctional facility within the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC). In 2017, while Smith was housed in administrative segregation, he filed this pro se lawsuit against various correctional officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging a violation of his procedural due process rights. The district court eventually granted summary judgment to these officials on the ground that Smith had failed to establish a protected liberty interest. According to the district court, the conditions that Smith was forced to endure in administrative segregation were not, as a matter of law, "atypical and significant[ly] [harsh] ... in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life." Smith v. Collins , No. 7:17-cv-00215, 2018 WL 4515898, at *5 (W.D. Va. Sept. 20, 2018) (quoting Sandin v. Conner , 515 U.S. 472, 484, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995) ).

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Smith, we think a reasonable jury could disagree. In line with the Supreme Court's decision in Wilkinson v. Austin , 545 U.S. 209, 125 S.Ct. 2384, 162 L.Ed.2d 174 (2005), our atypical-and-significant-hardship analysis turns on three factors: "(1) the magnitude of confinement restrictions; (2) whether the administrative segregation is for an indefinite period; and (3) whether assignment to administrative segregation had any collateral consequences on the inmate's sentence." Incumaa v. Stirling , 791 F.3d 517, 530 (4th Cir. 2015). Here, Smith has presented evidence demonstrating that his confinement conditions were severe in comparison to those that exist in general population (factor one) and that his segregation status may have had collateral consequences relating to the length of his sentence (factor three). Moreover, although the duration of Smith's segregated confinement—a fact we consider in assessing indefiniteness (factor two)—is not as long as the substantial periods of segregated confinement that this Court has found sufficient to support a protected liberty interest in the past, prisoners need not languish in solitary confinement for decades on end in order to possess a cognizable liberty interest under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The four-plus years that Smith spent in administrative segregation is significant enough to tip the scales in his favor, particularly in light of the other evidence of indefiniteness that he relies upon in this case.

For these reasons, we hold that there is at least a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Smith's conditions of confinement imposed a significant and atypical hardship in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. Therefore, we vacate the district court's summary judgment order and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Specifically, on remand, the district court should consider in the first instance, and after further discovery, whether the process that Smith received was constitutionally adequate and whether the Defendant-Appellees are nevertheless entitled to qualified immunity.

I.

Smith is currently serving a forty-four-year sentence in VDOC custody. In November 2010, he was placed in VDOC's Grooming Standards Violators Housing Unit (VHU), which was then located at Keen Mountain Correctional Center. Until recently, VDOC's grooming policy, Operating Procedure (OP) 864.1, required prisoners to keep their hair above a certain length or be moved to some form of alternative segregated housing, such as the VHU. See J.A. 124–27, 177–79; see also Resp. Br. 10 n.4 (detailing 2019 policy changes to OP 864.1). Smith asserts that, as a practicing Rastafarian, he cannot cut his hair without violating his religion.

Several months later, in February 2011, Smith was transferred to Wallens Ridge State Prison on an emergency basis, after he was accused of assaulting a correctional officer at Keen Mountain. Wallens Ridge is one of VDOC's twin maximum-security facilities with segregation units for holding prisoners in long-term solitary confinement. Upon arrival, Smith was assigned a "Level S" security level—a special designation reserved for prisoners who must be managed in an administrative segregation¹ setting due to a security risk. Certain kinds of past acts are segregation qualifiers, and aggravated assault against a correctional officer is one of them.

Shortly after he was assigned to Level S, Smith was transferred to VDOC's other supermax facility, Red Onion State Prison, for intake, orientation, and assessment, and he remained in administrative segregation there until his transfer back to Wallens Ridge in July 2013. In mid-2012, a little more than a year after Smith arrived at Red Onion, he began participating in an earlier version of VDOC's "Segregation Reduction Step-Down Program," which is now memorialized in OP 830.A. See generally J.A. 74–93 (OP 830.A). Because the Step-Down Program lies at the heart of Smith's appeal, we briefly summarize it before addressing Smith's experience in the program at both Red Onion and Wallens Ridge.

A.

The stated purpose of the Step-Down Program is to "establish[ ] procedures for incentive[-]based offender management" that will create a "pathway" for prisoners housed in segregation "to step-down from Security Level S to lower security levels in a manner that maintains public, staff[,] and offender safety." J.A. 74. Per OP 830.A, upon completion of the intake and orientation process at Red Onion, Level S prisoners are placed on one of two pathways by a "Dual Treatment Team"² based on their identified risk level: Intensive Management (IM) or Special Management (SM). J.A. 76. Depending upon whether they choose to participate in the Step-Down Program,³ prisoners may then be assigned a "privilege status" within their respective pathways. J.A. 76. Offenders in the IM track can be classified as IM0, IM1, or IM2—with IM0 offenders receiving the fewest privileges and having the most restrictive conditions. The same is true for SM offenders.

Upon successful completion of the requirements of IM1 and IM2 or SM1 and SM2, offenders can be stepped down to Security Level 6 (SL6). For SM pathway prisoners like Smith, who present less of a security risk, see generally J.A. 74–75 (defining IM and SM pathways), the transition from SL6 to general population at Security Level 5 (SL5) occurs in two phases: the first allows prisoners slightly more freedom, and the second provides limited interaction with other prisoners.

Step-Down Program participants are "challenged to meet goals in three areas." J.A. 78. They must commit to (1) eliminating disciplinary infractions, (2) meeting a set of responsible behavior goals, and (3) participating in self-improvement and education programs, including a seven-part curriculum called the Challenge Series . Members of a "Unit Management Team"—a multi-disciplinary group comprised of corrections officers, counselors, and a unit manager—are charged with informally tracking participants’ progress and advancing them through the IM or SM pathway. See J.A. 75, 78. In addition to monitoring participants’ disciplinary charges, the Unit Management Team tracks each participant's progress toward responsible behavior and program participation both by rating their weekly performance in categories such as cell maintenance, personal hygiene, standing for count, and respect, and by rating their level of participation in weekly programming.

All told, if a prisoner earns positive weekly ratings and evaluators find that he meets the goals of his current step, then he may advance to the next step and earn its additional privileges. But prisoners who do not meet their goals, or who commit disciplinary infractions, may be moved back a step or required to redo a Challenge Series workbook.

As previously noted, prisoners who successfully complete the IM or SM pathway may be eligible to "step down" from Level S to SL6 and, eventually, to general population at SL5. Before advancing to SL6, however, they must be "formally reviewed" by an Institutional Classification Authority (ICA) in accordance with VDOC's "Facility Classification Management" policy, OP 830.1. J.A. 78; See J.A. 94–102 (OP 830.1). OP 830.1 applies to all Level S prisoners and provides for ninety-day reviews of a person's segregation status at a hearing before an ICA.⁴ See J.A. 72; see also J.A. 96 (defining ICA as a "facility employee who has contact with the offender, but who is impartial to the offender being presented for review"). A counselor is also present at the hearing. See J.A. 96–97, 242. Following each hearing,...