Smith v. Mosley

• Citation: 532 F.3d 1270
• Decision Date: 03 July 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-12119.,06-12119.
• Parties: LeRoy SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gwendolyn MOSLEY, Kenneth Jones, Kenneth Sconyers, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

532 F.3d 1270

LeRoy SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gwendolyn MOSLEY, Kenneth Jones, Kenneth Sconyers, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-12119.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

July 3, 2008.

Kelly Fitzgerald Pate (Court-Appointed), Balch & Bingham, LLP, Montgomery, AL, for Smith.

Wiinfield J. Sinclair, Kim Tobias Thomas, Montgomery, AL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

Before TJOFLAT, ANDERSON and COX, Circuit Judges.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

In this case, an Alabama prison inmate serving a life sentence for murder seeks legal and equitable relief against the prison's warden, assistant warden, and hearing review officer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983¹ on the ground that they retaliated against him for engaging in protected speech—for complaining to the assistant warden and the U.S. Department of Justice about conditions of confinement at the prison. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment, and the inmate has appealed. We affirm.

I.

A.

The inmate is LeRoy Smith. At the time of the events giving rise to this law suit, Smith was confined in the Easterling Correctional Facility in Clio, Alabama.² On or about Friday, January 3, 2003, Smith sent the following type-written letter to Assistant Warden Kenneth Jones complaining about past and present conditions of his confinement at Easterling:³

Re: Mandatory Yard Call

Warden Jones,

this is a follow-up letter to the request that I sent you on Dec. 3, 2002. Having got no response to the request comes as no real surprise to me because I'm well aware of this Institution and it's habit of disregarding anything brought to the attention of it's Administrators by an inmate.

In case you're not familiar with the "practice" I'm referring to, it's the act of forcing the inmates to leave the warm dorm and go outside in thirty-something degree temperatures, wearing sub-standard clothing, with no shelter from the winter-like conditions.

It should come as no surprise to you that the practice is, at the very least, being arbitrarily, and maliciously applied to the segment of the prison population that can ill afford it. People with compromised immune systems, that makes them easy candidates to contract pneumonia. A threat, not only to their health, but to their lives also.

To be forced outside in weather conditions that we are being subject to amounts to pre-meditated assault because any person of reasonable intelligence knows the likely consequences of our being subjected to such non-sense. Maybe you should be forced to stand around outside, unsheltered, in thirty-eight degrees, with a 10-15 MPH breeze blowing. See how you'd like it.

Maybe there exist some sinister motive behind the practice? A powerful argument can be made that it is being done to get more people to sign up for sick-call so they will have to pay the $3.00 co-pay thereby increasing the institutions coffers underneath the MISC. INCOME category. Or maybe some other motive exist, one that is not so readily apparent. Like that fiasco in 1999, where the administrative heads of this institution decided to "vaccinate" everyone in this institution against the venereal disease syphilis. Anyone with a brain knows that no such thing as syphilis vaccine exists. And to top it all off, more than twelve hundred were then treated without ever being tested for the disease!

What is the true motive behind the madness? If I got sick to the point of dying, would it matter? Or is that the general idea? It's a really good way to limit the population in the prisons! Maybe this is just part of the big picture. With the way we are being treated, this institution should forever be branded a test-bed for human experimentation, physically as well as psychologically. Remember the infamous Tuskegee Study?

And while we are on the subject of health, let me make another relevant observation. I can certainly understand why there is a shortage of officers here at Easterling. The majority of those here are too busy practicing medicine to be officers, telling the inmates what they should and should not eat to stay healthy. This is quite a stretch for people who can't count to one-hundred without screwing it up! Excuse me, maybe I'm the one who is wrong and the Dept. of Corr. really is providing it's guards with a back-up course in medical technology!

But let's just forget about the fact that I was held down by four officers and forcibly injected with a "syphilis vaccine"; forget about the fact that I'm being forced to go outside in foul weather conditions, dressed in sub-standard clothing, where, because of my diabetic condition, I have a weakened immune system making me subject to the life threatening condition of pneumonia; and last, but certainly, by no means least, lets just forget about the physical and psychological manipulations being done at this prison facility. The underlying question is where will it all end? On a more sinister level, when, if ever, will it end? How can the inhumanity we are being subjected to be justified? As you can see, I have some serious questions that needs answers. For instance; why am I being fed a diet composed of 95% starch when you know I am diabetic? Why am I forced to attend a "progress review hearing" only to be told that I cannot make any progress?

Why am I being denied certain privileges because my supervisor failed to do the job he is being paid to do. Better yet, why is it my responsibility to remind him to do his job?

These are just some of the questions I ask now and before that I have yet to get answers to. Needless to say, I'll continue to ask these questions and I'm going on record yet again as having asked these questions.

In closing, as always, I'll say again, thanks for your time.

                   Respectfully
                   LeRoy Smith—# 107551
                

Jones received the letter at 10:30 a.m. on January 3. After reading the letter, Jones concluded that part of what Smith stated in the letter may have constituted the violation of two of the "Major Rules" of Alabama Department of Corrections ("DOC") Administrative Regulation 403: Rule 41, "Making False Statements or Charge to a DOC Employee with Intent to Deceive the Employee or to Prejudice Another Person"; and Rule 57, "Insubordination."⁴ Jones therefore prepared an "Institutional Incident Report" and submitted it to his supervisor, Warden Gwendolyn Mosley. After meeting with Mosley, Jones had Smith brought to the prison's administrative inmate waiting area and asked him whether he had sent the letter. When Smith admitted sending the letter, Jones informed him that disciplinary hearings would be convened for the purpose of determining whether he had violated Rules 41 and 57 and, if he had done so, whether he should be disciplined. Jones then assigned Smith to the restricted privileges dorm pending the disciplinary proceedings.

Jones prepared a "Disciplinary Report"⁵ for each alleged violation, and Warden Mosley, as required by Administrative Regulation 403, designated a member of the prison staff, Corrections Officer Bill Davis, to preside over the disciplinary hearings.⁶ The first disciplinary report cited Smith with violating Rule 57, "Insubordination," and, as indicated in the margin, related the "[c]ircumstances of the violation."⁷ The second report cited Smith with violating Rule 41, "Making False Statements or Charges to a DOC Employee with Intent to Deceive the Employee or to Prejudice Another Person," and, as indicated in the margin, related the "[c]ircumstances of the violation."⁸ The reports were served on Smith the same day, June 3. The reports informed him that the charges would be heard in separate hearings on January 7, beginning at 3:05 p.m.

The hearings were held on January 7, as scheduled. Jones and Smith both appeared. The first hearing dealt with the alleged violation of Rule 41, Smith's allegedly false statement, "Like that fiasco in 1999, where the administrative heads of this institution decided to `vaccinate' everyone in this institution against the venereal disease syphilis." Smith pled not guilty to the charge that the statement was false and then testified. Admitting that he had made a "bad choice of words," he insisted that the statement was not false because the inoculations for syphilis had actually taken place.⁹ Jones testified that the inoculations had been given at the direction of Alabama Department of Health, and that Smith's allegation that they had been given at the direction of the prison's administration was false and, furthermore, obviously intended to prejudice those responsible for the prison's operation, especially since Smith had sent the letter to the U.S. Department of Justice. At the conclusion of the hearing, Officer Davis found that the statement at issue was false. As a sanction, he recommended forty-five days of disciplinary segregation and the loss of store, telephone, and visiting privileges.

At the hearing involving the Rule 57 violation, Smith pled guilty to the charge. He also testified, explaining, as he had at the previous hearing, that he had used a "bad choice of words." As a sanction, Davis recommended forty-five days in the "hot dorm" and a loss of all privileges.¹⁰

Administrative Regulation 403 provides that the hearing officer's findings and recommendation are to be reviewed by the Warden or the Warden's designee.¹¹ Warden Mosley designated Lt. Kenneth Sconyers to serve as the review officer. On January 9, Sconyers issued his decisions; he approved Officer Davis's findings and recommendations.

B.

On February 11, 2003, Smith filed this law suit against Mosley, Jones, and Sconyers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that they conspired to, and subsequently did, discipline him without affording him the due process or equal protection rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. As relief, Smith requested that the disciplinary proceedings be declared void and sought compensatory and punitive...