Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-azd-2_09-cv-02330/USCOURTS-azd-2_09-cv-02330-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Prisoner Civil Rights

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 “Doc.#” refers to the docket number of filings in this case.

JDDL-K

WO SC

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

William J. Pedersen, 

Plaintiff, 

vs.

Charles Ryan, et al., 

Defendants. 

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No. CV 09-2330-PHX-MHM (DKD)

ORDER

Plaintiff William J. Pedersen, who is confined in the Special Management Unit I

(SMU I) in Florence, Arizona, has filed a pro se civil rights Complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983. (Doc.# 1.)1

 The Court dismissed the Complaint with leave to amend. (Doc.# 4.)

Plaintiff has filed a First Amended Complaint. (Doc.# 6.) The Court will dismiss the First

Amended Complaint with leave to amend.

I. Statutory Screening of Prisoner Complaints

The Court is required to screen complaints brought by prisoners seeking relief against

a governmental entity or an officer or an employee of a governmental entity. 28 U.S.C.

§ 1915A(a). The Court must dismiss a complaint or portion thereof if a plaintiff has raised

claims that are legally frivolous or malicious, that fail to state a claim upon which relief may

be granted, or that seek monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such relief.

28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b)(1), (2). 

A pleading must contain a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the

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pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2) (emphasis added). While Rule 8 does not

demand detailed factual allegations, “it demands more than an unadorned, the-defendantunlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009).

“Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory

statements, do not suffice.” Id.

“[A] complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a

claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Id. (quoting Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly,

550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). A claim is plausible “when the plaintiff pleads factual content

that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the

misconduct alleged.” Id. “Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for

relief [is] . . . a context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial

experience and common sense.” Id. at 1950. Thus, although a plaintiff’s specific factual

allegations may be consistent with a constitutional claim, a court must assess whether there

are other “more likely explanations” for a defendant’s conduct. Id. at 1951.

If the Court determines that a pleading could be cured by the allegation of other facts,

a pro se litigant is entitled to an opportunity to amend a complaint before dismissal of the

action. See Lopez v. Smith, 203 F.3d 1122, 1127-29 (9th Cir. 2000) (en banc). The Court

should not, however, advise the litigant how to cure the defects. This type of advice “would

undermine district judges’ role as impartial decisionmakers.” Pliler v. Ford, 542 U.S. 225,

231 (2004); see also Lopez, 203 F.3d at 1131 n.13 (declining to decide whether the court was

required to inform a litigant of deficiencies). Plaintiff’s First Amended Complaint will be

dismissed for failure to state a claim with leave to amend because it may possibly be saved

by amendment.

II. First Amended Complaint

Plaintiff alleges two counts of violation of due process and threat to safety. Plaintiff

sues the following employees of the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC): Protective

Segregation (PS) Administrators Hugh Matson, Audrey Burke, and Jeff Branch;

Classification Administrator Juanita Baca; Assistant Deputy Warden Stephen Morris; and

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Rast Unit Deputy Warden Quincy Owens. Plaintiff seeks compensatory and injunctive relief.

Plaintiff alleges the following facts in his First Amended Complaint: On September

4, 2007, Plaintiff was designated a member of a Security Threat Group (STG) making him

ineligible for custody level reductions and housing changes. Plaintiff renounced his STG

membership and was moved from the Bachman Detention Unit to the Browning Unit, a

super-maximum unit, to begin the debriefing process. Plaintiff successfully completed the

lengthy debriefing process, including administration of a polygraph, and was recommended

for placement in the Rast Unit, the only closed custody unit for debriefed former STG

members in Arizona. However, one or more of the Defendants prevented Plaintiff’s transfer

to the lower-custody Rast Unit because Plaintiff’s brother–who had previously renounced

his own STG membership–was already housed in Rast and pursuant to a prison restriction

on housing siblings in the same unit. The Defendants caused Plaintiff and his brother to be

placed on one another’s “Do Not House With” (DNHW) list. Plaintiff alleges that

Defendants have thereby violated his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by depriving

him of a state-created liberty interest and are subjecting him to unconstitutional conditions

of confinement by prolonging his confinement in SMU I in violation of the Eighth

Amendment.

III. Failure to State a Claim

To state a claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must allege facts supporting that (1) the

conduct about which he complains was committed by a person acting under the color of state

law and (2) the conduct deprived him of a federal constitutional or statutory right. Wood v.

Ostrander, 879 F.2d 583, 587 (9th Cir. 1989). In addition, a plaintiff must allege that he

suffered a specific injury as a result of the conduct of a particular defendant and he must

allege an affirmative link between the injury and the conduct of that defendant. Rizzo v.

Goode, 423 U.S. 362, 371-72, 377 (1976).

A. Count I

In Count I, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants have violated his Fourteenth Amendment

due process rights by depriving him of a state-created liberty interest to confinement in a

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lower custody unit following successful completion of the debriefing process. As the Court

previously informed Plaintiff, there is no constitutional right to a particular classification.

Vignolo v. Miller, 120 F.3d 1075 (9th Cir. 1997); Baumann v. Arizona Dep’t. of Corr., 754

F.2d 841,846 (9th Cir. 1985). Further, inmates have no liberty interest in remaining in a

particular institution; they may be transferred for any constitutionally permissible reason or

for no reason at all. Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 225 (1976); Ward v. Dyke, 58 F.3d

271, 274 (6th Cir. 1995); Shango v. Jurich, 681 F.2d 1091, 1100 (7th Cir.1982); Rizzo v.

Dawson, 778 F.2d 527, 530-31 (9th Cir. 1985). 

In Count I, Plaintiff again alleges that prison authorities have refused to transfer him

to the Rast Unit while his brother is there or to transfer him to a closed custody unit out of

state. Plaintiff contends that the failure to do so violates prison regulations. However, it is

the nature of a deprivation, rather than the language of particular prison regulations, that is

determinative of whether a deprivation rises to the level of a constitutional violation. As

explained by the Supreme Court, 

Sandin [v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 484 (1995)] involved prisoners’

claims to procedural due process protection before placement in segregated

confinement for 30 days, imposed as discipline for disruptive behavior.

Sandin observed that some of our earlier cases, Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460,

103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983), in particular, had employed a

methodology for identifying state-created liberty interests that emphasized “the

language of a particular [prison] regulation” instead of “the nature of the

deprivation.” Sandin, 515 U.S., at 481, 115 S.Ct. 2293. In Sandin, we

criticized this methodology as creating a disincentive for States to promulgate

procedures for prison management, and as involving the federal courts in the

day-to-day management of prisons. Id., at 482-483, 115 S.Ct. 2293. For these

reasons, we abrogated the methodology of parsing the language of particular

regulations. 

“[T]he search for a negative implication from mandatory

language in prisoner regulations has strayed from the real

concerns undergirding the liberty protected by the Due Process

Clause. The time has come to return to the due process

principles we believe were correctly established and applied in

Wolff and Meachum. Following Wolff, we recognize that

States may under certain circumstances create liberty interests

which are protected by the Due Process Clause. But these

interests will generally be limited to freedom from restraint

which, while not exceeding the sentence in such an unexpected

manner as to give rise to protection by the Due Process Clause

of its own force, nonetheless imposes atypical and significant

hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of

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prison life. Id., at 483-484, 115 S.Ct. 2293 (citations and

footnote omitted).

After Sandin, it is clear that the touchstone of the inquiry into existence

of a protected, state-created liberty interest in avoiding restrictive conditions

of confinement is not the language of regulations regarding those

conditions but the nature of the conditions themselves “in relation to the

ordinary incidents of prison life.” Id., at 484, 115 S.Ct. 2293.

Wilkinson v. Austin, 545 U.S. 209, 222-23 (2005) (emphasis added). 

In short, the failure to comply with prison regulations, absent more, does not violate

a protected liberty interest. Defendants’ failure or refusal to move Plaintiff to a lower

custody unit or acts resulting in his continued confinement in an SMU following successful

debriefing does not, absent more, violate a protected liberty interest. Accordingly, Plaintiff

fails to state a claim in Count I. 

B. Count II

Plaintiff designates Count II as claim for threats to his safety posed by his continued

confinement to the conditions in SMU I, which Plaintiff anticipates will be until his brother

is released from the Rast Unit (and prison) in three years. Plaintiff alleges that his conditions

of confinement in the SMU for an additional three years, after having already been confined

to an SMU for two years, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Specifically, Plaintiff

alleges he will continue to be subjected to florescent lights that are on 16 to 18 hours a day

and intermittently the balance of the time; continuous excessive noise from inmates and

officers; constant confinement to his cell with virtually no contact or interaction with others;

and recreation in a concrete enclosure without exposure to sunlight. As a result of his

confinement in these conditions for an extended period, Plaintiff suffers from headaches,

mental and emotional distress, and lack of meaningful sleep. 

In addressing a similar claim in the Complaint, the Court previously stated:

Under the Eighth Amendment, punishment may not be “barbarous” and

may not contravene society’s “evolving standards of decency.” Rhodes v.

Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 346 (1981). To state a claim under the Eighth

Amendment, an inmate must allege facts to support that he was incarcerated

under conditions posing a substantial risk of harm and that prison officials

were “deliberately indifferent” to those risks. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S.

825, 832-33 (1994); Redman v. County of Los Angeles, 942 F.2d 1435, 1443

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(9th Cir. 1991) (en banc). Only deprivations denying the minimal civilized

measure of life’s necessities are sufficiently grave to state an Eighth

Amendment violation. Johnson v. Lewis, 217 F.3d 726, 731 (9th Cir. 2000)

(quotation omitted). These are “deprivations of essential food, medical care,

or sanitation” or “other conditions intolerable for prison confinement.”

Rhodes, 452 U.S. at 348. To determine whether a violation has occurred, a

Court should consider the circumstances, nature and duration of a deprivation

of these necessities. Johnson, 217 F.3d at 731. “The more basic the need, the

shorter the time it can be withheld.” Hoptowit v. Ray, 682 F.2d 1287, 1259

(9th Cir. 1982). In addition to alleging facts to support that he has been

subjected to conditions that pose an excessive risk of harm to the inmate, a

plaintiff must also allege facts to support that a given defendant knew of, but

disregarded, that risk of harm. Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837. That is, “the official

must both [have been] aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn

that a substantial risk of serious harm exist[ed], and he must also [have]

draw[n] the inference.” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837; Redman, 942 F.2d at 1442.

Plaintiff alleges that his continued confinement in SMU I will subject

him to unconstitutional conditions. While Plaintiff ostensibly alleges facts to

support that the conditions of confinement in SMU I may rise to the level of

unconstitutionality, he fails to allege facts to support that any named

Defendant acted with deliberate indifference to those conditions. Rather,

in Count II, Plaintiff is essentially seeking relief against the named Defendants

for impeding his transfer to a lower custody unit. If Plaintiff seeks relief as

to his conditions of confinement, Plaintiff must allege facts to support that

a particular Defendant knew of but disregarded conditions posing an

excessive risk to Plaintiff’s safety. A Defendant’s mere involvement in

classification or housing assignments is not sufficient to support that the

defendant acted with deliberate indifference to allegedly unconstitutional

conditions. Because Plaintiff fails to allege facts to support that any named

Defendant acted with deliberate indifference to his conditions of confinement,

he fails to state a claim in Count II. 

(Doc.# 4 at 10-11) (emphasis added). 

In his First Amended Complaint, Plaintiff sufficiently alleges facts to support that the

conditions in SMU I may be unconstitutional. Plaintiff also asserts that he informed the

Defendants that their actions will result in him continuing to be held in more restrictive

conditions of SMU I. However, Plaintiff does not specifically allege facts to support that the

Defendants know that they are causing him to be subjected to the particular allegedly

unconstitutional conditions in SMU. For example, Plaintiff does not specifically allege when

or how he informed the Defendants that their actions were subjecting him to unconstitutional

conditions of confinement or what those conditions were. Plaintiff thus fails to sufficiently

allege facts to support that the Defendants have acted with deliberate indifference to his

allegedly unconstitutional conditions by preventing his transfer to the Rast Unit. Because

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Plaintiff may be able to amend his First Amended Complaint to correct this deficiency, he

will be granted leave to amend. 

IV. Leave to Amend

For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiff’s First Amended Complaint will be dismissed for

failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Within 30 days, Plaintiff may

submit a second amended complaint to cure the deficiencies outlined above. The Clerk of

Court will mail Plaintiff a court-approved form to use for filing a second amended complaint.

If Plaintiff fails to use the court-approved form, the Court may strike the amended complaint

and dismiss this action without further notice to Plaintiff.

Plaintiff must clearly designate on the face of the document that it is the “Second

Amended Complaint.” The second amended complaint must be retyped or rewritten in its

entirety on the court-approved form and may not incorporate any part of any prior complaint

by reference. Plaintiff may include only one claim per count. 

A second amended complaint supersedes any prior complaint. Ferdik v. Bonzelet, 963

F.2d 1258, 1262 (9th Cir. 1992); Hal Roach Studios v. Richard Feiner & Co., 896 F.2d 1542,

1546 (9th Cir. 1990). After amendment, the Court will treat any prior complaint as

nonexistent. Ferdik, 963 F.2d at 1262. Any cause of action that was raised in a prior

complaint is waived if it is not raised in a second amended complaint. King v. Atiyeh, 814

F.2d 565, 567 (9th Cir. 1987).

V. Warnings

A. Release

Plaintiff must pay the unpaid balance of the filing fee within 120 days of his release.

Also, within 30 days of his release, he must either (1) notify the Court that he intends to pay

the balance or (2) show good cause, in writing, why he cannot. Failure to comply may result

in dismissal of this action.

B. Address Changes

Plaintiff must file and serve a notice of a change of address in accordance with Rule

83.3(d) of the Local Rules of Civil Procedure. Plaintiff must not include a motion for other

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relief with a notice of change of address. Failure to comply may result in dismissal of this

action.

C. Copies

Plaintiff must submit an additional copy of every filing for use by the Court. See

LRCiv 5.4. Failure to comply may result in the filing being stricken without further notice

to Plaintiff.

D. Possible “Strike”

Because the Complaint and First Amended Complaint have been dismissed for failure

to state a claim, if Plaintiff fails to file an amended complaint correcting the deficiencies

identified in this Order, the dismissal may count as a “strike” under the “3-strikes” provision

of 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). Under the 3-strikes provision, a prisoner may not bring a civil action

or appeal a civil judgment in forma pauperis under 28 U.S.C. § 1915 “if the prisoner has, on

3 or more prior occasions, while incarcerated or detained in any facility, brought an action

or appeal in a court of the United States that was dismissed on the grounds that it is frivolous,

malicious, or fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, unless the prisoner is

under imminent danger of serious physical injury.” 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). 

E. Possible Dismissal

If Plaintiff fails to timely comply with every provision of this Order, including these

warnings, the Court may dismiss this action without further notice. See Ferdik, 963 F.2d at

1260-61 (a district court may dismiss an action for failure to comply with any order of the

Court).

IT IS ORDERED: 

(1) The First Amended Complaint is dismissed for failure to state a claim. (Doc.#

6.) Plaintiff has 30 days from the date this Order is filed to file a second amended complaint

in compliance with this Order. 

(2) If Plaintiff fails to file an amended complaint within 30 days, the Clerk of

Court must, without further notice, enter a judgment of dismissal of this action with prejudice

that states that the dismissal may count as a “strike” under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g).

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(3) The Clerk of Court must mail Plaintiff a court-approved form for filing a civil

rights complaint by a prisoner.

DATED this 16th day of April, 2010.

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