MALONE v. EPPS

Full title: RICO MALONE, Plaintiff, v. CHRISTOPHER EPPS, ET AL., Defendants

Court: United States District Court, N.D. Mississippi, Greenville Division

Date published: Jul 21, 2006

No. 4:06CV118-D-A (N.D. Miss. Jul. 21, 2006)

Opinion

No. 4:06CV118-D-A.

July 21, 2006

MEMORANDUM OPINION

GLEN DAVIDSON, Chief Judge

This matter comes before the court on the pro se prisoner complaint of Rico Malon (# 34269), who challenges the conditions of his confinement under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. For the purposes of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, the court notes that the plaintiff was incarcerated when he filed this suit. The plaintiff alleges that the defendants violated due process and wrongfully found him guilty of a prison rule violation. As a result of the guilty finding, the plaintiff was reduced in custody and placed in a higher security setting. For the reasons set forth below, the instant case shall be dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.

Sandin

In view of the Supreme Court's decision in Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 115 S. Ct. 2293, 132 L. Ed. 2d 418 (1995), the court concludes that the plaintiff has failed to set forth a claim which implicates the Due Process Clause or any other constitutional protection. As the Court noted, "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." Id. 115 S. Ct. at 2300 (citations omitted). In the Sandin case, the discipline administered the prisoner was confinement in isolation. Because this discipline fell "within the expected parameters of the sentence imposed by a court of law," id. at 2301, and "did not present the type of atypical, significant deprivation in which a State might conceivably create a liberty interest," id., the Court held that neither the Due Process Clause itself nor State law or regulations afforded a protected liberty interest that would entitle the prisoner to the procedural protections set forth by the Court in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 41 L. Ed. 2d 935 (1974). See also Malchi v. Thaler, 211 F.3d 953, 958 (5^thn Cir. 2000) (holding prisoner's thirty-day loss of commissary privileges and cell restriction due to disciplinary action failed to give rise to due process claim).

In this case, the plaintiff was accused of a prison rule violation: fighting with another inmate. The plaintiff attended a hearing and was found guilty of the violation. As punishment, the plaintiff was reduced in custody classification and placed in more restrictive housing. As discussed above, a simple change in custody classification does not constitute an "atypical, significant deprivation in which a State might conceivably create a liberty interest," Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 115 S. Ct. 2293, 132 L. Ed. 2d 418 (1995), and therefore does not rise to the level of a constitutional violation. As such, the instant case shall be dismissed with prejudice for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. A final judgment consistent with this memorandum opinion shall issue today.

SO ORDERED.