Snider v. Alvarez
| Decision Date | 02 November 2020 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION NO. 18-801 |
| Parties | JOEL SNIDER v. ROBIN ALVAREZ AND PSS STEVENS |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania |
Joel Snider is serving a thirty to sixty-year sentence in Pennsylvania prisons after pleading guilty but mentally ill to murder and burglary in Pennsylvania state court. He faces serious episodic challenges to his mental health. Since pleading guilty over six years ago, he repetitively files both counselled and pro se lawsuits against federal and state judges, prison officials, doctors, and others supervising him in Pennsylvania prisons. He now has lawsuits pending before at least three federal judges challenging the way in which different Pennsylvania prisons address his mental health or prison conditions. He generally focuses his scattered pro se allegations before us on his theory Pennsylvania is required to provide him, as a disabled man based on sporadic episodes of mental illness, with a certain desired level of legal services to help him litigate both his cases and help other incarcerated persons litigate their cases. When he does not understand his own pleadings or the court process, he seeks mental health treatment from prison officials. When the state actors do not help him to the level he desires, he files grievances. When the state actors deny his grievances, he claims they are discriminating or retaliating against him for his protected activity under the First Amendment and Americans with Disabilities Act.
We today address the sufficiency of Mr. Snider's civil rights and Pennsylvania law claims against Pennsylvania prison officials and medical professionals treating him from July 2017 until December 2018 at SCI-Somerset. Mr. Snider claims these state actors caused him psychological injury and frustrated his legal claims in an earlier lawsuit also pending before us, Snider v. Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, No. 15-951 ("Snider I"), and in his appeal from post-conviction relief in his state court criminal conviction which led to his lengthy sentence.
After parsing through the 338 paragraphs of allegations, we dismiss all claims and parties other than Mr. Snider's Eighth Amendment claim for deliberate indifference relating to the denial of mental health therapy and treatment by Psychological Services Staff Robin Alvarez and f/n/u Stevens. We dismiss all other claims against all other defendants as Mr. Snider otherwise does not plead a claim. We will proceed into discovery on this Eighth Amendment deliberative indifference claim against these two state actors. His remaining claims are dismissed.
Mr. Snider sues to "address the impeding and frustrating of [his] attempts to have meaningful court access for the claims he is attempting to present in" Snider I and his state court post-conviction petition.1 He challenges the conduct of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the Secretary of the Department of Corrections, Director of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, various prison officials and employees, and Department of Corrections physician Dr. Sheikh.2 Mr. Snider brings civil rights claims alleging violations of his rights under the First, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments; violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. § 12111, et seq. and the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794; and Pennsylvania state law claims including a medical negligence claim against Dr. Sheikh and a defamation claim.
He alleges the Department of Corrections discriminated against him on the basis of his mental health disability and excluded him from programs, activities, and services including "thelaw library, legal research, production of legal documents, meaningful access to the court, recreation, socialization, general living, housing, adjustment, conferral with counsel, religious services, employment, mental health services, grievance services, etc. and has made his participation unusually difficult."3 He alleges the Department of Corrections "regards him" as having personality disorder, a diagnosis which he contests.4 He alleges Defendants' conduct is impeding and frustrating his post-conviction relief action in state court and his "contemplated challenges" to prison conditions in Snider I.5
Mr. Snider asks we declare all "defendants" violated his rights and award him damages in an unspecified amount, as well as injunctive relief "to address ongoing retaliation, obstruction, defamation, exclusion, and failure to accommodate"; a "name-clearing hearing"; costs; and other equitable relief.6
Mr. Snider is sitting in state prison serving a thirty to sixty-year sentence for murder and burglary. In July 2010, police arrested Joel Snider for murder and other charges for the shooting death of Sudharman Joseph Fenton in Union County, Pennsylvania. After an October 12, 2010 preliminary hearing, a magisterial district judge bound the charges against Mr. Snider over for trial. Mr. Snider alleges incarceration as a pretrial detainee from September 2010 to August 2014 at the Union County prison, the Snyder County prison, the Clinton County Correctional Facility, and state prisons operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections including SCI-Coal Township, SCI-Camp Hill, SCI-Greene, and Torrance State Hospital.7
On August 8, 2014, Mr. Snider entered into a negotiated plea of guilty but mentally ill to one count of third-degree murder and one count of burglary. Mr. Snider received a sentence at the time of his plea to the agreed upon aggregate term of thirty to sixty years' imprisonment. It isunclear where the Department of Corrections housed Mr. Snider between August 8, 2014 and July 5, 2017.8 On July 6, 2017, the Department of Corrections moved Mr. Snider to SCI-Somerset.9 In his amended Complaint, Mr. Snider challenges only the conduct at SCI-Somerset beginning July 6, 2017.
On September 11, 2015, Mr. Snider moved for post-conviction collateral relief under the Post-Conviction Relief Act ("PCRA"), 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9541, et seq.10 On November 10, 2016, the Union County Court of Common Pleas granted, without a hearing, the Commonwealth's Motion to dismiss Mr. Snider's PCRA petition, including ineffective assistance of counsel to file a timely direct appeal.11 Mr. Snider appealed to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. On November 21, 2017, the Pennsylvania Superior Court vacated the trial court's order dismissing Mr. Snider's PCRA petition and remanded.12 The Superior Court did not address the merits of Mr. Snider's PCRA petition, instead concluding Mr. Snider's requite for nunc pro tunc relief to file a direct appeal should have been considered a PCRA petition and Mr. Snider should have been appointed counsel.13
After remand, the PCRA court held a hearing on Mr. Snider's petition and, on June 7, 2019, denied Mr. Snider's amended PCRA petition.14 On July 8, 2019, Mr. Snider, represented by appointed counsel, appealed the PCRA court's decision.15 On October 30, 2020, the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the denial of his PCRA petition and the PCRA court's finding Mr. Snider did not establish his burden of proving he requested a direct appeal. The case remains in the appellate courts for at least the next thirty days to allow possible appeals.16
On May 7, 2015, Mr. Snider filed an action, captioned Snider v. Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, No. 15-951, in this Court. He alleged defendants—over seventy entities and individuals including the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the United States, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania's Unified Judicial System, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, and various prison officials and corrections officers—violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, the United States Constitution, and Pennsylvania law.17
Mr. Snider alleges he is disabled within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131, 12181 and Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794 because of mental illness and a hearing impairment.18 In Snider I, Mr. Snider claims: (1) denial of access to the "programs, activities and services or judicial proceedings" in his state criminal action including his PCRA action from July 7, 2010 to the present; (2) conditions of confinement beginning in December 2012; and (3) retaliation for filing grievances from December 2012 to May 2013, August 2014, and May 2013 to May 2015 at multiple state and county correctional facilities.
The operative complaint in Snider I—the second amended complaint—remains pending with Defendants filing nine separate motions to dismiss. Mr. Snider responded to some, but not all of the motions. The motions to dismiss remain pending.
The Department of Corrections' "Access to Provided Legal Services" policy DC-ADM 007 effective April 13, 2015 (the "Policy") provides: "It is the policy of the Department that legalreference materials are acquired, maintained, and made available to an inmate, and that assistance in the use of legal reference materials is made available to an eligible inmate."19
The Policy is broken into two sections: (1) Law Libraries and Services; and (2) Inmate Access to Services. The first section provides, among other things, the acquisition and maintenance of law libraries, the operation of law libraries, and determining the need for extra time in a law library. The second section provides, among other things, legal assistance services to inmates who qualify. Eligibility for legal assistance is limited to inmates who: (1) are "legitimately illiterate"; (2) "lack the skills...
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