Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02574/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02574-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Timothy W. Austin
Appellant
Andrew Pazera
Appellee

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 14-2574 

TIMOTHY W. AUSTIN, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v.

ANDREW PAZERA, 

Respondent-Appellee. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division. 

No. 2:13-cv-00221-JTM — James T. Moody, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED JANUARY 20, 2015 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 19, 2015 

____________________ 

Before POSNER, KANNE, and SYKES, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff Austin, an inmate of an 

Indiana prison, was punished in a prison disciplinary proceeding for having attempted to traffic in tobacco, meaning 

attempting to carry tobacco or tobacco products into or outside the prison. His punishment consisted of losing 60 days 

of good-time credit (which increased his period of imprisonment by 60 days), being demoted from “credit class 1” to 

“credit class 2” (inmates in the first class earn one day of 

Case: 14-2574 Document: 18 Filed: 02/19/2015 Pages: 5
2 No. 14-2574 

good time credit for each day of imprisonment, inmates in 

the second class earn one day of credit for every two days of 

imprisonment), being given 20 hours of extra work duty, 

and being denied access to the prison commissary for 25 

days.

He petitioned for federal habeas corpus, see 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2254, on the ground that the disciplinary proceeding had 

denied him due process of law, primarily by convicting him 

on the basis of insufficient evidence. The respondent is the 

prison’s superintendent. The district court denied the petition, ruling that the evidence, though scanty, had been adequate to prove Austin’s “constructive possession” of tobacco. 

The entire evidence against him consisted of the following “conduct statement” submitted by a guard at the prison: 

On Feb 28, 13 at approx. 10.00 AM while I Ofc Spoon was 

shaking down the crawl spase [sic] at the Gary Parole Office, Gary, Ind. I Ofc Spoon found 5 packs of Bugler cigarette papers, 1 ziploc bag that appears to have tobacco in it, 

2 ziplock [sic] bags filled with more ziplock [sic] bags in it. 

Offender Austin, Timothy #20967 was assigned to this area 

(crawlspace) as his work assignment. 

Austin, though an inmate, had been assigned to work in 

the crawl space of a parole office near the prison, doing construction and renovation work, mainly removing tile, vinyl 

flooring, and carpet, and stripping wallpaper, baseboards, 

and trim. According to his uncontradicted testimony he 

worked only one day in the crawl space, and that was three 

or four days after he began working in the parole office, 

where he worked for at least four weeks. He also claimed in 

his prison disciplinary proceedings, again without contradicCase: 14-2574 Document: 18 Filed: 02/19/2015 Pages: 5
No. 14-2574 3 

tion in the record, that four other inmates had had access to 

the crawl space during the day he had worked there and all 

five had been in the crawl space that day cutting and removing pipes together. 

If it’s assumed that any of the five could have placed the 

tobacco in the crawl space, then, as we know nothing about 

the other four, we could conclude only that Austin had a 20 

percent probability of being the culprit. The district court 

deemed this sufficient evidence of his guilt to place the disciplinary sanctions imposed on him beyond judicial authority to reverse. Yet it seems odd, to say the least, that someone 

should be punished when there is an 80 percent probability 

that he is innocent. 

It’s true that in Hamilton v. O’Leary, 976 F.2d 341, 345 (7th 

Cir. 1992), we said that a 25 percent probability of guilt is 

enough to require courts to uphold a finding of guilt made 

in a prison disciplinary proceeding. But that was a much different case. Hamilton was one of four cellmates. Six weapons 

(mainly shanks) were found in their cell. All four cellmates 

were punished equally. Squeezed as they were into a single 

cell, it was beyond unlikely that any of them did not know 

about the weapons or have access to them to use if the occasion required. Since it was impossible to distinguish among 

innocent and guilty, and likely that all were guilty, the punishment of all was unavoidable—for the alternative would 

have been to acquit all. 

This case is different. As far as we can tell, the prison’s 

hearing officer was told nothing by prison personnel about 

the crawl space—how large it was, whether any effort to 

have concealed the tobacco and related items found there 

had been made, where such items might have come from, 

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and, most important, why no effort had been made by the 

prison authorities (so far as appears) to question the other 

four prisoners who worked in the crawl space. Austin appears to have been picked at random for punishment. 

As for the district court’s alternative ground—

constructive possession of the tobacco products—no evidence at all was presented. Constructive possession is control of an item (implying ready access and intended use actual or contingent) without physical possession. If Austin 

didn’t know there was contraband in the crawl space, he 

was not in constructive possession of the contraband. But 

even if he knew, if he had no interest in trafficking in tobacco and so would never become an actual possessor, he 

would not be guilty of constructive possession; for obviously 

a bystander who merely notices something is not in constructive possession of it. See United States v. Griffin, 684 F.3d 

691, 695 (7th Cir. 2012); United States v. Katz, 582 F.3d 749, 

752–54 (7th Cir. 2009); United States v. Bailey, 553 F.3d 940, 

947–49 (6th Cir. 2009); United States v. Cruz, 285 F.3d 692, 

697–700 (8th Cir. 2002); United States v. Brown, 3 F.3d 673, 684 

(3d Cir. 1993). Proximity is not possession. And to top it all, 

we don’t even know whether there were any tobacco products in the crawl space on the day Austin worked there.

Convicted without evidence of guilt, Austin was denied 

due process of law. The judgment is therefore reversed and 

the case remanded with directions to order the relief sought 

by him. For when the imposition of prison discipline is not 

supported by even “some evidence,” which we think the 

proper characterization of the scanty record in this case, the 

prisoner is entitled to a writ of habeas corpus commanding 

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No. 14-2574 5 

that the discipline be rescinded. Grandberry v. Smith, 754 F.3d 

425, 426 (7th Cir. 2014). 

REVERSED WITH INSTRUCTIONS. 

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