Opinion
No. CV 07-5009574S
May 26, 2010
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION RE MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT(#118)
Facts and Procedural History
The pro se plaintiff, Sidney Wylie, filed a complaint on February 26, 2007, against thirteen defendants employed by the Department of Correction ("DOC"). The defendants are sued in their individual capacities. The plaintiff, an inmate, seeks injunctive relief and monetary damages from the alleged abridgment of his fourteenth amendment right to due process and the alleged abridgment of his eighth amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The defendants filed their motion for summary judgment, memorandum and documents in support of the motion on February 9, 2010. The plaintiff filed his objection on March 18, 2010. The matter was heard at short calendar on April 26, 2010.
Discussion
"Practice Book § 17-49 provides that summary judgment shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, affidavits and any other proof submitted show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. In deciding a motion for summary judgment, the trial court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Provencher v. Enfield, 284 Conn. 772, 790-91, 936 A.2d 625 (2007).
Due Process Claims
The court will first address the plaintiff's due process claims. "In order to state a claim for a denial of procedural due process . . . a prisoner must allege that he possessed a protected liberty interest, and was not afforded the requisite process before being deprived of that liberty interest . . . A petitioner has no right to due process [at his disciplinary hearing] unless a liberty interest has been deprived . . . To constitute a deprivation of liberty, a restraint must have imposed an atypical and significant hardship . . . in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life . . . Additionally, the petitioner must establish that the state has granted its inmates, by regulation or by statute, a protected liberty interest in remaining free from that confinement or restraint." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Coleman v. Commissioner of Correction, 111 Conn.App. 138, 141-42, 958 A.2d 790 (2008), cert. denied, 290 Conn. 905, 962 A.2d 793 (2009).
The plaintiff claims that his due process rights were violated by his voluntary plea of guilty to four disciplinary tickets issued on October 6, 2006. The procedural due process protection offered to inmates in disciplinary hearings requires that the inmate "receive (1) advanced written notice of the disciplinary charges, (2) an opportunity, when consistent with institutional safety and correctional goals, to call witnesses and to present documentary evidence in his defense and (3) a written statement by the fact finder of the evidence relied on and the reasons for the disciplinary action." (Internal citations omitted.) Jolley v. Commissioner of Correction, 60 Conn.App. 560, 561, 760 A.2d 146 (2000), cert. denied, 274 Conn. 913, 879 A.2d 892 (2005). Here, the plaintiff voluntarily plead guilty to the disciplinary tickets and as a result, the minimum process guaranteed under the constitution was waived. Thus, the defendants are entitled to summary judgment on this claim.
Next, the court will address the plaintiff's allegations that the defendants violated various DOC administrative directives. In Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 483, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995), the Supreme Court redirected the legal authority concerning liberty interests to the statutes, rather than the administrative directives. The Court noted that: "the Due Process Clause does not protect every change in the conditions of confinement having a substantial adverse impact on the prisoner." Id., 478. "[W]e believe that the search for a negative implication from mandatory language in prisoner regulations has strayed from the real concerns undergirding the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause." Id., 483. Therefore, the administrative directives identified in the plaintiff's complaint do not confer a liberty interest and absent a liberty interest, the plaintiff cannot demonstrate a due process violation. Thus, the defendants are entitled to summary judgment on this claim.
Additionally, the plaintiff complains of his transfer to the Northern Correctional Unit ("Northern") on November 29, 2006, where he was placed in the Chronic Discipline Unit. In Connecticut, prison officials are given full discretion to determine inmate classifications. See General Statutes § 18-81. Neither state nor federal law recognizes a constitutionally protected interest in an inmate's classification.
That section states, in pertinent part: "The Commissioner of Correction shall administer, coordinate and control the operations of the department and shall be responsible for the overall supervision and direction of all institutions, facilities and activities of the department. The commissioner shall establish rules for the administrative practices and custodial and rehabilitative methods of said institutions and facilities in accordance with recognized correctional standards . . . The commissioner shall be responsible for establishing disciplinary, diagnostic, classification, treatment, vocational and academic education, research and statistics, training and development services and programs throughout the department . . . The commissioner shall organize and operate inter-institutional programs for the development and training of institution and facility staffs . . .
In Wheway v. Warden, 215 Conn. 418, 431, 576 A.2d 494 (1990), the Connecticut Supreme Court, relying on Moody v. Daggett, 429 U.S. 78, 97 S.Ct. 274, 50 L.Ed.2d 236 (1976), noted that "not every state action that carries adverse consequences for prison inmates automatically implicates or effectuates a due process right. Prison classification and eligibility for various rehabilitation programs, wherein prison officials have full discretion to control those conditions of confinement, do not create a statutory or constitutional entitlement sufficient to invoke due process." The Wheway court found that because the prison authorities had full discretion to grant or deny the petitioner early release, he did not have a legitimate statutory or constitutional entitlement sufficient to invoke due process considerations. See id., 432; see also Coleman v. Commissioner of Correction, supra, 111 Conn.App. 142 (holding, in part, that petitioner's classification as a security risk group member did not implicate a liberty interest). Therefore, the plaintiff does not have a protected liberty interest in his classification and the defendants are entitled to summary judgment on this claim.
As to the plaintiff's transfer to the Northern, his due process claim similarly fails. In Coleman v. Commissioner of Correction, supra, 111 Conn.App. 142, the court held that the petitioner's transfer from Cheshire Correctional Institution to Northern did not implicate a liberty interest. "Discipline by prison officials in response to a wide range of misconduct falls within the expected perimeters of a sentence imposed by a court . . . [A] prisoner generally has no due process right to challenge a transfer from one facility to another . . . Confinement in any of the [s]tate's institutions is within the normal limits or range of custody which the conviction has authorized the [s]tate to impose . . . If the petitioner believes that the conditions at Northern Correctional Institution impose on him an atypical and significant hardship, the proper course of action would be a challenge to the conditions at Northern Correctional Institution, not a challenge to his transfer from Cheshire Correctional Institution." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 142-43.
Eighth Amendment Claims
The plaintiff alleges that the defendants used excessive force and denied him medical treatment after forcibly applying hand restraints on him at the time of his transfer. "In the context of a claim by a prisoner that he was subjected to excessive force by prison employees, the source of the ban against such force is the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments . . . A claim of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment has two components-one subjective, focusing on the defendant's motive for his conduct, and the other objective, focusing on the conduct's effect . . . The subjective component of the claim requires a showing that the defendant had the necessary level of culpability, shown by actions characterized by wantonness in light of the particular circumstances surrounding the challenged conduct . . . When prison officials are accused of using excessive force, the wantonness issue turns on whether force was applied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm . . . On the other hand, [t]he objective component of a claim of cruel and unusual punishment focuses on the harm done, in light of contemporary standards of decency . . . In assessing this component, the court must ask whether the alleged wrongdoing was objectively harmful enough to establish a constitutional violation . . . But when prison officials use force to cause harm maliciously and sadistically, contemporary standards of decency always are violated . . . This is true whether or not significant injury is evident . . . In sum, the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment does not extend to de minimis uses of physical force, provided that the use of force is not of a sort repugnant to the conscience of mankind . . . Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge's chambers, violates a prisoner's constitutional rights." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Landy v. McLaurin, Superior Court, judicial district of New Haven, Docket No. CV 07 4025898 (March 2, 2010, Keegan, J), quoting Wright v. Goord, 554 F.3d 255, 268-69 (2d Cir. 2009).
"In order to establish an [e]ighth [a]mendment claim arising out of inadequate medical care, a prisoner must prove deliberate indifference to [his] serious medical needs . . . The standard of deliberate indifference includes both subjective and objective components. First, the alleged deprivation must be, in objective terms, sufficiently serious . . . Second, the [government official] must act with a sufficiently culpable state of mind . . . An official acts with the requisite deliberate indifference when that official knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety; the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference . . . Thus, an official's failure to alleviate a significant risk that he should have perceived but did not [does not violate the eighth amendment]." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Faraday v. Commissioner of Correction, 288 Conn. 326, 338-39, 952 A.2d 764 (2008).
Here, the defendants placed handcuffs on the plaintiff in order to facilitate his orderly transfer to another correctional institution, which in no way rises to the level of a constitutional violation under the eighth amendment's excessive force standard. Similarly, the defendants are entitled to judgment on the plaintiff's denial of medical treatment claim as the plaintiff did not have an objectively serious medical condition.
Further, the defendant complains of the conditions of his confinement. To prevail on a claim challenging the conditions of confinement, a petitioner must demonstrate by objective evidence that prison officials acted with deliberate indifference concerning his serious medical needs. See Faraday v. Commissioner of Correction, supra, 288 Conn. 338-40. Additionally, "subjective deliberate indifference means that a prison official cannot be found liable under the [e]ighth [a]mendment for denying an inmate humane conditions of confinement unless the official knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health safety . . ."(Internal quotation marks omitted.) Fuller v. Commissioner of Correction, 75 Conn.App. 133, 137, 815 A.2d 208 (2003).
Here, the plaintiff alleges that he lived and slept in dirty clothes and linens for two to three weeks. He has failed, however, to identify any objectively serious risk to his health, housing or safety, let alone a culpable mental state on the part of the defendants for failing to timely launder his clothes and linens. Furthermore, the plaintiff did not exhaust his administrative remedies under DOC administrative directives in regard to this claim.
Finally, the plaintiff also complains that he was denied unmonitored phone calls to his attorney. He has failed, however, to allege that his constitutional rights to free speech and access to the court were violated. Furthermore, the plaintiff did not exhaust his administrative remedies under DOC administrative directives in regard to this claim.
Conclusion
The defendants' motion for summary judgment is hereby granted in its entirety.