[ DO NOT PUBLISH] 

## In the 

# United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________
No. 22

- 10771
Non

- Argument Calendar

____________________
COLEMAN WARNOCK,
Petitioner

- Appellant,

v

ersus

WARDEN, FCI RAY BROOK,

Respondent

- Appellee.

____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 1 of 922

- 10771 Opinion of the Court 2

D.C. Docket No. 1:21

- cv

- 03002

- AT

____________________ Before J ORDAN , B RANCH , and M ARCUS , 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 challeng ed a prison disciplinary proceeding that resulted in his loss of good

- time credit. Because, h owever, 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 D ecember 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 charge s as: “possessing a hazardous tool/refusing to obey an order
, ” cor responding to prison code violation numbers 108 and 307, respectively. An incident report descri bed 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 USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 2 of 922

- 10771 Opinion of the Court 3 cellphone on December 12 in viol ation of code number 108

. Instead, t he DHO found that Warnock had committed the prohibited acts of “ D estroying and/or disposing of any item during a search , code 115 ” and “ R efusing to obey an order of any staff member , code 307. ” The DHO sanctioned him w ith, among other things , the loss of 54 days of good

- time credit.
Warnock brought the instant suit under § 2241 to challenge th e DHO’s decision. Relevant here, Warnock argu ed that: (1) he tried to exhaust his administrative remedies after the hearing, b ut 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 h e 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 d estroying a phone he never had , and he was not charged wit h destr oying 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 USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 3 of 922

- 10771 Opinion of the Court 4

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 , t he 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 becau se 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, rat her 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 USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 4 of 922

- 10771 Opinion of the Court 5 § 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 opport unity to engage in meaningful appellate review. See Danley v. Allen , 480 F.3d 1090, 109 1 (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, w e’ve vacated for additional reasoning when the district

court did not make necessary factual findings or explain its legal conclusion s

. See , e.g., id.; In re Ford Motor Co. , 345 F.3d 1315, 1317 (11th Cir. 2003).
III.
T he Due Proce ss Clause demands that an i ndividual receive due process of law before being deprived of a protected liberty interest. Whitehorn v. Harrelson , 7 58 F.2d 1416, 14 20 (11th Cir. 1985). In the prison context, the Supreme Court has held that in mates have a lib erty interest in good

- time credit, and due process requires that a prisoner receive these protections before his good

time credit is revoked: (1) 24 hours’ written notice before a USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 5 of 922

- 10771 Opinion of the Court 6 disciplinary hearing; (2) the opportunity, consistent with institutional saf ety 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 reli ed on and reasons for the disciplinary action. Wolff v. McDonnell , 418 U.S. 539, 564

– 66, 570 (1974). In elaborat ing on the function of the notice requirement , t he Supreme Court has explain ed 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 themselve s and the dates of the alleged offenses , but also to notice of the facts necessary to defend against the charges. See Dean

Mitchell v. Reese , 837 F.3d 1107, 1112, 1113 n.5 (11th Cir. 2016). I n 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 identifie d “ 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. USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 6 of 922

- 10771 Opinion of the Court 7

Since Wolff , the Supreme Court has held that the Due Process Clause requires that the record of a disciplinary hearing need only conta in “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,” bu t 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 raise d several due process c laims a rising out of his prison disciplinary proceeding s , but on the record before us, we are unable to conduct meaningful appellate review of the se 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 n ot charged with

. According to the hearing notice f ound in the record, initially Warnock was charged with “possessing a hazardous tool/refusing to obey an order
, ” pertain ing to prison code violation numbers 108 and 307, respectively . However, at the hearing
, the DHO made a USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 7 of 922

- 10771 Opinion of the Court 8 written finding, with out 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 fo und i nstead that Warnock had “ committed the prohibited act [ s ] of D estroying and/or disposing of any item during a search , code 115, and R efusing 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 w e 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 th at th e 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 f or the district court to develop the record more fully on USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 8 of 922

- 10771 Opinion of the Court 9

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 exhaust ion 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 consider ing the merits. See Santiago

- Lugo , 785 F.3d at 47 5 ( recognizing that while a prisoner must exhaust his administrative remedies before seeking relief under § 2241 , the district court ma y skip the issue if it is easier to d eny a petition on the merit s ). 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 cha llenges 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 , 4 10 F.3d 1337, 1350 (11th Cir. 2005) (“State

created 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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