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An inmate alleging his constitutional rights were violated in a prison disciplinary process that put him in segregation for two years has failed to find relief at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Plaintiff-appellant Benjamin Adams was convicted of attempted murder and involuntary manslaughter in 2004 and was sentenced to 34 years. As of January 2017, he was housed at the Plainfield Correctional Facility, where his complaint began.
In February 2017, inmate Kenneth Garretson got into a fight with another inmate. It was ultimately determined that Garretson was acting on orders from Adams, who was mad that the victim of the fight had stopped paying protection money to Adams or his prison gang, the Vice Lords.
Adams denied having any responsibility for the assault, and Garretson backed up that claim. But Adams was still assigned to disciplinary segregation, and Clinton Feldkamp, the prison’s director of intelligence and investigation, charged Adams with engaging in criminal gang activity.
The hearing officer found Adams guilty, resolving the matter based solely on written statements. Adams was then ordered to spend one year in disciplinary segregation, 365 days of earned good time credits were revoked and he was demoted to credit-earning class 3.
Adams was also convicted separately of unlawful possession of a cellphone. He was once again sanctioned to one year in disciplinary segregation, plus the loss of 180 days of good time credits.
It was then recommended that Adams be reclassified to department-wide restrictive housing based on eight different offenses in one year, including the assault offense involving Garretson. Inmates in restrictive housing spend 23 hours a day in their cells, and they have very few rights outside their cells, including receiving smaller food portions.
Adams was transferred to the restricted housing unit at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in June 2017.
After unsuccessfully appealing the assault conviction through the prison system, Adams filed a habeas petition in federal court. The prison review officer then designated the matter for rehearing, and an amended charging document charged Adams with conspiracy to commit assault and battery with serious bodily injury.
Each of Adams’ requested witnesses were rejected at the disciplinary hearing, and he was again convicted. This time, his sanction included the loss of 360 days of good time credits, a credit-class demotion and an order to spend one year in disciplinary segregation.
Adams again appealed within the prison system and filed a habeas petition, the latter of which was granted.
The district court concluded that the prison wrongfully denied Adams the opportunity to present live testimony of at least one witness: inmate Raymond Barnett, who was also found to be involved in the assault but who, like Adams, maintained his innocence. The judge ordered that two of the sanctions against Adams — the revocation of good time credit and the demotion in credit class — be vacated.
Then in September 2018, Adams was charged in connection with the assault for a third time, this time on a charge of aiding/attempted/conspiracy to assault. Adams was allowed to call some, but not all, of his requested witnesses, and he was again found guilty.
However, that December, the warden dismissed the conduct reports and expunged the sanctions on the ground that the allegations against Adams were too vague.
Separately, Adams obtained relief on the cellphone charge. Adams had already served two years in restrictive housing at that point.
While he was challenging his assault conviction, Adams filed suit against various prison officials for violations of his First, Eighth and 14th Amendment rights.
His First Amendment claim was based on the allegation that he was wrongfully charged and convicted in the assault case because shortly before the assault, he complained about being kicked off kitchen duty.
His Eighth Amendment claim alleged he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment in restrictive housing.
And finally, his 14th Amendment claim alleged a due process violation when he was not allowed to present live witnesses and other evidence at his first two disciplinary hearings, as well as an equal protection violation because he was allegedly treated differently based on his race.
The district court granted summary judgment to the prison defendants, and the 7th Circuit affirmed.
Beginning with Adams’ First Amendment Claim, Judge Ilana Rovner wrote that there was insufficient evidence to prove he was charged in the assault because he had complained about being removed from kitchen duty.
“The question is not whether Feldkamp was right or wrong in pointing the finger at Adams; it is whether he genuinely believed that Adams was culpably involved with the assault,” Rovner wrote. “In the employment context, we routinely hold that a disciplined or discharged employee’s avowal of good work performance is insufficient to create a dispute of fact as to whether the employer believed the qualify of his performance to be otherwise.”
The next issue was whether Adams’ due process rights were violated. Rovner dissented from the majority on that issue, so in a separate concurrence, Judge Amy St. Eve explained the court’s rationale.
Resolving the due process question in favor of the defendants, St. Eve — joined by Judge Thomas Kirsch — wrote, “Adams’s claim that Feldkamp called the shots in one of his assault hearings is disquieting, but later proceedings corrected that procedural misstep. Put another way, any error was harmless.”
In her dissent, Rovner addressed the issue of Adams’ witnesses.
“Given Adams’ exposure to the loss of good time credits in both the original hearing and the rehearing on the assault charge, he was entitled, inter alia, to present relevant live witness testimony, and the hearing officer’s decision to refuse testimony even from an exculpatory witnesses like Barnett, without explanation, amount to a denial of his due process rights … .
“To my mind,” Rovner added, “nothing about the grant of habeas relief in August 2018, which restored to Adams the good time credits that had been revoked as a result of the assault hearing (and rehearing) should alter the analysis.”
In response, St. Eve wrote that “the dissent improperly bootstraps this hearing about disciplinary segregation into one about the loss of good time credits, all because one of eight underlying violations (which is not at issue here) might have called for more process. Our law does not support this expansion of rights.”
St. Eve also held that Adams cannot proceed on his claim that he did not receive an impartial decisionmaker because “any failure to provide a neutral arbiter at that stage was harmless.”
“In the end, an internal administrative appeal process concluded that the allegations against Adams had been too vague to support the assault charge,” she wrote. “This is due process at work … .”
The court returned to unanimity on the equal protection claim, rejecting the argument that Garretson, who is white, was treated more favorably.
“Alternatively, Adams cites various remarks and actions on the part of Feldkamp that purport to directly show racial bias on his part … ,” Rovner wrote. “We agree with the district court that none of these statements or actions, considered separately or together, is sufficient to support an inference that Feldkamp’s actions vis-à-via Adams were animated by racial bias.”
Finally as to Adams’ Eighth Amendment claim, the 7th Circuit held, “(T)he restrictive housing conditions that Adams has described were not unique to him, and there is no evidence that any of the defendants created those conditions or somehow made them worse for Adams in particular … .”
“Even assuming that the defendants were aware of the conditions of that unit at Plainfield and Wabash Valley, there is no evidence that their positions within the prison charged them with any responsibility for the conditions in that unit or gave them the authority to change those conditions — there is no evidence that they had anything to do with the restrictive housing unit at all,” Rovner concluded. “Consequently, they cannot be held liable for the conditions Adams has described.”
The case is Benjamin Adams v. Christina Reagle, et al., 21-1730.
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