Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02480/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02480-0/pdf.json

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

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-2480

NATHANIEL BROWN,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

MICHAEL RANDLE, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Western Division.

No. 11 C 50193 — Frederick J. Kapala, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED OCTOBER 26, 2016 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 7, 2017

____________________

Before FLAUM, EASTERBROOK, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. In 1994 Nathaniel Brown was 

convicted of four sex offenses and sentenced to prison in Illinois. His projected release date was July 10, 2009, after 

which his sentence required him to serve three years of 

“mandatory supervised release,” a status that officials in Illinois often call parole.

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When July 10 arrived, however, the Illinois Department 

of Corrections did not release Brown. Instead it issued a “Parole Violation Report” reciting that Brown had committed 

two anticipatory violations of the terms of supervised release. First, he had refused to accept electronic monitoring 

that is required of sex offenders; second, he lacked a place 

where he could lawfully reside outside the prison’s walls. 

(Like many other states, Illinois limits the locations where 

sex offenders can make their homes.) The problems are related. Illinois tries to find lawful accommodations for sex offenders who promise to wear electronic monitoring devices, 

but because Brown rejected the device the prison system did 

not try to help him find a place to live.

Brown seeks damages for the delay in releasing him, yet 

he does not contend that either the electronic-monitoring or 

the residential-location condition of release is invalid. We 

have held that one is proper, and the Eighth Circuit has sustained the other. See Belleau v. Wall, 811 F.3d 929 (7th Cir. 

2016) (state may require a sex offender to wear a GPS ankle 

bracelet as a condition of release); Weems v. Little Rock Police 

Department, 453 F.3d 1010 (8th Cir. 2006) (residential-location 

limits for sex offenders are valid); Doe v. Miller, 405 F.3d 700 

(8th Cir. 2005) (same). Cf. Doe v. Lafayette, 377 F.3d 757 (7th 

Cir. 2004) (en banc) (states may prevent sex offenders from 

visiting places where children congregate). Nonetheless

Brown contends that he was entitled to immediate release 

without regard to those conditions. Perhaps the state could 

have picked him up later and revoked his release, he allows, 

but first it had to discharge him. He contends that his confinement violated both the Fourth Amendment, applied to 

the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Due 

Process Clause of that amendment.

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One part of Illinois’ government thinks that he should 

have been let out in July 2009. The Prisoner Review Board 

held a hearing in October 2009 and determined that Brown 

had not violated the conditions of his release. Apparently it 

believes that an anticipatory violation should be distinguished from a completed violation, though it did not explain its reasoning. On the same day the Board made this 

decision, an employee of the Department of Corrections issued a second Parole Violation Report, giving the same two 

reasons as before. That step was authorized by 20 Ill. Admin. 

Code §1610.110(a), which says that even a formal order for 

release on parole “shall not be effective” until the prisoner 

has an approved residence. The Board then washed its 

hands of the matter, having earlier told the Department that 

it would not re-review situations in which the Department 

disagreed with its decisions. Brown remained in prison until 

January 11, 2011, when he was released unconditionally. (Illinois gives day-for-day good-time credit, so 18 months in 

prison was deemed to discharge a sentence of three years’ 

supervised release.)

One of Brown’s themes is that Illinois did not offer him a 

hearing before it issued either the first or the second violation report. No one doubts that, if he had been released, the 

Constitution would have required notice and an opportunity 

for a hearing before he could be returned to prison. See Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471 (1972). But the Supreme Court 

has limited Morrissey by holding that a state may rescind parole, without a hearing, if it acts before a person reaches the 

outside of the prison. See Jago v. Van Curen, 454 U.S. 14 

(1981). That’s what happened to Brown.

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No matter how the Due Process calculus may come out, 

Brown insists, he had a right under the Fourth Amendment 

to release as soon as his prison sentence ended. Yet as of 

2009, when he was kept in prison, no court had held that the 

Fourth Amendment entitles a sex offender to release even 

though it appears likely that, as soon as he steps outside the 

prison’s front door, he will be in violation of the terms of release. Indeed, no federal court has so held to this day. Under 

the circumstances, therefore, the defendants are entitled to 

qualified immunity from damages. And so we concluded

with respect to Wisconsin’s system of keeping sex offenders 

in prison until they have a lawful post-prison residence. See 

Werner v. Wall, 836 F.3d 751 (7th Cir. 2016).

In a supplemental brief filed after argument, Brown asks 

us to put Werner to one side because Illinois and Wisconsin 

do not use identical systems, and he emphasized the Fourth 

Amendment while Werner relied principally on the Eighth 

Amendment. These distinctions are true but beside the 

point. The core conclusion of Werner is that the federal judiciary has not clearly established that sex offenders who lack 

a lawful place to live must nonetheless be released from 

prison. That conclusion does not depend on the particulars 

of the state systems or the constitutional provision a given 

plaintiff emphasizes.

Brown does not identify any decision of a federal court 

establishing that sex offenders without approved living arrangements must be released. Instead he states the constitutional rule at a high level of generality (the Fourth Amendment forbids unreasonable seizures) and contends that this 

suffices. No, it doesn’t. As the Justices reiterated earlier this 

month:

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“clearly established law” should not be defined “at a high level 

of generality.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 742 (2011). As this 

Court explained decades ago, the clearly established law must be 

“particularized” to the facts of the case. Anderson v. Creighton, 

483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987). Otherwise, “[p]laintiffs would be able to 

convert the rule of qualified immunity ... into a rule of virtually 

unqualified liability simply by alleging violation of extremely 

abstract rights.” Id., at 639.

White v. Pauly, No. 16–67 (U.S. Jan. 9, 2017), slip op. 7. Federal courts have not particularized the sort of right Brown asserts, so the defendants are entitled to immunity from liability in damages.

But wait!, Brown cries. Even if it is not clearly established 

that the Constitution requires immediate release of sex offenders who lack lawful living plans, it must be clearly established that inmates who have such plans are entitled to 

their freedom. Perhaps so, but Brown has not shown either 

that he had lawful living plans or that he had consented to 

electronic monitoring. His complaint does not contain such 

an allegation; he did not proffer an affidavit to that effect; his 

brief does not ask for an opportunity to prove it. Instead of 

contending that he had consented to monitoring and had a 

lawful place to live, Brown insists that the Prison Review 

Board must have found those matters in his favor.

There are two problems. First, the Board did not say any 

such thing. All it said is that Brown had not violated the 

conditions of his release. We take this as restating the Board’s 

oft-expressed view that the Department of Corrections 

should follow a release-and-revoke model, rather than retaining custody of prisoners during their supervised-release 

periods. If the Board meant something different (or something extra) in Brown’s case, it did not say so.

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Second, no rule of federal law requires every state official 

to accept, without question, any determination made by 

some other state official. Whether the Board’s decision binds 

the Department of Corrections is a matter of state rather than 

federal law. Cf. Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005). 

Perhaps 20 Ill. Admin. Code §1610.110(a) is invalid as a matter of Illinois law. Brown could have pursued such a theory 

in state court. But 42 U.S.C. §1983 does not authorize federal 

courts to order state officials to pay damages for violations 

of state law; remedies in §1983 suits are for violations of federal law only.

Brown has a further claim for relief that is unrelated to 

his status as a sex offender. He contends that state employees violated the Eighth Amendment by withholding care for 

a serious medical condition. See generally Petties v. Carter, 

836 F.3d 722 (7th Cir. 2016) (en banc) (standards for medicalcare claims under the Eighth Amendment). There’s no doubt 

that he has grave coronary problems; there is also no doubt 

that he has received intensive care for them. He had a heart 

attack in March 2007 and was sent to a hospital. A recurrence 

in April led to another trip to the hospital, followed by a 

transfer to a university health center for triple bypass surgery. Another heart attack in April 2008 led to his return to 

the university’s health center for placement of a stent, and he 

had received a second stent in May 2010 to relieve a coronary blockage. Since his release from prison in January 2011, 

he has had two additional stents inserted to deal with 

blocked arteries.

In this court, Brown contests two aspects of his medical 

care: a delay between July 2009 and May 2010 in returning 

him to the university center for diagnosis and treatment, and 

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No. 14-2480 7

a six-week period in May and June 2010 that he spent in the 

prison’s general population rather than its health-care unit. 

He wants to recover damages from Nedra Chandler, who 

was the Warden of Dixon Correctional Center in 2009 and 

2010. He does not seek damages from anyone else, such as 

the prison physician who determined that Brown did not 

need hospital care between July 2009 and May 2010.

Brown does not contend that Chandler had anything to 

do with the timing of his visits to the university health center, so she cannot be liable. Public officials are accountable 

for their own conduct, but they are not vicariously liable for 

the acts of their subordinates. See, e.g., Iqbal v. Ashcroft, 556 

U.S. 662, 677 (2009); Vance v. Rumsfeld, 701 F.3d 193, 203–05 

(7th Cir. 2012) (en banc). Brown alleges that in March 2007 

Chandler called him a faker and that this supports an inference that she was responsible for keeping him away from the 

hospital between July 2009 and May 2010. That’s a nonsequitur. The comment that Brown attributed to Chandler 

occurred before his repeated hospitalizations for heart problems. By the middle of 2009, after Brown had triple-bypass 

surgery and yet another heart attack following that surgery, 

no one could have doubted that his condition was real. No 

reasonable trier of fact could conclude that something Chandler may have said in March 2007 controlled medical decisions that the prison’s physicians made in 2009 or 2010.

Brown maintains that Chandler personally made the decision to house him in the general population during May 

and June 2010, so she could be liable under the standards of

Petties. This aspect of Brown’s claim fails because he has not 

shown harm. Indeed, he has not even alleged harm. He says 

that he would have been more comfortable in the health-care

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unit and could have received faster treatment if he had another heart attack, but he does not allege that heart problems

did recur during those six weeks. The Eighth Amendment 

prevents prison personnel from being deliberately indifferent to serious medical needs, see Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 

825 (1994), but it does not oblige those officials to maximize 

the comfort of inmates who have medical challenges such as 

heart disease.

AFFIRMED

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