[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-10771

Non-Argument Calendar

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COLEMAN WARNOCK, 

Petitioner-Appellant,

versus

WARDEN, FCI RAY BROOK, 

Respondent-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

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22-10771 Opinion of the Court 2

D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-03002-AT

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Before JORDAN, BRANCH, and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Coleman Warnock, a federal prisoner proceeding pro se, 

appeals from the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2241 

petition, which challenged a prison disciplinary proceeding that 

resulted in his loss of good-time credit. Because, however, the 

record in this case does not provide us with an opportunity to 

meaningfully review the issues on appeal, we vacate and remand 

for the district court to develop the record more fully. 

I. 

The relevant background is this. Warnock is serving a 180-

month sentence for conspiracy to possess with intent to 

manufacture and distribute phencyclidine in violation of 21 U.S.C. 

§§ 846, 841(a)(1), and 841(c)(2). On December 12, 2020, Officer M. 

Pierce accused Warnock of possessing a cellphone in violation of 

prison rules and initiated disciplinary proceedings. Warnock’s 

hearing notice listed his charges as: “possessing a hazardous 

tool/refusing to obey an order,” corresponding to prison code 

violation numbers 108 and 307, respectively. An incident report 

described the conduct giving rise to Warnock’s charges, including 

what the officer saw Warnock do and how Warnock responded to 

his orders. At the hearing, the Discipline Hearing Officer (“DHO”) 

found insufficient evidence that Warnock had possessed a 

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cellphone on December 12 in violation of code number 108. 

Instead, the DHO found that Warnock had committed the 

prohibited acts of “Destroying and/or disposing of any item during 

a search, code 115” and “Refusing to obey an order of any staff 

member, code 307.” The DHO sanctioned him with, among other 

things, the loss of 54 days of good-time credit. 

Warnock brought the instant suit under § 2241 to challenge 

the DHO’s decision. Relevant here, Warnock argued that: (1) he 

tried to exhaust his administrative remedies after the hearing, but 

prison officials conspired to prevent him from meeting the 

necessary deadlines to do so; (2) he did not receive adequate notice 

of the hearing and the charges against him because, as he told 

officials at the time, he was not given the incident report 24 hours 

before the hearing; (3) he was improperly denied the services of a 

staff representative at the hearing, which he needed to help him 

present potentially exculpatory security camera footage; and (4) no 

evidence at the hearing indicated that he had destroyed an item 

during a search or disobeyed an order, especially since the DHO 

found insufficient evidence that he had wrongfully possessed a 

cellphone, it made no sense to punish him for destroying a phone 

he never had, and he was not charged with destroying an item 

during a search. 

A magistrate judge issued a Report and Recommendation 

(“R&R”) determining that Warnock had failed to exhaust his 

administrative remedies and that his claims also failed on the 

merits. After Warnock lodged objections to the R&R, the district 

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court issued an order disposing of the case. The court first found 

that Warnock had made a “colorable argument” that he made a 

diligent effort to exhaust his administrative remedies but still failed 

to do so, through no fault of his own. Nevertheless, the court went 

on to hold that Warnock’s DHO hearing was constitutionally 

adequate. It found that Warnock was given sufficient notice of the 

hearing, even if he did not receive a copy of the incident report, 

when he received a hearing notice and a notice of inmate rights 

before the hearing. The district court also found that, assuming 

Warnock had requested a staff representative for the hearing, he 

was not entitled to one because he was not illiterate and the issues 

were not particularly complex; however, the district court did not 

address whether he was entitled to a representative to help with 

the video surveillance footage. Finally, it found that Officer 

Pierce’s report that he saw Warnock with a cellphone, which the 

DHO deemed more credible than Warnock’s statements, 

established “some evidence” of the code violations for which he 

was sanctioned. 

This timely appeal follows.

II. 

Challenges to the execution of a sentence, rather than the 

validity of the sentence itself, are properly brought under § 2241. 

Antonelli v. Warden, 542 F.3d 1348, 1352 (11th Cir. 2008). This 

includes relief from sanctions received as a result of prison 

disciplinary proceedings. See Santiago-Lugo v. Warden, 785 F.3d 

467, 469, 475–76 (11th Cir. 2015). When reviewing the denial of a 

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§ 2241 habeas petition, we review de novo questions of law and for 

clear error factual findings. Andrews v. Warden, 958 F.3d 1072, 

1076 (11th Cir. 2020). We review de novo whether relief is 

available under § 2241. Dohrmann v. United States, 442 F.3d 1279, 

1280 (11th Cir. 2006). 

This Court has long held that the district court should give

a sufficient explanation of its rulings so as to allow us an 

opportunity to engage in meaningful appellate review. See Danley 

v. Allen, 480 F.3d 1090, 1091 (11th Cir. 2007); see also Clay v. 

Equifax, Inc., 762 F.2d 952, 957–58 (11th Cir. 1985) (collecting cases 

“urg[ing] the district court to state the reason for its decision and 

the underlying predicate”). In doing so, we’ve stressed that it is the 

“responsibility of the district court in the first instance” to review 

the record and the applicable caselaw. Danley, 480 F.3d at 1092. 

Moreover, we’ve vacated for additional reasoning when the district 

court did not make necessary factual findings or explain its legal 

conclusions. See, e.g., id.; In re Ford Motor Co., 345 F.3d 1315, 

1317 (11th Cir. 2003).

III. 

The Due Process Clause demands that an individual receive

due process of law before being deprived of a protected liberty 

interest. Whitehorn v. Harrelson, 758 F.2d 1416, 1420 (11th Cir. 

1985). In the prison context, the Supreme Court has held that 

inmates have a liberty interest in good-time credit, and due process 

requires that a prisoner receive these protections before his goodtime credit is revoked: (1) 24 hours’ written notice before a 

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disciplinary hearing; (2) the opportunity, consistent with 

institutional safety goals, to call witnesses and present evidence in 

his defense; (3) help from a fellow inmate or the prison staff, if the 

inmate is illiterate or if the issue is sufficiently complex; and (4) a 

written statement by the factfinders as to the evidence relied on 

and reasons for the disciplinary action. Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 

U.S. 539, 564–66, 570 (1974). In elaborating on the function of the 

notice requirement, the Supreme Court has explained that it is to 

“give the charged party a chance to marshal the facts in his defense 

and to clarify what the charges are, in fact.” Id. at 564. On this 

basis, the Court in Wolff struck the oral notice procedures that had 

been used by the Nebraska prison system, in part, because in some 

instances, the inmate “first receive[d] notice of the actual charges 

at the time of the hearing.” Id. 

Applying Wolff, we’ve held that the Due Process Clause 

entitles inmates to notice not only of the disciplinary charges 

themselves and the dates of the alleged offenses, but also to notice 

of the facts necessary to defend against the charges. See DeanMitchell v. Reese, 837 F.3d 1107, 1112, 1113 n.5 (11th Cir. 2016). In 

Dean-Mitchell, we rejected a warden’s arguments that an inmate 

had sufficient information about the charges against him based on 

a hearing notice -- which identified “only the alleged violations 

(‘Refusing an order of a staff member/Threating another with 

bodily harm’) and the date of the offenses,” and lacked any “factual 

information regarding the incident” -- where it was disputed 

whether he received the incident report. Id.

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Since Wolff, the Supreme Court has held that the Due 

Process Clause requires that the record of a disciplinary hearing 

need only contain “some evidence” supporting the hearing 

decision, since the “fundamental fairness guaranteed by the Due 

Process Clause does not require courts to set aside decisions of 

prison administrators that have some basis in fact.” Superintendent

v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 447, 456 (1985). Determining whether there 

is “some evidence” in the record to support a disciplinary charge 

does not “require examination of the entire record, independent 

assessment of the credibility of witnesses, or weighing of the 

evidence,” but merely assessment of whether there is “any 

evidence in the record that could support the conclusion reached 

by the disciplinary board.” O’Bryant v. Finch, 637 F.3d 1207, 1213 

(11th Cir. 2011) (quoting Hill, 472 U.S. at 454–56). 

Here, Warnock has raised several due process claims arising 

out of his prison disciplinary proceedings, but on the record before 

us, we are unable to conduct meaningful appellate review of these

issues. See Clay, 762 F.2d at 957–58; Danley, 480 F.3d at 1092. As 

we see it, Warnock’s claims all seem to stem from an issue that has 

not yet been developed in the record -- that is, how he was

sanctioned at his disciplinary hearing for a code violation that he 

was not charged with. 

According to the hearing notice found in the record, initially 

Warnock was charged with “possessing a hazardous tool/refusing 

to obey an order,” pertaining to prison code violation numbers 108 

and 307, respectively. However, at the hearing, the DHO made a 

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written finding, without elaborating, that the officer’s statement in 

the incident report that Warnock had possessed a cellphone on 

December 12 “did not adequately support the code 108, Possession 

of a Hazardous Tool.” Consequently, the DHO dismissed “[t]he 

code 108.” The DHO found instead that Warnock had “committed 

the prohibited act[s] of Destroying and/or disposing of any item 

during a search, code 115, and Refusing to obey an order of any 

staff member, code 307.” The DHO then noted that Warnock was 

sanctioned with 40 days’ loss of good-time credit based on code 

violation 115 and 14 days’ loss of good-time credit based on code 

violation 307. 

From this limited information, we glean that the DHO 

found that Warnock had destroyed something during the incident 

in question, but we do not know what, nor whether that matters. 

It also appears that Warnock faced a new charge (code violation 

115) at some point during the proceedings, but we do not know 

when it was added, when he received notice of it, or how the 

change may have shaped his defense at the hearing. Further, the 

DHO’s notations suggest that the different charges carried different 

sanctions, but, again, we do not know how the sanctions for his 

original charges varied from the sanctions he actually received. 

In short, the record does not appear to contain important 

information that would shed light on critical aspects of Warnock’s 

proceedings. Without more, we cannot determine how 

Warnock’s due process rights were affected, if at all. We, therefore, 

remand for the district court to develop the record more fully on 

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this issue and any other issues that might inform its due process 

analysis. See Danley, 480 F.3d at 1092; In re Ford Motor Co., 345 

F.3d at 1317. We note, moreover, that the district court did not

resolve whether Warnock satisfied the exhaustion requirement

before bringing suit, and leave it to the district court to determine 

on remand whether it should do so, in addition to or instead of 

considering the merits. See Santiago-Lugo, 785 F.3d at 475 

(recognizing that while a prisoner must exhaust his administrative 

remedies before seeking relief under § 2241, the district court may

skip the issue if it is easier to deny a petition on the merits).1

VACATED AND REMANDED.

1 On remand, however, the district court need not address Warnock’s claim 

that the BOP’s intentional interference with his administrative proceedings 

constituted an independent violation of his constitutional rights. For one 

thing, this claim is not cognizable under § 2241; it should be brought under § 

1983. See Antonelli, 542 F.3d at 1352 (holding that a § 2241 petition challenges 

the execution of a sentence). Moreover, we are unaware of any precedent 

holding that due process entitles a prisoner to an administrative appeal process 

to challenge disciplinary sanctions. See Bingham v. Thomas, 654 F.3d 1171, 

1177 (11th Cir. 2011) (rejecting an inmate’s due process claim based on the 

BOP’s failure to enforce regulations creating prison grievance procedures, 

since “an inmate has no constitutionally-protected liberty interest in access” to 

those procedures); Doe v. Moore, 410 F.3d 1337, 1350 (11th Cir. 2005) (“Statecreated procedural rights that do not guarantee a particular substantive 

outcome are not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, even where such 

procedural rights are mandatory.”) (quotations omitted).

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