Whitfield v. Spiller
| Docket Number | 20-1747 |
| Decision Date | 07 August 2023 |
| Parties | BenYehudah Whitfield, II, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Betsy Spiller, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
ARGUED JANUARY 5, 2022
RE-ARGUED JANUARY 11, 2023 [1]
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois No. 3:13-cv-00653-SMY - Staci M. Yandle Judge.
Before WOOD, BRENNAN, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.
BenYehudah Whitfield was scheduled for discharge from Menard Correctional Center on January 7, 2010, at which point he was to begin a term of mandatory supervised release. But things went badly off the tracks that day. The problems began when prison officials handed Whitfield only the signature page of a document called the "Electronic Detention Program Agreement" (the Agreement). That page stated in boldface that "the following conditions of the Program apply only to sex offender cases." Whitfield was (and is) not a sex offender, and so he reasonably thought that the signature requirement on the provided form should not apply to him. Furthermore, he objected to signing the Agreement without an explanation from a prison official clarifying why he, a non-sex offender, had to sign a form designed exclusively for sex offenders.
Whitfield's objections were brushed aside. Four times, clinical services supervisor Betsy Spiller directed Whitfield to sign the form. After his continued refusal, she ordered a disciplinary ticket to be issued against Whitfield for failure to follow a direct order. The disciplinary ticket triggered a cascade of unfortunate events: Whitfield was transferred to disciplinary segregation; the Illinois Prisoner Review Board (the Board) held a hearing on whether he had violated the terms of his supervised release; he was declared a violator of the release conditions; and finally, his eligibility for supervised release was revoked. In the end, Whitfield remained in custody for another 18 months.
In response to his prolonged incarceration, Whitfield sued Spiller, other Menard officials, and certain members of the Board, alleging several constitutional violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. By now, the case has boiled down to Whitfield's claims against Spiller and then-warden William Gaetz for violations of his First and Eighth Amendment rights. We conclude that the district court correctly granted summary judgment to defendants on some of these claims, but that Whitfield has adduced sufficient evidence that Spiller's conduct violated his First Amendment rights to move forward. We therefore affirm in part and reverse in part.
Whitfield was sentenced by a state court to a 28-year term of imprisonment for home invasion and aggravated battery- crimes he committed in December 1994. He was transferred to Menard on September 10, 2008. On September 16, 2009, the Board approved Whitfield for mandatory supervised release under several conditions, including electronic monitoring. Whitfield's release date was calculated as January 7 2010; he was to live at an approved host site called "Henry House."
When January 7 arrived, Whitfield was taken to Menard's reception center to meet with Vickie Howie, a Clinical Services Counselor. Howie instructed him to sign five or six release documents, one of which was the signature page of the Agreement we mentioned earlier. No one showed Whitfield the rest of the Agreement, and he refused to sign it. Whitfield later testified that he was aware of the dangers of signing one's rights away, thanks to his long involvement in litigation against officials from the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). Whitfield's concern was reinforced by the fact that the signature page's header read "The following conditions of the Program Agreement apply only to sex offender cases."
After Whitfield's initial refusal, Spiller stepped in. Whitfield asked her for a legal justification for the signature requirement. But she told him that she did not know the legal basis for the signature requirement. During this exchange, Whitfield tried to explain that he should not have been subject to electronic monitoring and that he wanted to preserve his ability to contest it as a condition of his supervised release. Whitfield also contended that the statute governing participant consent requirements for electronic monitoring, 730 ILCS 5/5-8A-5, did not require his signature in any event. He was concerned that, by signing the Agreement, he would be consenting to improper release conditions and would thus be at risk of being returned to custody for "bogus" infractions.
Though Whitfield likely was mistaken about his eligibility for any exemption from electronic monitoring, it was true that Illinois law did not require his signature on the Agreement. Under 730 ILCS 5/5-8A-5, signed consent is not required for "persons subject to electronic monitoring or home detention as a term or condition of parole, aftercare release, or mandatory supervised release." This carve-out applied to Whitfield and meant that his signature was not a legal requirement of his discharge that day. The electronic monitoring was going to happen, signature or no signature.
Spiller did not request guidance from a supervisor or consult with a legal authority such as a lawyer from the Attorney General's Office. Nor does the record reflect any prison policy or rule that might have controlled Spiller's response. Instead, she warned Whitfield that failure to sign the Agreement would be considered a violation of his supervised release conditions and would warrant a disciplinary ticket. Sure enough, when Whitfield continued to withhold his signature after Spiller ordered him four times to sign the Agreement, Spiller directed Howie to write and file a disciplinary ticket.
Spiller knew that the issuance of a disciplinary ticket would result in Whitfield's immediate placement in segregation under "temporary confinement" status, and that is just what happened. Spiller understood that this placement in segregation was intended as punishment for Whitfield's refusal to sign. She explained in discovery that Whitfield "had already committed an offense or violation of the rules for disobeying a direct order," and so "punishment was meted out." That same day, Whitfield's sentence was recalculated to include an additional 18 months of imprisonment based on an alleged violation of his supervised-release conditions.
On January 11, after four days in segregation, Whitfield filed a grievance addressed to Warden Gaetz. He expressed a willingness to sign the Agreement if someone explained the legal authority for requiring his signature. He restated his contention that Illinois law did not require him to be placed on electronic monitoring. He also questioned the legal authority to detain him on his release date and declare him a violator of his supervised-release conditions without a hearing.
Whitfield did not mark the grievance as an emergency filing, and so under Menard policy it was redirected to Spiller, who generally handled non-emergency grievances about the conduct of a member of the counseling staff. Spiller summarily denied the grievance. She did not investigate the relevant Illinois law, nor did she respond to Whitfield's requests for legal authority or provide him another opportunity to sign the Agreement. Instead, she told Whitfield that his
On January 12, Menard's Adjustment Committee held a hearing on Whitfield's disciplinary ticket. Whitfield was informed of the hearing the same day, but he was not allowed to attend, ostensibly because his braids violated the Adjustment Committee's dress code. He was not given sufficient time to remove them. The Adjustment Committee found Whitfield guilty of disobeying a direct order and recommended three months of disciplinary segregation as a punishment. Whitfield ultimately spent more than four months in segregation.
On January 20, 2010, not quite two weeks after his initial encounter, Whitfield finally signed the Agreement, even though he never was given a full copy of the document. But because the Adjustment Committee had already recommended three months of disciplinary segregation, Whitfield's efforts to comply with Spiller's orders were judged insufficient to warrant removal from segregation or discharge from Menard. Shortly thereafter, Whitfield was deemed to have refused his spot at Henry House and lost his host-site placement. This made him ineligible for supervised release until another host site could be located.
About a month later, on February 24, Whitfield attended a release revocation hearing before the Board. Whitfield explained in a letter why he withheld his signature, restating his contention that his signature was not required, explaining that no one answered his request for legal authority, and adding that one of the reasons he refused to sign the Agreement was because officials would not allow him to read a full copy of the document. But the Board found that his failure to sign the Agreement was a violation of his supervised-release conditions. Because Whitfield had signed the Agreement in the meantime, the Board did not revoke his eligibility for parole. Whitfield attended a second release revocation hearing on May 19, which resulted in the same outcome: a confirmed violation but no revocation of release eligibility. Nevertheless, Whitfield was still trapped at Menard because no new host site had been confirmed. No IDOC official ever discussed his release plan or a new host site with him. In...
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