Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-24-02120/USCOURTS-ca7-24-02120-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Monwell Douglas
Appellant
Donald Emerson
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted December 2, 2024*

Decided December 3, 2024 

Before

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

NANCY L. MALDONADO, Circuit Judge

No. 24-2120 

MONWELL DOUGLAS,

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v. 

DONALD EMERSON,

Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of 

Indiana, Indianapolis Division. 

No. 1:23-cv-01426-JMS-MKK

Jane Magnus-Stinson, 

Judge.

* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. APP. P. 32.1

Case: 24-2120 Document: 14 Filed: 12/03/2024 Pages: 4
No. 24-2120 Page 2 

O R D E R

Monwell Douglas, a prisoner formerly incarcerated at the Plainfield Correctional 

Facility1, lost good-time credit when a prison disciplinary board found him guilty of 

possessing a cell phone. He petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2254, arguing that the proceedings violated his constitutional right to due process. The 

district court denied the petition because “some evidence” supported the board’s 

conclusion and Douglas was not entitled to have new evidence considered on appeal. 

We affirm. 

Douglas was written up in a conduct report for using a cell phone in a bathroom 

stall. He had been spotted by a Plainfield correctional officer performing a 

walkthrough. In the conduct report, the officer wrote that Douglas had been hiding 

“with the pretense of using the toilet,” and that Douglas, when approached, handed 

over the phone from the pocket of his “altered” gym shorts. 

In a screening report, Douglas pleaded not guilty to the charge, rejected 

assistance from a lay advocate, and requested that officers ask specific questions of two 

other prisoners present during the search, Lewis and Harris. Lewis was asked whether 

he was also being watched while using the latrine (he said he was not, but that he had 

been on other occasions). Harris was asked whether the search was “routine” (he said 

he did not know, but he did not think so because there were so many officers). Douglas 

also requested security video from the hallway outside the latrine. Because of security 

concerns, the prison did not allow Douglas to view the video. The board instead 

reviewed and summarized the video in writing, stating that it captured an officer as he 

peered through the window into the latrine, “appearing to notice something 

suspicious.” 

At the disciplinary hearing, the board found Douglas guilty based on the officer’s 

report. The board acknowledged Douglas’s testimony that the phone already was in the 

stall when he entered, as well as the submitted statements of Lewis and Harris, but 

credited the conduct report’s statement that Douglas was using the phone and that 

Douglas handed over the phone from a pocket in his altered shorts.2 Douglas received a 

1 Since filing his appeal, Douglas has been placed in a Community Transition 

Program.

2 Since the hearing, Douglas has repeatedly argued that the shorts were not his 

and that the phone was in the pocket of the shorts on the floor of the stall. This version, 

Case: 24-2120 Document: 14 Filed: 12/03/2024 Pages: 4
No. 24-2120 Page 3 

written reprimand, 30-day loss of privileges, 90-day loss of earned credit time, and a 

one-level demotion of credit class.

A week after he was found guilty, Douglas obtained an affidavit from a fellow 

prisoner named Joshua Sutton, who attested that the cell phone was his and that he had 

ditched it in the stall after an officer saw him through the window using it. Douglas 

attached Sutton’s affidavit to his appeal of the board’s decision. The facility head did 

not acknowledge the affidavit and affirmed the finding of guilt. Douglas then appealed 

this determination to the Appeal Review Officer, who again affirmed the board’s 

conclusion and noted that Sutton’s affidavit was new evidence that could not be 

considered on appeal. 

Douglas then petitioned under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, raising due process challenges to 

his disciplinary hearing. First, he alleged a due process violation based on the prison’s

failure to produce either the security video or the confiscated shorts. Second, Douglas 

alleged that the institution violated his due process rights by not ordering a rehearing 

after he submitted Sutton’s affidavit, which, he insisted, was exculpatory. 

The district court denied the petition. Regarding Douglas’s argument that he was 

denied the opportunity to present relevant evidence, the court explained that (1) it had

reviewed the video, which—as consistent with the board’s summary—was neither 

material nor exculpatory because it did not show the inside of the restroom; and (2) the 

absence of the shorts did not raise due process concerns because Douglas had not 

requested that they be presented at his hearing. See Piggie v. McBride, 277 F.3d 922, 925 

(7th Cir. 2002) (“We agree that if Piggie failed to ... request [a prison’s surveillance tape] 

either before or at the hearing, then the [board] could not have denied him due process 

by not considering the request.”). As for the sufficiency of the evidence, the district 

court determined that the officer’s conduct report satisfied the requirement that “some 

evidence” supports the board’s decision. See Superintendent, Mass. Correctional Institution 

at Walpole v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 455–56 (1985). With regard to Douglas’s argument that he 

was denied due process by not being allowed to have Sutton testify on rehearing, the 

court found Douglas’s request to be untimely, as Douglas did not seek to present 

evidence from Sutton until his administrative appeal. 

however, is inconsistent with Douglas’s account in his administrative appeal that he 

saw the phone on the floor and pushed it away, and that officers confiscated the shorts 

that he was wearing. 

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No. 24-2120 Page 4 

On appeal, Douglas maintains that Sutton’s affidavit was newly discovered, 

exculpatory, and warranted a rehearing. Due process, however, does not require 

consideration of evidence that could have been presented, but was not, at the original 

hearing. See Perry v. Sims, 990 F.3d 505, 512 (7th Cir. 2021) (citing McPherson v. McBride, 

188 F.3d 784, 786 (7th Cir. 1999)). In his appeal of the board’s decision to the facility

head, Douglas admitted knowing before the hearing that the phone belonged to Sutton, 

yet he took no steps to have Sutton questioned. Regardless, Douglas has not shown that 

Sutton’s affidavit was sufficiently exculpatory. Exculpatory evidence need be 

considered only to the extent that it undermines the reliability of the evidence relied 

upon by the institution. Scruggs v. Jordan, 485 F.3d 934, 941 (7th Cir. 2007). Even if we 

accept that the cell phone belonged to Sutton, there was “some evidence”—the 

correctional officer’s report that Douglas pulled the phone from a pocket of altered 

shorts—to support the board’s decision. Hill, 472 U.S. at 455–56. 

AFFIRMED

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