Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-89-03320/USCOURTS-ca10-89-03320-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 

---

• FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS DEC 2 8 1990 

TEN'l'H CIRCUIT ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

TIMOTHY STALLARD, ) 

) 

Plaintiff-Appellant, ) 

) 

v. ) 

) 

STEVEN DAVIES; RAYMOND ROBERTS; ) 

WAYNE SHIPMAN; PHILIP L. ) 

TINDER; W.T. MADDEN; LT. SMITH; ) 

M. SLUSHER, ) 

) 

Defendants-Appellees. ) 

No. 89-3320 

(D.C. No. 89-3400-S) 

(D. Kansas) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before ANDERSON, BALDOCK, and EBEL, Circuit Judges. 

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel 

has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially 

assist the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 

34(a); 10th Cir. R. 34.1.9. Therefore, the case is ordered 

submitted without oral argument. We nevertheless grant Stallard's 

request to proceed in forma pauperis. 

This case involves a complaint filed pursuant to 42 u.s.c. S 

1983. Plaintiff, an inmate at the Kansas State Penitentiary, 

Lansing, Kansas, claims that the defendants violated his 

constitutional rights by punishing him for refusing to work on an 

* This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall not 

be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, except 

for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of the case, 

res judicata, or collateral estoppal. 10th Cir. R. 36.3. 

Appellate Case: 89-3320 Document: 010110097388 Date Filed: 12/28/1990 Page: 1 
assigned work detail. According to plaintiff, defendants did not 

comply with Kansas State Prison General Order 18-101, which 

entitles all inmates to an in-person classification review prior 

to any·work assignment. Plaintiff asserts that he had a 

Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest in the pre-classification 

review which defendants violated. In addition, plaintiff contends 

that the punishment meted out against him was cruel and unusual 

and constituted an impermissible restriction on his First 

Amendment right to religious freedom. The district court, 

Saffels, J., dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. 

We affirm the district court on all but the Eighth Amendment 

claim, which we remand for further consideration consistent with 

this order and judgment. 

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT CLAIM 

The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any state from depriving a 

person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. 

Plaintiff here asserts that defendants deprived him of a valid 

liberty interest when they assigned him to work in the "furniture 

repair and refinish shop" without first interviewing him. 

According to plaintiff, such a pre-assignment interview was 

required by Kansas State Prison General Order No. 18-101. We 

reject plaintiff's argument for two independent reasons. 

In the first place, plaintiff has misinterpreted the terms of 

the General Order and mistakenly concluded that he was entitled to 

pre-job-assignment consultation. In our view, consultation 

interviews are required only for those inmates who -- unlike 

-2-

Appellate Case: 89-3320 Document: 010110097388 Date Filed: 12/28/1990 Page: 2 
plaintiff -- choose to participate in an inmate program plan. 

This is confirmed by both the Kansas Administrative Regulations 

and the prison order in question. According to§ 44-5-105 of the 

Kansas .Administrative Regulations: 

Within one month after each inmate's admission or readmission evaluation, an initial classification 

conunittee shall meet with the offender to develop a 

program plan .... The program plan shall include 

various tasks which the inmate agrees to perform over an 

estimated period of time .•. includ[ing] activities in 

education, vocational training, psychological or 

psychiatric counseling or therapy, work, hobbies or 

leisure time activities, and participation in social, 

special interest or special counseling •••• Any inmate 

may elect not to participate in a formal program plan .. • rand] shall not be penalized for (such] refusal .. The inmate shall nevertheless be subject to all the 

regulations of the secretary and the orders of the 

principal administrator. and shall be required to 

participate in any work assignments which are made by 

the unit team. 

Id. (emphasis added). The general order relied on by plaintiff 

merely follows up on this regulation: "all inmates shall be 

present at their initial classification to provide their input as 

to preferences in progranuning." Plaintiff's Complaint at 8 

(emphasis added). 1 

On March 1, 1989 -- more than five months before the reclassification at issue here -- plaintiff here declined to enter 

into a program plan agreement with prison administrators. See 

Plaintiff's Complaint, Exhibit 4. This was his right under K.A.R 

§ 44-5-105. Nevertheless, by refusing to participate in the 

1 Plaintiff's exhibit 2, a letter from Administrative Officer 

Mary E. Chambers, also deals exclusively with participation in the 

program plan. It in no way contradicts§ 44-5-105 in its holding 

that non-participating inmates "shall [nevertheless] be required 

to participate in any work assignments ••• made by the unit 

team." 

-3-

Appellate Case: 89-3320 Document: 010110097388 Date Filed: 12/28/1990 Page: 3 
prison programming plan, plaintiff unavoidably forfeited his right 

to avail himself of the benefits which accompany participation in 

such a program. We therefore conclude that plaintiff had no claim 

to a classification interview; rather, the inmate was "required to 

participate in any work assignments ... made by the unit team." 

K.A.R. 44-5-lOS(c)(l). 

Futhermore, even if defendants had promised a reclassification interview to all inmates, it is by no means clear 

that reneging on such a promise would constitute a violation of 

the Fourteenth Amendment. In Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 469 

(1982), the Supreme Court noted that "we have never held that 

statutes and regulations governing the daily operation of a prison 

system conferred any liberty interest in and of themselves." The 

Court reasoned that: 

The creation of procedural guidelines to channel the 

decision-making of prison officials is ••• a salutary 

development. It would be ironic to hold that when a 

State embarks on such desirable experimentation it 

thereby opens the door to scrutiny by the federal 

courts, while States that choose not to adopt such 

procedural provisions entirely avoid the strictures of 

the Due Process Clause. The adoption of such procedural 

guidelines, without more, suggests that it is these 

restrictions alone, and not those federal courts might 

impose under the Fourteenth Amendment, that the State 

chose to require. 

Id. at 471. We think it obvious that the general orders cited by 

plaintiff are nothing more than procedural guidelines adopted for 

the internal administration of the Kansas State Penitentiary in 

Lansing. They make no pretense to elevate or expand the liberty 

interests of inmates, as evidenced by the fact that the Kansas 

code and Kansas Administrative Regulations remain silent on the 

subject. Indeed, we question whether an individual prison has the 

-4-

Appellate Case: 89-3320 Document: 010110097388 Date Filed: 12/28/1990 Page: 4 
authority to unilaterally confer Fourteenth Amendment liberty 

interests on state prisoners. Therefore, even if plaintiff 

correctly interpreted the general order in question, we still 

conclude that there was no Fourteenth Amendment violation by 

defendants. 

FIRST AMENDMENT CLAIM 

As punishment for his refusal to comply with the work reassignment, Stallard was assigned to cell house "X". There he was 

permitted to attend religious services for no more than one hour 

per week.. Plaintiff asserts that such punishment violated his 

First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. We disagree. 

In Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 84 (1987), the Supreme 

Court acknowledged that "courts are ill-equipped to deal with the 

increasingly urgent problems of prison administration." The Court 

accordingly held that "a lesser standard of scrutiny is 

appropriate in determining the constitutionality of prison rules." 

Id. at 85. Thus, where a prison regulation "impinges on inmates' 

constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably 

related to legitimate penological interests." Id. at 89. There 

can be no dispute that administrative confinement like that 

ordered against plaintiff is reasonably related to the legitimate 

penological interest of maintaining order and discipline among 

prison inmates. We therefore conclude that the prison regulation 

limiting prisoners to one hour of religious services per week is a 

valid one which represents an acceptable accommodation between the 

-5-

Appellate Case: 89-3320 Document: 010110097388 Date Filed: 12/28/1990 Page: 5 
prisoner's First Amendment rights and the prison's interest in 

maintaining order. 

EIGHTH AMENDMENT CLAIM 

Plaintiff finally claims that the conditions in the "X" cell 

house, where he was sent for refusing to comply with his job reassignment, were so unsanitary and dangerous as to amount to cruel 

and unusual punishment. Specifically, he contends that cell house 

"X" is characterized by "extreme fire hazards," "insect and vermin 

infestation," lack of recreational facilities and opportunities 

for exercise, and dangerous fellow inmates "suffering from extreme 

mental illness, or aggressive homosexuals whom(sic) have 

repeatedly molested other . ·. • . inmates." Pl. Complaint at 13. 

The district court apparently misunderstood this contention, 

holding that "plaintiff has made no allegations that the work 

assignment was violative of the constitutional prohibition against 

cruel and unusual punishment." Order at 2. We think it is 

obvious that plaintiff's Eighth Amendment claim challenges the 

conditions of his confinement in cell house "X" -- not the work 

assignment which he initially refused. We accordingly remand this 

claim to the district court and direct it to follow the Supreme 

Court's admonitions against "deliberate indifference" and 

"unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" which is "totally 

without penological justification." Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 

337, 342 (1981) See also Caldwell v. Miller, 790 F.2d 589, 600 

(7th Cir. 1986) (prolonged restriction on exercise threatened 

inmate's physical health and implicated Eighth Amendment); Ramos 

-6-

Appellate Case: 89-3320 Document: 010110097388 Date Filed: 12/28/1990 Page: 6 
♦ 

v. Lamm, 639 F.2d 559, 568 (10th Cir. 1980) (state must provide 

inmate with a "healthy habilitative environment"), cert. denied, 

450 U.S. 1041 (1981). 

CONCLUSION 

For the reasons set forth above, we AFFIRM the district 

court's dismissal of all claims but the Eighth Amendment claim, 

which we REMAND for further consideration. 

Entered for the Court 

David M. Ebel 

Circuit Judge 

-7-

Appellate Case: 89-3320 Document: 010110097388 Date Filed: 12/28/1990 Page: 7