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Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted May 23, 2016*

Decided June 17, 2016

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge

RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

No. 15-2886

WINFRED OLIVER,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

RANDY PFISTER, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Central District of Illinois.

No. 13-1457

James E. Shadid,

Chief Judge.

O R D E R

Winfred Oliver, an Illinois prisoner, challenges the dismissal of his complaint 

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that his disciplinary proceeding on child pornography 

charges did not provide the process that he was due, and that his request for leave to 

amend his complaint was wrongly denied. We affirm.

 

* After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral argument is 

unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the briefs and record. See FED. R. APP.

P. 34(a)(2)(C).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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In April 2011, while Oliver was incarcerated in the protective-custody unit at 

Pontiac Correctional Center, prison officials found in his cell two pornography 

magazines with children’s faces pasted on the bodies of naked adults, loose 

photographs of young nude men, and an album with images of children cut from 

magazines. A reporting officer wrote a disciplinary report about the incident, and 

Oliver was charged with breaking a prison rule against violating federal or state law, 

specifically the Illinois child pornography statute, see 720 ILCS 5/11-20.1. Oliver 

submitted a written defense and pleaded not guilty during an Adjustment Committee 

hearing. The committee found Oliver guilty and issued a final report, which 

summarized Oliver’s defenses, stated (incorrectly, according to Oliver) that no 

witnesses were requested, and concluded that Oliver’s admitted conduct of putting 

actual children’s faces on photos of adult bodies violated the Illinois child pornography 

statute. Among the punishments Oliver received were a one-year term of disciplinary 

segregation and a one-year loss of good-time credit.

Oliver brought this suit against ten prison employees, asserting due process 

violations in connection with his disciplinary proceeding. He alleged that the 

defendants mistakenly applied the state child pornography law to his conduct when 

they (1) punished him for having images of children’s faces pasted onto naked adult 

bodies, (2) did not allow him to present documentary evidence that the naked male 

images found in his cell were of legal-aged adults, and (3) did not allow him to question 

the reporting officer, either in person or through a written interrogatory he had 

submitted. Oliver also alleged that the conditions of his disciplinary segregation

constituted cruel and unusual punishment and violated his right to equal protection,

but he has since abandoned those contentions and we do not address them further.

At screening, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the district court dismissed Oliver’s due 

process challenge, which related to the procedures that were followed in his prison 

disciplinary hearing, for failure to state a claim. With respect to Oliver’s claim that he 

was denied his right to call witnesses, the court found “no possibility” based on its 

review of Oliver’s interrogatory that the reporting officer’s testimony would have 

assisted Oliver’s defense. As for Oliver’s claim that the disciplinary officers failed to 

produce sufficient documentary evidence of his guilt or overlooked his own “relevant” 

evidence, the court found that he had received all the procedural protections he was 

due under Wolff v. McDonnell, and that there was “some evidence” in the record—

namely in his own allegations and documents attached to his complaint—that 

supported a finding of guilt. The court allowed Oliver to proceed on his claim that he 

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was deprived of a protected liberty interest by being placed in disciplinary segregation 

for an extended period of time.

Oliver then moved to amend his complaint by adding information justifying his 

need to question the witness (the reporting officer) and by pointing to documents 

showing that the male images were legal. The district court denied this motion on 

grounds that amendment would be futile because the additional information did not 

cure the defects noted in the screening order. Oliver responded with two more motions. 

First, in a “motion for clarification,” he asked the court to clarify what relief remained 

available to him based on his claim that the prison conditions deprived him of a liberty 

interest. He argued, as defendants had in their submissions, that no relief appeared

available even if a liberty interest had been implicated by his placement in segregation

because the court found that the disciplinary procedures that landed him there were 

sufficient. Second, one week later, he filed a motion to reconsider the denial of his 

motion to amend; in that motion he argued that he had sufficiently stated a due process 

claim based on the defendants’ failure to call the reporting officer as a witness and their 

refusal to allow him to obtain and submit evidence of the legality of the male images. 

He also urged that there was no evidence of his guilt.

In response to Oliver’s motion for clarification, the district court determined that 

there no longer was a need to develop a factual record on whether his placement in 

segregation implicated a liberty interest, because Oliver received all the process he was 

due in the disciplinary proceeding. As for Oliver’s motion to reconsider, the court 

construed it as being brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) (which was 

not correct because final judgment had not yet been entered) and denied it because it 

merely rehashed arguments that previously had been made and rejected.

On appeal Oliver primarily challenges the district court’s conclusion that there 

was some evidence in the record to support the Adjustment Committee’s finding that 

the reported violations of the Illinois child pornography statute occurred.1 Due process, 

at a minimum, requires that the findings of a prison disciplinary committee be 

 

1 On appeal defendants do not assert the affirmative defense that this case is 

barred by Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486–87 (1994), and Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 

641, 646 (1997), given the fact that Oliver seeks monetary damages for disciplinary 

actions that have yet to be invalidated. See Polzin v. Gage, 636 F.3d 834, 837–38 (7th Cir. 

2011); Carr v. O'Leary, 167 F.3d 1124, 1126 (7th Cir. 1999). We therefore do not address 

this possibility.

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supported by “some evidence” in the record—a standard below that required to 

support a criminal conviction. See Superintendent, Mass. Corr. Inst., Walpole v. Hill, 472 

U.S. 445, 454–56 (1985); Lagerstrom v. Kingston, 463 F.3d 621, 624 (7th Cir. 2006). Oliver 

concedes that he pasted children’s faces onto naked bodies of adults, but he argues that 

this action merely produced “virtual child pornography,” the prohibition of which the 

Illinois Supreme Court found unconstitutionally overbroad in People v. Alexander, 

791 N.E.2d 506 (Ill. 2003); see also Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002) 

(holding unconstitutional the provisions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 

1996 that ban virtual child pornography). Because the prohibition on virtual child 

pornography no longer is valid, Oliver continues, there was no evidence in the record to 

support the committee’s finding that his actions violated the statute.

Oliver misapprehends the scope of Alexander’s holding. In that case, the Illinois 

Supreme Court held that the criminalization of pornography consisting of computergenerated depictions that appear to be children, or pornography that does not involve 

any actual, identifiable children, was unconstitutionally overbroad. Alexander,

791 N.E.2d at 511, 513–14. The category of pornography that Oliver’s altered images fall 

intopornography that “morphs” different parts of actual children’s faces with adult 

bodies—is different from “virtual pornography” because it uses the faces of real 

children. Id. at 513; see Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coal., 535 U.S. at 242. Based on the incident

report and Oliver’s own admission that he pasted faces from actual children onto naked 

adult bodies, we agree with the district court that “some evidence” in the record 

supports the disciplinary action taken by the prison.

Oliver also challenges the district court’s conclusion that his proposed amended 

complaint failed to state a due process claim based on the denial of his request to call 

the reporting officer as a witness at his disciplinary hearing. But, as the district court 

explained, a prisoner has no right to call a witness whose testimony would be 

irrelevant, repetitive, or unnecessary. See Piggie v. Cotton, 344 F.3d 674, 677 (7th Cir.

2003); Pannell v. McBride, 306 F.3d 499, 502–03 (7th Cir. 2002); Forbes v. Trigg, 976 F.2d 

308, 317–18 (7th Cir. 1992). Oliver sought the reporting officer’s testimony in order to 

confirm the information already contained in the report and to reiterate the officer’s 

opinion that Oliver violated the statute. But the officer’s testimony was unnecessary 

because Oliver did not dispute the underlying facts of the charged misconduct. Since 

the requested testimony could not have aided Oliver’s defense, the district court

properly determined that its exclusion was harmless. See Piggie, 344 F.3d at 677–78.

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Oliver also maintains relatedly that his proposed amended complaint stated a 

due process claim based on the denial of his request to present documentary evidence 

in his defense. He contends that he was not allowed the opportunity to verify the legal 

age of the men in some of the confiscated images—a task he proposed to perform by 

presenting a letter from the owner of the company that sold him the images. But Oliver 

presented this information to the committee in his written defense, and so we do not see 

how the proposed evidence would have helped his defense. And because the committee 

found Oliver guilty based on the pornographic magazine pictures that he altered with 

the children’s faces, the additional evidence involving this other set of images would 

have done nothing to help his defense.

We have considered Oliver’s remaining arguments and none has merit.

AFFIRMED.

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