BOLES ET AL. v. CHAVIS
No. 80-2082
C. A. 7th Cir.
454 U.S. 907
Mоtion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis granted. Certiorari denied.
But regrettable and unavoidable as this confusion may have been, it does not and cannot explain the failure of any of the District Court opinions or the opinion of the Court of Appeаls to even address the existence of a case or controversy. From reading those opinions, one would gather that only suсh remedial issues as faculty assignment, scope of busing, and the like were at issue here. But I think the existence of a case or cоntroversy sought to be saved by an unexplained granting of a motion for intervention in 1977, and not even mentioned by the Court of Appeals, has considerable significance for the federal judicial system over a wide range of cases. I would therefore grant the pеtition for certiorari limited to the following question, which I believe is fairly subsumed under Question II in the petition:
“Is a District Court at liberty to grant a motion for intervention in a case which has become moot, without any principled explanation therefor, or any reasoned justification of its action by the Court of Appeals, in order to continue its supervision of the operation of a school district?”
No. 80-2082. BOLES ET AL. v. CHAVIS. C. A. 7th Cir. Motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis granted. Certiorari denied.
JUSTICE REHNQUIST, dissenting.
This case originated in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and that court issued a brief memorandum opinion and order denying relief to respondent
On appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of the District Court as to the due process claim and also sustained an Eighth Amendment claim upon which the District Court appears not to have passed. Chavez v. Rowe, 643 F. 2d 1281 (CA7 1981). The Court of Appeals stated that “Chavis’ failure to name a particular defendant in connection with his Eighth Amendment allegation is no bar to this claim.” Id., at 1290, n. 9.
I believe that this Court should grant petitioners’ request for review оf the manner in which the Court of Appeals treated the respondent‘s due process claim. At a hearing on October 2, 1976, the Adjustment Committee dismissed the correctional officer‘s “ticket” as “improperly written.” Id., at 1283. The following week, another correctional оfficer who was also a member of the Adjustment Committee wrote a second “Inmate Violation Report” charging respondent with thе assault and stabbing. After a series of proceedings and appeals within the Illinois prison system, the Acting Director
The Court of Appeals thought that the system of prison disciplinary hearings and review established by the State of Illinois did not meet the standards of Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539 (1974). It was of the view that the Adjustment Committee‘s failure to disсlose to respondent an investigatory report containing statements by a witness to the stabbing incident violated this Court‘s decisions in Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963), and United States v. Agurs, 427 U. S. 97 (1976).
This would hаve very likely been true had these procedures been constructed on the traditional judicial model, but I had thought one of the tоuchstones of prison disciplinary proceedings was that they need not be so constructed. As we said in Wolff, supra, at 556:
“Of course, as we have indiсated, the fact that prisoners retain rights under the Due Process Clause in no way implies that these rights are not subject to restrictions imposed by the nature of the regime to which they have been lawfully committed. . . . Prison disciplinary proceedings are not a part of a criminal prosecution, and the full panoply of rights due a defendant in such proceedings does not apply. Cf. Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S., at 488. In sum, there must be mutuаl accommodation between institutional needs and objectives and the provisions of the Constitution that are of general аpplication.”
“Within the reasonable limitations necessary in the prison disciplinary context, we suggested, but did not require, that the disciplinary committee ‘state its reason for refusing to call a witness, whether it be for irrelevance, lack of necessity, or the hazards presented in individual cases.’ . . .
“We were careful to distinguish between this limited right to call witnesses and other due process rights at disciplinаry hearings. We noted expressly that, in comparison to the right to call witnesses, ‘[c]onfrontation and cross-examination present greater hazards to institutional interests.’ . . . We said:
‘If confrontation and cross-examination of those furnishing evidence against the inmatе were to be allowed as a matter of course, as in criminal trials, there would be considerable potential for havoс inside the prison walls. Proceedings would inevitably be longer and tend to unmanageability.’ . . .
“We therefore concluded that ‘[t]he better сourse at this time, in a period where prison practices are diverse and somewhat experimental, is to leave thesе matters to the sound discretion of the officials of state prisons.‘” 425 U. S., at 321-322, citing Wolff v. McDonnell, supra, at 566, 567, 569.
It seems to me that the opinion of the Court of Appeals, dealing as it does with the stabbing of a correctional officer as he was escorting a group of inmates including respondent, cоmes close to disavowing the principles of flexibility and experimentation expounded in Wolff, supra, and Baxter, supra, and virtually mandates a full panoply of courtroom procedures for what we have heretofore described as “diverse” and “flexible” prison dispute settlement mechanisms.