Arce v. WalkerArce v. Walker
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- Before:
- Larimer
DECISION AND ORDER
LARIMER, District Judge.
This action is brought pursuant to
Presently before the Court are the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment. For
BACKGROUND 1
This action arises out of plaintiffs “holdover” stay at Attica Correctional Facility in 1987. Previously a resident of the Clinton Correctional Facility, Arce was temporarily moved to Attica on December 22, 1987 so that he could attend court proceedings in Buffalo. He was returned to the Clinton facility on January 9th. During his nineteen day stay at Attica, Arce was confined to SHU. He claims that he was denied exercise privileges except for one day, December 28th.
THE PARTIES’ MOTIONS
In his present motion, Arce asserts that the nineteen day SHU confinement without opportunity to be heard deprived him of a liberty interest conferred by the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. It is not his placement in SHU, per se, that Arce complains of, but rather that he was detained there for an extended period without a hearing of any kind. Arce asserts that he should have been entitled to at least an informal hearing within 7 to 10 days.
Arce also asserts that the defendants’ refusal to provide him daily exercise outside his cell deprived him of a liberty interest created by state regulation, specifically
Finally, Arce asserts that the exercise deprivation was cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment.
Defendants do not deny that Arce was confined to SHU during his stay at Attica. However, they assert that Arce’s SHU assignment was an ordinary and required ad1-ministrative procedure for “hold over” prisoners — ie., those individuals temporarily housed at another facility. The purpose for the SHU confinement was not punitive. The procedure was used because Attica officials do not have enough information about such transferred prisoners whose stay is typically of short duration to determine if they pose a danger to the prison community at large or would be in danger themselves from others in the community. Defendants contend that no liberty interest is implicated by this procedure.
Defendants dispute Arce’s factual allegations pertaining to the exercise deprivation claim. They assert that Arce was offered outdoor exercise every day, but refused to take it. Nonetheless, even if Arce’s allegations were true, defendants assert that such actions would constitute neither a liberty interest deprivation nor a violation of Arce’s 8th Amendment rights. 2
DISCUSSION
A. Summary Judgment Standards
Summary judgment shall be granted if the pleadings and supplemental evidentiary materials “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.”
The burden of showing the absence of any genuine issue of material fact rests on the moving party,
Celotex Corp. v. Catrett,
477 U.S. 317, 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2553, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986), and all ambiguities and inferences that may reasonably be drawn from the facts must be viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party.
In this case, for the purpose of analyzing defendants’ motion for summary judgment, I will accept all of Arce’s allegations as true concerning his confinement and his denial of exercise.
B. Deprivation of a “Liberty Interest”
To state a
As noted, Arce asserts that his nineteen day detention in SHU, without being given the opportunity to be heard, violated his constitutional Due Process rights. Arce does not assert that the liberty interest arose as the result of a state law or regulation prohibiting extended confinement without a hearing, but rather was implicated by the Due Process clause alone. Arce relies heavily on dicta contained in Wright v. Smith, 21 F.3d 496, 499 (2d Cir.1994), where the court stated that “[i]t is arguable that ... the Fourteenth Amendment itself creates a liberty interest in not being kept in restrictive confinement within a prison for an extended period of time without any hearing.”
Unfortunately for Arce, the analysis of what constitutes a liberty interest was transformed significantly by the Supreme Court’s decision Sandin v. Conner, supra, decided this past June. Thus, discussion of cases that predate Sandin is of limited use.
In Sandin v. Conner, the United States Supreme Court expressly determined that neither Hawaii state regulations nor the Due Process clause created a liberty interest for a prisoner in avoiding thirty days’ disciplinary confinement in SHU. The Court found that state regulations can create a liberty interest only where a restraint imposes “atypical and significant hardship on an inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.” Sandin at -, 115 S.Ct. at 2300.
This definition marks a dramatic departure from years of precedent at least since the Supreme Court’s decision in Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983). See Rodriguez v. Phillips, 66 F.3d 470, 480 (2d Cir.1995). Prior to Sandin the question of whether a state regulation created a liberty interest depended on whether the language of the regulation was “of an unmistakably mandatory character” as opposed to a mere “procedural guideline.” Sandin, citing, Hewitt, supra. In other words, the question was whether the regulation required that certain procedures “shall”, “will” or “must” be employed. See Rodriguez, at 479. This, the Sandin Court concluded, was an incorrect focus.
By shifting the focus of the liberty interest inquiry to one based on the language of a particular regulation, and not the nature of the deprivation, the Court encouraged prisoners to comb regulations in search of mandatory language on which to base entitlements to various state-conferred privileges. Courts have, in response, and not altogether illogically, drawn negative inferences from mandatory language in the text of prison regulations. Id. — U.S. at -, 115 S.Ct. at 2299.
In Sandin the Court refocused this examination to measure the “nature of the deprivation,” i.e., is the deprivation a significant departure from ordinary prison conditions? Thus, Sandin eroded prisoners’ ability to rely on the mandatory nature of language in state statutes or regulations. It is now the nature of the deprivation that matters. See Malsh v. Austin, 901 F.Supp. 757 (1995) (“After Sandin ... the inquiry must focus not on the mandatory nature of a State’s rule governing the imposition of the deprivation, but rather on the nature of the deprivation itself.”)
Following the holding and spirit of the Sandin decision, as I must, I find that Arce’s nineteen day administrative confinement in SHU did not deprive him of a liberty interest conferred by the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. Such administrative confinement is not outside the realm of normal prison conditions. It does not “exceed the sentence in such an unexpected manner as to give rise to protection by the Due Process clause of its own force.” Sandin at -, 115 S.Ct. at 2299. I find no compelling distinction between the thirty days SHU confinement endured by the plaintiff in Sandin, which the Supreme Court expressly found to be insufficient to implicate a due process deprivation, and Arce’s nineteen day confinement. Nothing Arce has alleged is so egregious as to meaningfully distinguish this case. 3 Thus, Arce’s claim for unlawful SHU confinement is dismissed. See also Lee v. Coughlin, 902 F.Supp. 424 (S.D.N.Y.1995) (No liberty interest implicated by the Due Process clause in prison context unless confinement is “qualitatively different” from typical punishment and has “stigmatizing consequences”); Uzzell v. Scully, 893 F.Supp. 259 (S.D.N.Y.1995) (no liberty interest in avoiding keeplock confinement because it is not atypical and significant).
I also find that
Sandin
effectively extinguishes Aree’s exercise deprivation claim. While the language of the New York state regulation (
C. The 8th Amendment
Finally, I find that the failure to have exercise outside one’s cell for 6 six consecutive days, and then for 12 consecutive days, does not constitute an 8th Amendment violation. It is well established that an 8th Amendment violation occurs only where
CONCLUSION
For all the above reasons, I hereby DENY the plaintiffs motion for summary judgment (# 103) and GRANT the defendant’s cross-motion for summary judgment (# 110). Plaintiffs complaint is dismissed with prejudice.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Notes
. Only the facts relevant to my determination are set forth herein. For purposes of this determination I am accepting the plaintiffs’ allegations as true.
. Defendants raise additional defenses to both of plaintiff‘s claims — i.e., qualified immunity and failure to allege the personal involvement of all the defendants. Because defendants’ motion is granted on the merits, it is unnecessary for me to address these additional defenses.
. Notwithstanding the fact that Arce’s SHU confinement was 11 days shorter than the prisoner‘s in Sandin, Arce points to the combined effects of the nineteen day segregation plus exercise deprivation and verbal harassment, as distinguishing his circumstances from those of the prisoner in Sandin. Additionally, Arce distinguishes his case from Sandin by noting that Sandin involved punitive segregation and his case involves administrative segregation.
I do not find Arce‘s conditions of confinement to be markedly more severe than those of the plaintiff in Sandin. Indeed, the duration is less severe. Nor do I find the distinction between administrative and punitive confinement to be of any consequence in these circumstances.