Wakinekona v. Olim
Decision Date | 08 June 1978 |
Docket Number | Civ. No. 76-0286. |
Citation | 459 F. Supp. 473 |
Parties | Delbert Kaahanui WAKINEKONA, Plaintiff, v. Antone OLIM, Edith M. Wilhelm, John Smythe, Winton Leong and Edwin Shimoda, Defendants. |
Court | U.S. District Court — District of Hawaii |
Clayton C. Ikei, Honolulu, Hawaii, for plaintiff.
Ronald Y. Amemiya, Atty. Gen., State of Hawaii, Michael A. Lilly, Deputy Atty. Gen., Honolulu, Hawaii, for defendants.
Defendants have moved for summary judgment pursuant to Rule 56, F.R.Civ.P., seeking a dismissal of plaintiff's First Amended Complaint. Defendants had previously moved to dismiss plaintiff's original complaint, which was denied by this court. Defendants, in effect, are asking this court to reconsider its previous order denying dismissal.
Plaintiff Wakinekona, sentenced to life imprisonment without parole by the Hawaii State court, was an inmate of the Hawaii State Prison confined to the maximum control unit. On August 2, 1976, Wakinekona appeared before a board designated as a Program Committee of the Hawaii State Prison for a hearing, the stated purpose of which was to determine the reason for which the programs at the maximum control unit of the Hawaii State Prison had failed. Three days later, he was served with a written notice that he would have a further hearing to determine his program designation at the Hawaii State Prison, which included a possible transfer to an out-of-state penal facility. On August 10, 1976, a hearing was held on plaintiff's program classification before the same members of the same committee. The committee rendered its decision the next day and thereafter served a written copy of it to the plaintiff. Based on this decision, the plaintiff was transferred to Folsom State Prison in California.
In his First Amended Complaint, plaintiff claims, inter alia, that the decision rendered by the committee was violative of the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution since it was "rendered by a board the composition of which was biased and prejudicial against the Plaintiff and consisted of persons who were directly responsible for the initiation of said hearing. . . ." Plaintiff further claims that his transfer violated the purpose of the program classification hearing which was governed by state regulations promulgated and issued by the Corrections Division of the Hawaii State Department of Social Services and Housing.
In its Memorandum and Order dated October 1, 1976, 421 F.Supp. 83, this court held that the hearing conducted on August 10, 1976 before a board consisting of the same members who sat on the August 2, 1976 committee violated plaintiff's constitutional right to due process. This court's holding was based on its reading of Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974). In that case, the Supreme Court held that although the Constitution does not guarantee good-time credit for satisfactory behavior while in prison, where the state itself provided a statutory right to good time and specifies that it is to be forfeited only for serious misbehavior, the prisoner has acquired an interest which "has real substance and is sufficiently embraced within the Fourteenth Amendment `liberty' to entitle him to those minimum procedures appropriate under the circumstances and required by the Due Process Clause to insure that the state-created right is not arbitrarily abrogated. . . ." Id. at 2975.
In Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 96 S.Ct. 2532, 49 L.Ed.2d 451 (1976), the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause does not protect a duly convicted prisoner against transfer from one institution to another within the state prison system. It asserted that Wolff was distinguishable because "The liberty interest protected in Wolff had its roots in Nebraska state law . . .." id. at 2539, whereas in the Fano case, ". . . Massachusetts law conferred no right on the prisoner to remain in the prison to which he was initially assigned, defeasible only upon proof of specific acts of misconduct." Id. at 2539.
In its October 1, 1976 Memorandum and Order, this court thought that Fano was "not on point because it does not involve a state-created right." It was pointed out that Fano held that a state prisoner is not entitled, under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, "to a hearing when he is transferred to a prison the conditions of which are substantially less favorable to the prisoner, absent a state law or practice conditioning such transfers on proof of serious misconduct or the occurrence of other events." Citing from 96 S.Ct. at 2534, with emphasis added. This court was then of the opinion that the State of Hawaii did create a right to plaintiff to a fair hearing by promulgation of the regulations by the Corrections Division.1
After this court issued its Memorandum and Order, the First Circuit Court of Appeals had occasion to address itself to the applicability of Fano in the context of prisoner rights created not by a state statute but by state departmental regulations not in effect at the time Fano was decided. In Lombardo v. Meachum, 548 F.2d 13 (1st Cir. 1977), the pertinent regulations provided that an inmate would receive some type of hearing before his reclassification. The regulations, however, did not impose standards limiting the discretion of prison authorities with respect to prisoner transfers. The Court therefore concluded that the regulations did not create "the kind of substantive interest which is required before a state...
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Olim v. Wakinekona
...the Hawaii regulations governing prison transfers do not create a substantive liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. 459 F.Supp. 473 (1978).4 The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, by a divided vote, reversed. 664 F.2d 708 (1981). It held that Hawaii had cr......
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Wakinekona v. Olim
...interest protected by the due process clause. Wakinekona appealed the resulting judgment. We reverse the decision of the district court, 459 F.Supp. 473. I. Wakinekona was an inmate of the Hawaii State Prison, sentenced to life imprisonment and confined to the maximum control unit. On Augus......
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Wakinekona v. Olim, 78-3092
...75 L.Ed.2d 813 (1983), reversing and remanding the prior decision of this court, 664 F.2d 708 (1981), the judgment of the district court 459 F.Supp. 473 dismissing the complaint is ...