NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

    United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted November 4, 2010*

Decided November 24, 2010

Before

                          

RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge

      

No. 10‐2022

YUSEF L. WILLIAMS,

Plaintiff‐Appellant.

v.        

BRET MIERZEJEWSKI, Correctional

Officer, et al.,

Defendants‐Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 2:08‐cv‐00721‐CNC

Charles N. Clevert, Jr.,  

Chief Judge.

O R D E R

Yusef Williams, a Wisconsin state inmate, appeals from the grant of summary

judgment in his suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming that two prison officials violated his

First Amendment and due process rights by improperly intercepting his outgoing mail.  We

affirm.

 

*

After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral argument is

unnecessary.  Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and record.  See FED. R. APP. P.

34(a)(2)(C).
No. 10‐2022 Page 2

Williams is an inmate at the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.  Bret

Mierzejewski is a correctional officer at WCI, and Bruce Muraski is both a captain at WCI

and a certified gang specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.  Mierzejewski

and Muraski began monitoring Williams’s mail in July 2002 because they believed he had a

significant role in the Traveling Vice Lords gang.  On July 11, Mierzejewski examined a

letter that Williams wrote to a certain Wenelo Alizea and shared it with Muraski.  Muraski

stated in his affidavit that the letter contained the words “chief” and “deck,” terms used to

identify the leadership and geographic area of a gang.  Muraski believed that Williams was

directing Alizea to go to an area in Chicago controlled by the Traveling Vice Lords and

speak to one of the gang leaders.  The letter also mentioned the leaders of both the

Traveling Vice Lords and the Latin Kings, another major gang.     

Muraski and Mierzejewski stated by affidavit that they confiscated the letter because

they thought it would undermine Williams’s rehabilitation and prison security.  Muraski

explained that one goal of rehabilitation efforts at WCI is to encourage inmates to live a

crime‐free life when released from custody, and this requires disassociating from groups

frequently involved in criminal activity.  Muraski deemed the letter incompatible with

Williams’s rehabilitation because, he believed, it showed that Williams was trying to

connect Alizea with members of the Traveling Vice Lords.  He also thought that the letter

posed a potential security threat because its release could imply that WCI tolerated gang

activity and increase tension within the prison between Williams and other inmates not

associated with the Traveling Vice Lords.   

Mierzejewski issued a conduct report to Williams for engaging in disruptive

behavior by writing a letter with gang references.  Mierzejewski did not, however, give him

the standard Department of Corrections form that notifies prisoners of non‐delivery of mail.  

Department of Corrections Internal Management Procedures direct prison officials to give

prisoners a DOC‐243 notice when mail is not delivered.  See DOC 309 IMP 4(A)(4).  The

conduct report did, however, also inform Williams that the letter had been confiscated.  At

the disciplinary hearing that ensued, the hearing officer credited testimony given by

Mierzejewski and sanctioned Williams by placing him in segregation for 184 days, and

directing that the letter be disposed as contraband.   

In the meantime Williams filed an offender complaint concerning the seizure of his

letter and the failure to provide him with a notice of non‐delivery.  The complaint was

ultimately dismissed on grounds that the conduct report itself served as adequate notice of

the letter’s non‐delivery.  Having exhausted his administrative remedies, Williams filed this

§ 1983 suit.  He argued that (1) the letter’s confiscation and his failure to receive notice of

non‐delivery on the appropriate DOC form violated due process and (2) his placement in

segregation for the contents of his letter violated the First Amendment.   
No. 10‐2022 Page 3

The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on both claims.  

Regarding the lack of notice, the court acknowledged that Williams did not receive a DOC‐

243 form but concluded that the conduct report adequately notified him of the confiscation

and the reasons for it.  Williams, the court found, had ample opportunity to contest the

confiscation of his letter, and thus any challenge to the defendants’ failure to provide him

with the DOC‐243 form demanded “the type of ‘needless formality’ that cannot establish a

constitutional violation.”  As for Williams’s First Amendment claim, the court explained

that prisons can limit prisoner correspondence to further the substantial government

interest in rehabilitation.  The court noted the deference owed to the professional judgment

of prison administrators in assessing whether the message was related to gang activity and

concluded that Williams could not avoid summary judgment through his mere denial of

gang membership and his assertion that the letter contained only slang.   

On appeal, Williams maintains first that Muraski and Mierzejewski violated his right

to due process by failing to give him notice of non‐delivery.  He asserts without explanation

that the conduct report and the disciplinary hearing did not give him sufficient notice or

opportunity to challenge the interference with his outgoing mail.

The district court properly concluded that Williams received all the process that is

required.  Prison procedures themselves are not substantive liberty or property interests

that are protected by due process, see Shango v. Jurich, 681 F.2d 1091, 1100‐01 (7th Cir. 1982),

and a violation of state laws or regulations is not a basis for a federal civil rights suit, see

Guajardo‐Palma v. Martinson, No. 10‐1726, 2010 WL 3619782, at *5 (7th Cir. Sept. 20, 2010);

Domka v. Portage Cnty., Wis., 523 F.3d 776, 784 (7th Cir. 2008).  That Williams was not given

notice on the proper Department of Corrections form, in and of itself, does not violate due

process.

Williams next reasserts that his First Amendment rights were violated when the

prison seized his letter and placed him in segregation because of what he wrote.  He

maintains that he is not affiliated with a gang and that the letter contained no gang

references.  He further argues that the officers’ actions aimed to suppress expression rather

than advance any legitimate penological interest.   

The district court correctly determined that the prison’s confiscation of Williams’s

letter was a reasonable restriction on his First Amendment rights.  Prisoners have

constitutional rights, but prisons can limit these rights if the restriction is related to

legitimate penological interests.  See Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89 (1987); Lindell v. Frank,

377 F.3d 655, 657 (7th Cir. 2004).  Prison security and rehabilitation are legitimate

penological interests that justify reasonable restrictions on a prisoner’s outgoing

correspondence.  See Koutnik v. Brown, 456 F.3d 777, 781 (7th Cir. 2006).  We give

considerable deference to a prison official’s determination that a communication between a

prisoner and the outside world constitutes a security threat.  See Thornburg v. Abbott, 490
No. 10‐2022 Page 4

U.S. 401, 407‐408 (1989); Koutnik, 456 F.3d at 785.  Though the district court emphasized

rehabilitation as the justification for limiting Williams’s First Amendment rights, prison

security itself is a sufficient basis for having this type of letter confiscated as contraband.  

See Westefer v. Snyder, 422 F.3d 570, 575 (7th Cir. 2005).   

Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.