*1 Illinois Official Reports
Appellate Court
Pitts v. Kolitwenzew
,
Appellate Court JACOB P. PITTS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CHAD KOLITWENZEW, Caption Director, Jerome Combs Detention Center, Defendant-Appellee. District & No. Third District
No. 3-19-0267 Filed November 20, 2020
Decision Under Appeal from the Circuit Court of Kankakee County, No. 19-MR-88; the Hon. Ronald J. Gerts, Judge, presiding. Review Judgment Affirmed.
Counsel on Jacob P. Pitts, of Kankakee, appellant pro se .
Appeal
Jim Rowe, State’s Attorney, of Kankakee (Nancy Nicholson, Assistant State’s Attorney, of counsel), for appellee.
Panel JUSTICE CARTER delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
Presiding Justice Lytton and Justice Schmidt concurred in the judgment and opinion.
OPINION ¶ 1 Plaintiff, Jacob P. Pitts, a pretrial detainee in the Kankakee County jail (also known as the
Jerome Combs Detention Center), filed a mandamus complaint in the trial court seeking to compel defendant, Chad Kolitwenzew, the director of the jail (Director), to provide Pitts with barber services and access to a sufficient law library and to stop restricting Pitts’s access to correspondence and legal materials as a disciplinary sanction. [1] After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court denied Pitts’s complaint for mandamus relief. Pitts appeals. We affirm the trial court’s judgment.
¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND
¶ 3 In March 2019, while Pitts was a pretrial detainee in the county jail awaiting trial on certain
charges, he filed a pro se complaint for mandamus relief against the Director. In his complaint, Pitts alleged, among other things, that on certain specified dates (1) his correspondence and legal materials had been taken away from him (or he was denied access to those items) as disciplinary punishment, (2) he was denied barber services at the jail, and (3) he had been denied sufficient legal materials or resources at the jail. Pitts sought to have the trial court order the Director to provide him with access to barber services and a sufficient law library that complied with part 701 of the Title 20 of the Illinois Administrative Code (County Jail Standards) (see 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701) and to prohibit correctional officers from denying Pitts access to his correspondence and legal materials in the future. The Director filed an answer to the mandamus complaint and denied Pitts’s main accusations. Later that same month, the trial court held an evidentiary hearing on the
complaint. Pitts was present in court for the hearing, in the custody of the county sheriff, and represented himself pro se . Pitts was allegedly in shackles, although there is no mention of that in the record, except for one brief reference that Pitts made in passing during his testimony. Pitts did not ask to have the shackles removed and did not object to being restrained. The Director was also present in court for the hearing and was represented by one of the county’s assistant state’s attorneys (referred to hereinafter as the Director’s attorney). At or near the start of the hearing, the Director’s attorney asked the trial court whether the hearing could be conducted “a little more informally” so that she could conduct her direct examination of the Director immediately after Pitts had done so rather than having to wait until the Director’s case-in-chief. The trial court allowed the Director’s attorney’s request. During the evidence portion of the hearing, the trial court heard the testimony of both the
Director and Pitts. In addition, the trial court admitted two jail videos as exhibits for Pitts and also admitted a copy of the County Jail Standards as an exhibit for the Director. The evidence that was presented can be summarized as follows. The Director testified that he had been the chief of corrections at the county jail for the past
six or seven years and, prior to that time, had been the assistant chief of corrections at the jail for about four years. One of the Director’s responsibilities as the chief of corrections was to
ensure that the jail was a safe environment for the jail’s employees and inmates. In keeping with that responsibility, the Director enacted disciplinary consequences based on incidents that happened in the jail and in line with the County Jail Standards. Pitts was currently an inmate at the jail and was awaiting trial for pending Kankakee
County criminal charges. In 2012, Pitts was convicted of attempting to escape from the jail. While Pitts was an inmate at the jail (presumably in relation to the current offenses), he was involved in various incidents. According to the Director, Pitts had assaulted and battered other inmates, had assaulted and battered corrections staff, had deployed a taser against one of the correctional officers, and had smeared and used fecal matter within the facility. As a result of those incidents, disciplinary action was taken against Pitts. In the Director’s opinion, Pitts was a security risk to the safety of the jail employees and other inmates. At the time of the hearing, Pitts was being housed in “Max C” as a disciplinary sanction
for when Pitts deployed a taser on a member of the corrections staff. Max C was a disciplinary segregation/restrictive housing unit at the jail. While in Max C, Pitts was only allowed to be out of his cell for one hour each day to use the phone, take a shower, clean his cell, and do whatever else he needed to do. When the Director was asked during his testimony if there was a reason why the corrections staff would take an inmate’s personal property if a disciplinary action had occurred, the Director responded that if the conduct had occurred inside the cell, the corrections staff would remove items to make sure the cell was clean and that everything was in order before they gave the items back to the inmate. In addition, because Max C was disciplinary housing, less property was permitted in the cell. An inmate in Max C was not allowed to accumulate commissary and could not take with him into Max C any items that he had bought from the store. Items that were needed as part of everyday life, however, such as legal work, were allowed in the cells in Max C. More specifically as to Pitts’s accusations, the Director testified that the jail did not have a
barber shop or an area where inmates went to get their hair cut. Instead, the jail provided inmates with barbering tools—hair trimmers, clippers, shavers, and plastic guards that controlled the length at which the hair was cut—so that the inmates could cut their own hair or cut each other’s hair. Pitts had requested to be seen by a barber or to have barber services at various times while he was in jail and had been provided with the barbering tools by the jail staff. As for Pitts’s mail, the Director testified that Pitts was given his correspondence when it was received at the jail, after it had been screened, and that the mail screening procedures were enacted pursuant to the County Jail Standards. According to the Director, the jail did not withhold mail from an inmate as a disciplinary sanction. With regard to Pitts’s access to legal materials, the Director testified that the jail had wall kiosks located throughout the facility that contained all of the different legal resources that were available to the inmates. The jail also had law libraries that were located on carts or in attorney rooms in the different housing units for the inmates to use. To the best of the Director’s knowledge, the different legal resources available to the inmates were those that were required by the County Jail Standards. The Director denied that he had withheld legal resources from Pitts for disciplinary reasons and stated that legal resources were available to Pitts, even when he was being housed in Max C. Pitts testified that he arrived at the jail in April 2018. In May 2018, it was alleged that Pitts had been involved in an aggravated battery to some of the correctional officers. According to Pitts, as a form of disciplinary punishment, his legal materials and all his other property items, even hygiene items, were taken away from him. Pitts was left in a cell with nothing other than *4 a blanket and a sheet for about six weeks. In November 2018, Pitts was charged with another aggravated battery of a correctional officer, and his legal materials and other property items were again taken away from him for a period of time. In June 2019, Pitts was alleged to have committed a third aggravated battery of a correctional officer (the incident where Pitts allegedly deployed a taser on the officer) and was again denied access to his property and legal materials.
¶ 12 Pitts indicated during the hearing that he did not have an issue with the mail procedure at
the county jail. Rather, according to Pitts, his complaint was about his correspondence materials—his pen and paper—being taken at times. As for barbering services, Pitts acknowledged during his testimony that he had been provided with barbering tools when he requested them but complained that other inmates had stolen all of the plastic trimmer guards so that the only option available to him was to shave off all of his hair. In addition, although Pitts had seen inmates cutting each other’s hair in the general population at the jail, that did not occur in Max C because Max C was a segregation unit and the inmates in the unit were not allowed to have contact with each other.
¶ 13 With regard to legal resources, Pitts testified that other inmates in disciplinary segregation
had access to the wall kiosks, which had all of the legal resources on them that were required by the County Jail Standards. Pitts, however, was not allowed in the area where the wall kiosks were located. According to Pitts, when he was taken out of his segregation cell for his daily hour of recreation, he was taken to the booking area. There was no wall kiosk in that area. Instead, the booking area had a cart with a computer on it that contained certain Illinois legal resources. Pitts did not believe, though, that the legal resources on the computer were up to date and was unable to find jury instructions on the computer. After the presentation of the evidence had concluded, the trial court took the case under
advisement. The following month, in April 2019, the trial court issued its written decision, denying Pitts’s complaint for relief. In its ruling, the trial court found that (1) the restrictions on barber services in the maximum-security unit were reasonable and within necessary security measures allowed by the applicable regulations, (2) the problem with the plastic trimmer guards was not of the Director’s making, and (3) the Director had provided Pitts with access to sufficient legal resources in compliance with the requirements of the County Jail Standards. In its ruling, the trial court noted that the videos that Pitts had submitted showed Pitts fighting with correctional officers and using a taser to repeatedly shock a correctional officer. The trial court found from those videos that Pitts was a violent person and that the restrictions placed upon him in the jail were reasonable and necessary. Upon being notified of the trial court’s ruling, Pitts appealed. II. ANALYSIS On appeal, Pitts argues that the trial court erred in denying his complaint for
relief. Pitts asserts that the trial court’s ruling was erroneous for several reasons. First, Pitts
contends, the trial court failed to conduct a proper hearing on the complaint in that
the trial court failed to hold a
Boose
hearing (see
People v. Boose
,
of that argument, the Director asserts that the trial court correctly conducted the hearing on the mandamus complaint; correctly interpreted the various sections of the County Jail Standards; correctly determined that section 3-8-7 of the Unified Code did not apply in this case; correctly found that the Director had not denied Pitts access to barber services, a law library, or legal and correspondence materials; and correctly denied Pitts’s complaint for mandamus relief. The Director asks, therefore, that we affirm the trial court’s judgment. Although there is some uncertainty in the law as to the standard of review that applies on
appeal when an appellate court reviews a trial court’s grant or denial of a complaint for
mandamus
relief (
Pate v. Wiseman
, 2019 IL App (1st) 190449, ¶ 27 (recognizing that the
standard of review that applies on appeal to a trial court’s grant or denial of a
mandamus
complaint is unclear)), in situations such as the present case, where the trial court’s denial of
the
mandamus
complaint was based primarily upon factual grounds, the appellate court will
not reverse the trial court’s ruling unless it is against the manifest weight of the evidence (see
Duane v. Hardy
,
comply with the County Jail Standards (see 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701), which, among other things, require that county jail facilities provide detainees with access to barber services and legal resources and prohibit county jail facilities from imposing mail restrictions on detainees as *6 disciplinary sanctions. See 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701.100(b)(4) (2014); 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701.230(a) (1997); 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701.180(h) (2014). There are three sections of the County Jail Standards that are involved in this case: section 701.100, section 701.230, and section 701.180. Section 701.100 of the County Jail Standards, which addresses clothing, personal hygiene, and grooming, requires that “[b]arber and beautician services shall be made accessible [to detainees] but must not violate required security measures.” 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701.100(b)(4) (2014). Section 701.230, which addresses library services, requires that “up-to- date informational, recreational, legal, and educational resources” be made available to detainees. 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701.230(a) (1997). The section goes on to specify the two legal materials that must be provided: the Illinois Compiled Statutes and the current jail rules and regulations. 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701.230(a)(1), (2) (1997). Finally, section 701.180 of the County Jail Standards, which addresses mail procedures, provides that “[n]o disciplinary restrictions shall be placed on a detainee’s mail privileges.” 20 Ill. Adm. Code 701.180(h) (2014). A somewhat similar provision is contained in section 3-8-7 of the Unified Code, which Pitts also relies upon here. See 730 ILCS 5/3-8-7(b)(1) (West 2018) (providing that “[c]orporal punishment and disciplinary restrictions on diet, medical or sanitary facilities, mail or access to legal materials are prohibited”). The County Jail Standards are part of the Illinois Administrative Code. When interpreting
such provisions, this court applies the rules of statutory construction. See
Ress v. Office of the
State Comptroller
, 329 Ill. App. 3d 136, 142 (2002) (stating that the rules of statutory
construction apply when a court is construing the provisions of the Illinois Administrative
Code). The fundamental rule of statutory construction is to ascertain and give effect to the
intent of the legislature (or drafters, in the case of Administrative Code provisions).
Gaffney
,
that barbering tools—such as trimmers and plastic trimmer guards—were provided to the
detainees at the jail, including Pitts, so that they could cut their own hair or cut each other’s
hair. Pitts agreed in his testimony that barbering tools had been provided. That other inmates
had stolen the plastic trimmer guards, as Pitts had testified, was not a failure or refusal to act
on the Director’s part and could not, therefore, be remedied through a proceeding.
See
id.
(indicating that a proceeding is used to compel a public officer to perform
a mandatory and nondiscretionary official duty). Nor can we find as a matter of interpretation
that section 701.100(b)(4) of the County Jail Standards requires the county jail to provide Pitts
and the other detainees with access to a barber, as Pitts suggests. If that were the case, the
regulation would have plainly stated as much—that detainees must be given access to a
“barber”—rather than requiring that detainees be given access to “[b]arber *** services.” See
20 Ill. Adm. Code 701.100(b)(4) (2014). The additional word, “services,” must be given
meaning, if possible, and when considered with the rest of the language of that part of the
regulation—that the services must not violate required security measures—is an indication that
the Director has discretion to determine the most appropriate and secure manner in which to
satisfy that requirement under the circumstances. See
Palm
,
legal materials, including the Illinois Compiled Statutes and the jail rules and regulations, were
made available to detainees through wall kiosks located throughout the facility and through
computers located on carts in various areas of the facility. Pitts’s own testimony on the matter
corroborated that of the Director in most respects as Pitts testified that he could access the legal
materials specified, even while he was in disciplinary segregation, on a computer in the
booking area. The concerns that Pitts raised in his testimony about the legal resources—that
he did not believe they were up to date and that he could not find jury instructions on the
computer—were for the trial court, as the trier of fact, to consider and weigh in determining
whether the Director had complied with the requirements of the County Jail Standards. See
Best
,
Director testified that Pitts’s access to such materials was not denied. At most, according to
the Director, items may have been removed from Pitts’s cell temporarily, following a
disciplinary infraction, so that correctional staff could make sure that Pitts’s cell was clean.
Upon the correctional staff doing so, those items would have been promptly returned to Pitts.
Pitts disagreed with that testimony. However, as noted above, it was for the trial court, as the
trier of fact in this case, to determine whether to believe the Director’s or Pitts’s version of
events, and we cannot find that the trial court’s determination on that matter here was against
the manifest weight of the evidence. See
Best
,
proper hearing on the
mandamus
complaint, the record does not support that contention. To
the contrary, the record shows that the trial court conducted a relatively standard evidentiary
hearing on the
mandamus
complaint with both Pitts and the Director present; that both sides
were allowed to present witness testimony and physical evidence in support of their positions;
that after all of the evidence had been presented, the trial court took the case under advisement
so that it could review the law on relief; and that after the trial court considered the
evidence presented and the law in this area, it ultimately concluded in a thorough and complete
written order that Pitts’s request for relief should be denied. Under those
circumstances, we find that there was nothing improper about the manner in which the trial
court proceeded with, and ruled upon, Pitts’s complaint in the present case.
In reaching that conclusion, we note that Pitts did not at any time object in the trial court
to the manner in which the hearing was conducted and arguably may, therefore, have
acquiesced in the procedure used by the trial court. See
Steiner v. Eckert
, 2013 IL App (2d)
121290, ¶ 15 (recognizing that a party may not acquiesce in procedure followed in the trial
court and then complain about that procedure on appeal). In addition, although Pitts points to
the trial court’s alleged use of an “informal” procedure as an indication that the hearing was
conducted improperly, the record shows that the informality to which the trial court referred in
its comments during the hearing was merely the trial court’s decision to allow the Director’s
attorney to proceed with her direct examination of the Director immediately after Pitts’s direct
examination had concluded, rather than having the Director’s attorney wait until the Director’s
case-in-chief to proceed with her direct examination of the Director. Such a decision was well
within the trial court’s discretion to make in conducting the hearing in this case. See
In re T.R.
,
Notes
[1] Although Pitts labeled his pleading a petition for writ of , the pleading is more properly
referred to as a complaint for relief. See 735 ILCS 5/2-1501 (West 2018) (abolishing writs);
id.
§ 14-102 (referring to the filing of a complaint for );
Turner-El v. West
, 349 Ill. App. 3d
475, 477 (2004);
People ex rel. Braver v. Washington
,