Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-96-07187/USCOURTS-caDC-96-07187-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
District of Columbia
Appellee
John Lattimore
Appellee
James H. Neal
Appellant

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 9, 1997 Decided December 16, 1997 

No. 96-7187

JAMES H. NEAL,

APPELLANT

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND 

JOHN LATTIMORE,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 94cv01528)

Daniel M. Schember argued the causes and filed the briefs 

for appellant. Alake Johnson-Ford entered an appearance.

Mary L. Wilson, Assistant Corporation Counsel, argued 

the cause for the District of Columbia, with whom Jo Anne 

Robinson, Interim Corporation Counsel at the time the brief 

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was filed, and Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corporation Counsel, were on the brief.

Jonathan J. Frankel argued the cause for amicus curiae

American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area, 

with whom Stephen H. Sachs and Arthur B. Spitzer were on 

the brief.

Before: WALD, HENDERSON and GARLAND, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALD.

WALD, Circuit Judge: This is a companion case to Brown v. 

Plaut, No. 96-7027 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 16, 1997). Because our 

opinion in Brown addresses many of the same issues raised in 

this case, we will make frequent reference to that opinion.

Plaintiff James H. Neal ("Neal") was an inmate at the 

District of Columbia's (the "District's") prison at Lorton 

during all times relevant to this action. He seeks to recover 

damages from the District for holding him against his wishes 

and without due process in "voluntary protective custody," a 

regime of specially restricted custody for prisoners whose 

personal safety is in danger, for a period of six months. The 

district court dismissed Neal's action for reasons which we 

find are not persuasive; the District argues nonetheless this 

dismissal should be affirmed. We find that, under the analysis mandated by Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472 (1995), Neal 

had no liberty interest in remaining free of the special 

conditions of detention imposed upon him, and therefore 

affirm the dismissal.

I. BACKGROUND

Neal was convicted in 1987 in D.C. Superior Court of a 

number of offenses, including multiple counts of robbery, and 

sentenced to 49 to 147 years' imprisonment. He was initially 

placed at Lorton, then transferred to the federal prison in 

Leavenworth, Kansas, and later transferred back to Lorton in 

March 1992. The federal Bureau of Prisons transfer forms 

stated that Neal had a significant history of violence (he had 

allegedly tried to choke a prison guard) and that he should be 

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considered an escape risk based on the length of his sentence. 

Accordingly, Neal was placed at Lorton's Maximum Security 

Facility, a decision that Neal says in a declaration filed in this 

action that he did not oppose. On March 31, 1992, at his 

initial hearing for housing classification at the Maximum 

Security Facility, Neal asked to be placed in voluntary protective custody to allow him to "become acquainted with the 

conditions and routine" at the facility. Prison officials 

obliged, and placed him in voluntary protective custody in 

Cellblock 1 of the Maximum Security Facility.

Voluntary protective custody is one species of administrative segregation; the other major category is involuntary 

protective custody, which is reserved for prisoners who present an escape risk or who pose a danger to themselves or 

others. D.C. Mun. Regs. tit. 28, §§ 521.4, 521.10, 521.11 

(1987).1 Prison regulations require that all placements in 

administrative segregation be reviewed every thirty days. 

Id., § 527.1. Neal was scheduled for a review of his housing 

placement on April 30. When that review did not occur, and 

no other review was scheduled, he submitted written requests 

for a review in October and November 1992. On December 

1, 1992, he submitted a written request for "placement in 

general population." On March 24, 1993, the Classification 

Board, charged with reviewing prisoners' custody levels, recommended that Neal be moved to medium security custody, 

but, for reasons unknown, this recommendation was never 

implemented. Neal wrote letters on March 29 and April 11, 

1993, complaining that he had not received appropriate reviews of his placement in protective custody, and asserting 

that he wished to be moved to the general population at the 

Maximum Security Facility. On June 21, 1993, Neal was 

stabbed, and removed from the prison to an outside hospital. 

On his return to the prison, Neal voluntarily entered protective custody for a time, and then was returned to the general 

population of the Maximum Security Facility.

Neal filed a pro se complaint on July 14, 1994, claiming that 

the District's failure to release him from protective custody 

__________

1 Administrative segregation may also be used to hold an inmate 

prior to a housing hearing or adjustment hearing. Id., § 521.2.

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for six months violated the Due Process Clause and the D.C. 

regulations. (These regulations are referred to by the parties 

by the name of the statute approving them, the Lorton 

Regulations Approval Act ("LRAA").) The District filed a 

motion to dismiss or in the alternative for summary judgment 

on a number of grounds, one of which was that the LRAA did 

not create a private right of action. The district court denied 

the motion on all counts. It noted, however, that the question 

of whether the LRAA created a private right of action was a 

complex one, and requested further briefing.

While Neal's case was pending, the Supreme Court decided 

Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472 (1995), finding that state laws 

and regulations governing prisons may only create a liberty 

interest for due process purposes if the alleged deprivation 

constitutes "atypical and significant hardship." Id. at 484. 

The parties filed supplemental pleadings as to Sandin's application to Neal's case, and the district court found that, on the 

basis of a comparison between conditions in protective custody and those in the general population at the Maximum 

Security Facility, the conditions Neal had experienced in 

protective custody did amount to an atypical and significant 

hardship.

The district court then issued a memorandum deciding the 

LRAA question. It concluded that the question of whether 

the LRAA gives rise to a private cause of action was "complex" and that no court to date had awarded damages based 

on an LRAA violation. The district court stated that Neal 

had conceded that, absent the LRAA, he would not be able to 

bring a section 1983 action. It then found that comity 

dictated that the District of Columbia's courts be allowed to 

decide whether the LRAA creates a private right of action in 

the first instance, and dismissed Neal's entire suit. See Neal 

v. District of Columbia, 931 F. Supp. 16, 17 (D.D.C. 1996). 

Neal appeals from this order.

II. ANALYSIS 

On appeal, the District presents a number of arguments for 

affirming the district court's decision to dismiss Neal's section 

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1983 action. The most serious is that, under Sandin, 515 

U.S. 472 (1995), Neal did not have a liberty interest in 

avoiding his placement in administrative segregation. Because we agree with this one, we do not reach the others.

Before addressing Sandin, however, we briefly discuss the 

reasons given by the district court for its decision. The 

district court mistakenly assumed that, if a state law does not 

create a private cause of action, then it cannot support an 

action under section 1983. But to bring an action under 

section 1983 for a violation of the Due Process Clause, Neal 

need only establish that he has been deprived of a protected 

interest (here, a liberty interest) without due process. Under 

the law as it stood before Sandin was decided, Neal could 

have demonstrated this by showing that the relevant state 

laws and regulations sufficiently constrained the discretion of 

state officials to establish the existence of a liberty interest. 

See Brown, slip op. at 9. Since Sandin, Neal must show that 

he has been subjected to an "atypical and significant hardship 

... in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life." 

Sandin, 515 U.S. at 484.2 At neither time, however, did the 

test for the existence of a liberty interest turn on whether the 

relevant state laws create a private cause of action.

We now turn to Sandin. In the companion Brown case, we 

concluded that the application of Sandin raised difficult questions which we thought it unnecessary to answer. In this 

case, we need not reach those questions, as Neal cannot 

establish the existence of a liberty interest under any plausible reading of Sandin.

Neal avers that he involuntarily spent six months in "voluntary" protective custody, beginning at the point he asked in 

writing on December 1, 1992, to leave voluntary protective 

custody, and ending when he left the administrative segrega-

__________

2 As we note in Brown, after Sandin Neal might still need also to 

show that relevant state laws and regulations contain language 

constraining the discretion of state officials. See Brown, slip op. at 

12.

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tion unit on June 21, 1993, for the hospital.3In Cellblock 1, 

where Neal was held during that period, he was allowed to 

leave his cell for nine hours a day three days a week, for six 

and a half hours (or longer if he had a visitor) for two days a 

week, and for five and six hours respectively on the remaining 

two days. He was allowed a total of eight hours a week 

outdoors, in a small courtyard. He did not have easy access 

to the gym, mailroom, law library, or medical unit (although 

other arrangements were made for provision of these services), and he could not work at a prison job.

Neal contends that the appropriate standard for determining whether the deprivation he suffered was "atypical and 

significant" is to compare his circumstances to those of the 

general prison population from which he was removed. Cf. 

Brown, slip op. at 10-12. Even by that standard, however, 

Neal fails to meet the Sandin test. Had he remained a part 

of the general population at the Maximum Security Facility, 

Neal would have received at least 141/2 hours a day of out-ofcell time, and 171/2 hours on Fridays and Saturdays. He 

would have been allowed 14 hours a week outdoors, some 22 

hours a week of work, and easy access to the gym, mailroom, 

law library, and medical unit. His placement in administrative segregation thus cost him approximately half of his outof-cell time, eliminated his access to employment, and restricted his access to prison facilities, all over a six-month 

period. This deprivation is comparable to that at issue in 

Sandin; although the deprivation in Sandin lasted only 

thirty days, it was considerably more severe, involving (for 

instance) a reduction from between eight and twelve hours a 

day of out-of-cell time to fifty minutes. Sandin, 515 U.S. at 

__________

3 The LRAA states that a prisoner in voluntary protective custody who makes a written request to leave that status "shall be 

released at once from protective custody." D.C. Mun. Regs. tit. 28, 

§ 521.12 (1987). The LRAA permits an inmate who asks to leave 

voluntary protective custody to be placed instead in involuntary 

protective custody if findings are made that the inmate is a danger 

to himself or others or presents an escape risk. See id., §§ 521.4, 

521.12. The District does not contend that any such findings were 

made.

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486 & n.8. It follows that, even under the reading of Sandin

he himself proposes, Neal had no liberty interest in avoiding 

his treatment at the hands of Lorton's authorities, and so has 

no claim under the Due Process Clause. We therefore affirm 

the dismissal of Neal's due process claim.4

There remains Neal's claim under the LRAA. Although it 

is unclear on what basis the district court originally dismissed 

this claim, Neal concedes that, if the district court's dismissal 

of his section 1983 claim was proper, it would also have been 

proper for the district court to dismiss his claim under D.C. 

law for lack of jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3).5 We 

thus affirm the district court's dismissal of this claim.

The decision of the district court is therefore affirmed.

So ordered.

__________

4 Although we find that the District's alleged treatment of Neal 

does not rise to the level of a violation of the Constitution, that does 

not mean that we endorse it. We do not know from the record 

whether the District had any valid reason for keeping Neal for six 

months in "voluntary" protective custody against his will, and why it 

denied him any process at all.

5 Neal may, of course, pursue his LRAA claim in the courts of the 

District of Columbia. Dismissals for lack of supplemental jurisdiction are without prejudice, and the limitations period for a claim 

dismissed for this reason is tolled "while the claim is pending and 

for a period of 30 days after it is dismissed unless State law 

provides for a longer tolling period." 28 U.S.C. § 1367(d).

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