Wrinkles v. Davis, 3:03-CV-0888 AS.

Decision Date17 March 2004
Docket NumberNo. 3:03-CV-0888 AS.,3:03-CV-0888 AS.
Citation311 F.Supp.2d 735
PartiesEric WRINKLES, Mike Lambert, Benny Saylor, and Gamba M. Rastafari, Plaintiffs, v. Cecil K. DAVIS, Defendant.
CourtU.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

Eric Wrinkles, Westville, IN, pro se.

Mike Lambert, Westville, IN, pro se.

Benny Saylor, Michigan City, IN, pro se.

Gamba M Rastafari, Michigan City, IN, pro se.

Thomas M Dixon, Dixon Wright and Associates, South Bend, IN, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ALLEN SHARP, District Judge.

Eric Wrinkles, Mike Lambert, Benny Saylor, and Gamba Rastafari filed a complaint in the LaPorte Superior Court, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Indiana State Prison ("ISP") superintendent Cecil Davis violated their federally protected rights. They also allege that Superintendent Davis violated rights protected by Indiana's constitution and statutes and by Indiana Department of Correction ("IDOC") policy.

The defendant removed the case to this court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b). Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a), federal courts are required to review "a complaint in a civil action in which a prisoner seeks redress from a governmental entity or officer or employee of a governmental entity." Because the plaintiffs are prisoners as defined in § 1915A(c) and the defendant they seek redress from is a governmental employee, § 1915A requires this court to screen this complaint, even though the plaintiffs originally filed it in state court. Courts apply the same standard under § 1915A as when addressing a motion under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) to dismiss a complaint. Weiss v. Cooley, 230 F.3d 1027, 1029 (7th Cir.2000).

A claim may be dismissed only if it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief. Allegations of a pro se complaint are held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers. Accordingly, pro se complaints are liberally construed.

In order to state a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the Supreme Court requires only two elements: First, the plaintiff must allege that some person has deprived him of a federal right. Second, he must allege that the person who has deprived him of the right acted under color of state law. These elements may be put forth in a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief. Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2). In reviewing the complaint on a motion to dismiss, no more is required from plaintiff's allegations of intent than what would satisfy Rule 8's notice pleading minimum and Rule 9(b)'s requirement that motive and intent be pleaded generally.

Alvarado v. Litscher, 267 F.3d 648, 651 (7th Cir.2001) (citations, quotation marks and ellipsis omitted).

According to the complaint, the ISP's Death Row is an administrative segregation unit designed to house inmates sentenced to death. The plaintiffs are all sentenced to death, and were housed on Death Row on October 27, 2002, when a Death Row prisoner was killed during recreation, apparently by other Death Row prisoners. Superintendent Davis placed the facility on lockdown, which means that normal prison routines were suspended and inmates were confined to their cells. The lockdown of other parts of the facility was soon lifted. Death Row, however, remained on lockdown for seventy-nine days, though some privileges such as visitation and religious services were reinstated earlier.

The plaintiffs assert that Superintendent Davis violated rights protected by the Constitution's First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as rights created by Indiana's constitution and statutes and IDOC policy. Section 1983 provides a cause of action to redress the violation of federally secured rights by a person acting under color of state law. Bell v. City of Milwaukee, 746 F.2d 1205 (7th Cir.1984). To state a claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must allege violation of rights secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and must show that a person acting under color of state law committed the alleged deprivation. West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 108 S.Ct. 2250, 101 L.Ed.2d 40 (1988). The first inquiry in every § 1983 case is whether the plaintiff has been deprived of a right secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States. Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 140, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979).

I. DUE PROCESS CLAIMS

In Section 4(A) of their complaint, the plaintiffs allege that Superintendent Davis deprived them of due process when he locked the Death Row unit down, thereby depriving them of out-of-cell recreation and services they normally received. Among the privileges or services the plaintiffs state they lost during all or part of the lockdown include hot meals, access to library books, regular commissary services including arts and crafts materials, contact visitation, and religious services.

The Fifth Amendment's due process clause applies only to acts of the federal government and does not limit actions of state officials. Craig v. Cohn, 80 F.Supp.2d 944, 947 (N.D.Ind.2000). The Fourteenth Amendment provides that states may not deprive persons of "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law. Thus, analysis of a due process claim begins with determining whether the plaintiff has a liberty or property interest with which the state has interfered. Kentucky Dept. of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 460, 109 S.Ct. 1904, 104 L.Ed.2d 506 (1989). Only if the plaintiff has a liberty or property interest does the court move to the second step and examine whether the procedures used to deprive him of that interest were constitutionally sufficient. Id.

The Constitution itself creates no liberty interest in inmates avoiding an institutional lockdown. Indeed, the state, not the Constitution, is the source of "the rights if any that persons lawfully confined in state prisons have to enjoy a modicum of freedom of locomotion within the prison walls." Smith v. Shettle, 946 F.2d 1250, 1252 (7th Cir.1991). Subject only to Eighth amendment restrictions, "a state can confine a prisoner as closely as it wants, in solitary confinement if it wants." Id. at 1252. "Only if the state decides to recognize such a liberty — a liberty that is artificial, therefore, rather than natural — does he have a right that he can enforce under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment." Id. at 1252, citing Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 470-72, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983); Kentucky Dept. of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 109 S.Ct. 1904, 104 L.Ed.2d 506 (1989).

At one time, courts analyzed state statutory or regulatory language pursuant to Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983), to see "if the State had gone beyond issuing mere procedural guidelines and had used `language of an unmistakably mandatory character' such that the incursion on liberty would not occur `absent specified substantive predicates.'" Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 480, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995), quoting Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. at 471-472, 103 S.Ct. 864. In Sandin, the Supreme Court modified the approach used to identify liberty interests in prisoner cases, holding that:

States may under certain circumstances create liberty interests which are protected by the Due Process Clause. But these interests will be generally limited to freedom from restraint which, while not exceeding the sentence in such an unexpected manner as to give rise to protection by the Due Process Clause of its own force, nonetheless imposes atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.

Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. at 483-484, 115 S.Ct. 2293 (citations omitted).

The court held that "discipline by prison officials in response to a wide range of misconduct falls within the expected parameters of the sentence imposed by a court of law," Id., at 485, 115 S.Ct. 2293, and that "Conner's discipline in segregated confinement did not present the type of atypical, significant deprivation in which a state might conceivably create a liberty interest." Id., at 486, 115 S.Ct. 2293. Institutional lockdowns, like disciplinary segregation, fall within the expected parameters of an inmate's sentence, and do not present the type of "atypical" deprivation in which a state might conceivably create a liberty interest.

Moreover, prison officials must be free to take appropriate action to ensure the institution's security and the safety of its inmates and employees, and so must "be accorded wide-ranging deference in the adoption and execution of policies and practices that in their judgment are needed to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security. `Such considerations are peculiarly within the province and professional expertise of corrections officials, and, in the absence of substantial evidence in the record to indicate that the officials have exaggerated their response to these considerations, courts should ordinarily defer to their expert judgment in such matters.'" Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 827, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974) (citations omitted).

The Fourteenth Amendment creates no liberty interest in inmates avoiding an institutional lockdown, and Superintendent Davis locked the Death Row Unit down in reaction to a serious breach of security on the unit. Even giving the plaintiffs the benefit of the inferences to which they are entitled at the pleadings stage, Superintendent Davis did not violate their Fourteenth Amendment due process rights when he locked down the Death Row Unit, temporarily depriving them of out-of-cell recreation and services they normally received.

II. FIRST AMENDMENT CLAIMS

In Sections 4(C) and 4(E) of their complaint, the plaintiffs allege that Superintendent Davis violated rights protected by the Constitution's First...

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