Whitlock v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 05 August 1998
• Docket Number: No. 98-1133,98-1133
• Citation: 153 F.3d 380
• Parties: Herbert WHITLOCK, Stanley Wrice, and Bennie Lopez, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Adrienne JOHNSON, Melvin Allen, and George DeTella, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 380

153 F.3d 380

Herbert WHITLOCK, Stanley Wrice, and Bennie Lopez, et al Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Adrienne JOHNSON, Melvin Allen, and George DeTella Defendants-Appellants.

No. 98-1133.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 28, 1998.

Decided Aug. 5, 1998.

Thomas Peters (argued), Murphy, Peters & Davis, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

A. Benjamin Goldgar (argued), Office of the Attorney General, Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellants.

Before FLAUM, MANION, and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

Prisoners faced with the revocation of good-time credits have a qualified right to call witnesses in their defense. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974). Officials at Illinois' Stateville Correctional Center contend that this right is satisfied when, in lieu of actually bringing an inmate's requested witnesses to testify at the revocation hearing, officials instead interview the proposed witnesses and present the prison's disciplinary committee with an unsworn report summarizing the witnesses' testimony. The district court held that this policy violated the prisoners' due process rights as articulated in Wolff. We affirm this decision, but we vacate the portion of the district court's award ordering the reopening of previous cases in which inmates' good-time credits were revoked.

I.

Stateville Correctional Center maintains an Adjustment Committee that holds hearings to adjudicate inmates' alleged violations of prison disciplinary rules. The Adjustment Committee is authorized to mete out a variety of punishments for such violations, see 20 ILL. ADMIN. CODE § 504, including the revocation of good-time credits that an inmate may have earned under Illinois law, see 703 ILL. COMP. STAT. § 5/3-6-3(c). When an inmate accused of an infraction requests a witness to testify in his defense, the Committee sends an investigator to interview the witness. The requesting inmate is allowed to list the questions he would like posed to the witness, and the investigator poses the questions, records the answers or a summary thereof, and prepares a report summarizing the testimony, which is then presented to the Committee at the inmate's disciplinary hearing.

The Committee relies almost exclusively on these summaries in assessing the testimony of an inmate's defense witness. The Committee will hear live testimony from an inmate's defense witness only when the witness is already present before the Committee (usually on his own disciplinary charges) and is available to testify when the requesting inmate's case is called.

In 1994, Fares Umar, an inmate at Stateville, brought a class action suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against various prison officials, asserting that Stateville's witness policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process guarantee. Umar's complaint alleged that his good-time credits had been revoked by the Adjustment Committee after a search revealed four homemade knives hidden in his cell. According to the complaint, Umar made written and oral requests that his cellmate, Pablo Malave, appear as a witness at his disciplinary hearing, but Malave was not produced. The complaint averred that Malave would have presented exculpatory testimony that the knives belonged to him and that Umar had no actual or constructive notice of their presence in the cell. The complaint sought damages and declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of Umar and a class of similarly situated inmates who had been charged with disciplinary offenses and had been adversely affected by the witness policy.

In August 1995, the district court certified a plaintiff class. In its final form, the class consisted of inmates at Stateville Correctional Center (1) who are charged with infractions of prison rules or regulations, (2) who request witnesses for their disciplinary hearings before the Adjustment Committee, and (3) who risk the loss of good-time credits as a result of the decisions that may be reached in their hearings. Umar was the designated class representative at the time of certification.

In 1997, the district court ruled on the parties' cross-motions for summary judgment. On Umar's individual claim, the court held that the Stateville witness policy was not implicated in Umar's case. Although Malave was not called as a witness at Umar's hearing, the Adjustment Committee had heard Malave's live testimony at Malave's own hearing (regarding the same incident) four days earlier. Thus, because Umar's right to present Malave's testimony had not been affected by the challenged policy, the court entered summary judgment in favor of the prison officials on his individual claim. In doing so, the court recognized that Umar could no longer serve as an adequate class representative, for his claims were not typical of those of the class. See FED. R. CIV. PRO. 23(a)(3). The court declined the defendants' invitation to decertify the class, however, and instead allowed new named plaintiffs--Herbert Whitlock, Bennie Lopez, and Stanley Wrice--to be substituted as class representatives. The Whitlock plaintiffs filed an amended complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief (and dropping the claim for damages), and the court entered summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff class on its due process claim.

The district court entered a permanent injunction barring the defendants from continuing Stateville's current witness policy. The court also ordered the defendants to review every disciplinary hearing that had been conducted under this witness policy since September 19, 1994 (the date that Umar filed his complaint) and that had resulted in the revocation of good-time credits. For every such hearing in which the inmate class member had requested witnesses, the defendants were ordered to decide whether live testimony should have been allowed and, if so, to restore the inmate's good-time credits or else hold a new hearing. The defendants appeal from this decision and order.

II.

As an initial matter, we must address the defendants' contention that the district court was obligated to decertify the class and dismiss the action for lack of jurisdiction after the court entered summary judgment for the defendants on Umar's individual claim. According to the defendants, the district court's rejection of Umar's claim was based on its determination that Stateville's witness policy had never caused Umar to suffer any injury. Without an injury in fact, Umar never had standing to bring suit. Once Umar's lack of standing became apparent, the defendants assert, the district court should have dismissed the entire action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

Assuming that the initial certification of the class was appropriate, the district court acted properly in refusing to decertify the class or dismiss the action once it became apparent that Umar did not have an actionable individual claim. A properly certified class has a legal status separate from and independent of the interest asserted by the named plaintiff. See United States Parole Comm'n v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, 404, 100 S.Ct. 1202, 63 L.Ed.2d 479 (1980); Franks v. Bowman Transp. Co., 424 U.S. 747, 753, 96 S.Ct. 1251, 47 L.Ed.2d 444 (1976); Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 399, 95 S.Ct. 553, 42 L.Ed.2d 532 (1975). In Sosna, the Court recognized the independent legal status of class actions and held that, where a class has been properly certified, the mootness of the named plaintiff's individual claim does not render the class action moot. 419 U.S. at 399-401, 95 S.Ct. 553. See also Franks, 424 U.S. at 753-55, 96 S.Ct. 1251 (applying Sosna even though the named plaintiff's claim did not involve an issue "capable of repetition, yet evading review"). In Geraghty, the Court extended this principle and held that a class action does not become moot upon expiration of the named plaintiff's substantive claim even when class certification was denied in the district court. See 445 U.S. at 404, 100 S.Ct. 1202. Although his individual claim was moot, the Court held, the named plaintiff could continue to argue on appeal for reversal of the district court's denial of class certification. See id. at 404-05, 100 S.Ct. 1202.

The defendants point out that Umar's individual claim did not expire because of mootness, as did the individual claims in Sosna and Geraghty, but instead expired because of a judgment on the merits against him. The reasoning of Sosna and Geraghty, however, applies with equal force regardless of the reason for the expiration of the named plaintiff's individual claim. The Supreme Court has said as much, albeit in dicta, in East Texas Motor Freight System, Inc. v. Rodriguez, 431 U.S. 395, 97 S.Ct. 1891, 52 L.Ed.2d 453 (1977). In Rodriguez, the district court had held that the named plaintiffs were not members of the class of victims of employment discrimination that they purported to represent, for the named plaintiffs were not qualified for the positions they alleged were discriminatorily denied to them. The Supreme Court agreed with the district court's rejection of the plaintiffs' individual claims, as well as its decision denying the class claims because of the plaintiffs' inadequacy as class representatives under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See 431 U.S. at 404-05, 97 S.Ct. 1891. The Court, however, then made the following observation:

Obviously, a different case would be presented if the District Court had certified a class and only later had it appeared that the named plaintiffs were not class members or were otherwise inappropriate class representatives. In such a case, the class claims would have already been tried, and, provided the initial certification was proper and decertification not appropriate, the claims of the class members would not need to be mooted or destroyed because subsequent events or the proof at trial had undermined the plaintiffs'...