UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

________________ _________________ DARNELL LOVE PITTMAN, SR., Petitioner - Appellant,

v. CHRISTOPHER GOMEZ, Respondent - Appellee. No. 21-1114 (D.C. No. 1:19-CV-02221-STV) (D. Colo.)

________________ _________________ ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

________________ _________________ Before HARTZ , HOLMES , and McHUGH , Circuit Judges.

________________ _________________ Darnell Pittman appeals the denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2241 petition challenging the loss of good time credit due to pr ison disciplinary proceedings. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 12 91 and 2253(a), we affirm.
BACKGROUND During the events giving rise to this habeas petition, Pittman was an inmate at the Administrative Maximum Facility of the United States Peniten tiary in Florence,

* After examining the briefs and appella te record, this pa nel has determined unanimously that oral argument would not ma terially assist in the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctr ines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cite d, however, for its persuasi ve value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit 

### July 6, 2022 Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 12 Colorado. In 2018, prison officials served him with an incident report charging him with possession of a hazardous tool, a violation of prison rules.
See 28 C.F.R. § 541.3(a)-108. The hazardous tool at issue was a razor blade concealed in a macroeconomics textbook labe led “Property of Darnell Pittman” in black permanent marker. O fficer Megan Boze reported that she found the razor blade while searching Pittman’s cell. At the time of the s earch, prison officials had brought Pittman out of his cell for questioning regard ing an unrelated investigation. The Unit Disciplinary Committee (UDC) conducted a hearing at which Pittman denied the charge, stating: “This is false—bogus[.] My property was mishandled, and I do not own the book that is referen ced.” R. vol. 1 at 222. The UDC referred the matter to a Di sciplinary Hearing Officer (DHO) for further hearing. Pittman requested a staf f representative, Recr eation Specialist James Dahlquist, to assist him before the DHO. On his witness list, Pittman requested review of “[c]amera [f]ootage R&D.” Id. at 230. 1 Pittman’s witness list also included officers who found abandoned books in the unit containing Pittman’s cell, including three books (other than the macr oeconomics textbook) that an officer returned to Pittman around th e time Officer Boze discovered the razor blade. Pittman also gave a handwritten note to the UDC requesting “D-unit camera footage,” and “R&D camera footage.” Id. at 236. In subsequent correspondence, Pittman requested that Dahlquist “revie w[] certain camera footage.” Id. at 237. Pittman later

1 “R& D” refers to the Inmate Se rvices Unit at th e facility. Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 23 requested that Dahlquist “[o]btain access to review the ADX Security Surveillance Camera footage between July 6th–July 9th of 2018; [i]n relation to D-block Unit; C-block Unit, and the R&D Dep’t.” Id. at 238. The DHO held a disciplinary hearing over tw o days. On the first hearing date, the DHO continued the proceedings to give Da hlquist more time to attempt to fulfill Pittman’s requests. Meanwh ile, between the first and s econd hearing dates, the DHO emailed Officer Boze, writing: Hello. You authored this inci dent report, correct? If so, can please clarify something fo r me? The inmate alleges there were three books which were sitting on the floor outside of his cell on the da y he and his property were removed from the cell. He sa id you picked those three books up and “disappeared.” Do you happen to remember if . . .any of that information is accurate? Also, if so, do you remember what those thre e books were and what you did with those books? Were they placed back in his property before the search where you found the razor blade? Was one of those books the [m]acroeconomics book? Id. at 232. Officer Boze replied: Hello Ma’am, Yes Ma’am I did. The three books in the hallway belonged to the ADX library and Chap el[;] I placed those three books in the sallyport of th e unit for those respective departments to collect. Inmate Pittman had other institution books in his cell which belonged to those departments as well[;] I added th em to the firs t three. The [m]acroeconomics book which I discovered the razor blade concealed in the binder of wa s located inside of his cell underneath his legal material s, along with a few other personal books. Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 34 I discovered several home-made greeting cards when I searched and inventoried hi s property; the cards had precise cuts made in the pa per which could only be made with a very sharp cutting inst rument. Inmate Pittman had made threats to harm hims elf that morning. The [m]acroeconomics book set of f the metal detector, and I saw the razor blade inside of the book when we took his property to C-Unit to scan it through the x-ray machine as Inmate Pittman was placed on suicide watch. If you have any further questio ns[,] please feel free to contact me! Id. Ultimately, Dahlquist did not obtain, and the DHO did not review, any surveillance camer a footage. The DHO resumed the hearing, at which sh e expressly considered the incident report, the email exchange, photographs of the macroeconomics textbook and razor blade, and a seven-page, ha ndwritten document listing thir ty-one “Defensive Case Points” that Pittman submitted, id. at 42–48. In that document, Pittman stated camera footage “would show that the so-called ‘macroeconomics’ book was not removed out of my property on July 6–7; because I did not own said book, nor was said book taken out of my cell.” Id. at 45. He also stated the camera footage would show how officers handled the three other books they found outside of his cell. The DHO determined, by the greater weight of th e evidence, that P ittman was guilty of the disciplinary violation and imposed a sanction including the loss of 31 days of good time credit. Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 45 Pittman then filed a § 2241 application in the District of Colorado challenging the disciplinary conviction. 2 The parties consented to th e exercise of jurisdiction by a magistrate judge, who denied the applicat ion without a hearing. Pittman filed a notice of appeal in this court and a Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e) motion in the district court. We abated the appeal until th e district court addressed the Rule 59 motion. When the district court resolved the Rule 59 motion, Pittman’s no tice of appeal ripened. See Breeden v. ABF Freight Sys., Inc. , 115 F.3d 749, 752 ( 10th Cir. 1997).
DISCUSSION 3 “When reviewing the denial of a habeas petition unde r § 2241, we review the district court’s legal c onclusions de novo and accept its factual fi ndings unless clearly erroneous.” al-Marri v. Davis , 714 F.3d 1183, 1186 (10th Cir. 2013). “Prison disciplinary proceedings are not part of a criminal prosecution, and the full panoply of rights due a defendant in such pro ceedings does not apply.” Wolff v. McDonnell , 418 U.S. 539, 556 (1974). Nonethel ess, “[w]here a prison disciplinary hearing may result in the loss of good time credits, . . . the inmate must re ceive . . . an opportunity, when consistent with institutional safety a nd correctional goals, to call

2 The record is unclear whether Pittm an pursued any other administrative appeals, or if such appeals would have been available to him. The government, though, in its preliminary response to Pittm an’s habeas application, indicated it would not raise the defense of exhaus tion of administrati ve remedies.

3 Because Pittman “is a federal prisone r proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, . . . his appeal is not governed by the An titerrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, and thus no certificate of appealability is required.” Howard v. U.S. Bureau Of Prisons , 487 F.3d 808, 810 n.1 (10th Cir. 2007) (internal citation omitted). Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 56 witnesses and present documentary evidence in his defense.” Superintendent, Mass. Corr. Inst. v. Hill , 472 U.S. 445, 454 (1985). “In a ddition, the decision must be supported by some evidence.” Wilson v. Jones , 430 F.3d 1113, 1117 (10th Cir. 2005) (internal citation omitted). Determining whether prison disciplin ary proceedings satisfy the “some evidence” standard “does not require examination of the entire record, independent assessment of the credibility of witnesses, or weighing of the evidence. Instead, the relevant question is whether there is any ev idence in the record that could support the conclusion reached by th e disciplinary board.” Hill , 472 U.S. at 455–56. “The decision can be upheld even if the evid ence supporting the decision is meager.” Mitchell v. Maynard , 80 F.3d 1433, 1445 (10th Cir. 1996) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have no trouble concluding “some evidence” supports the imposition of discipline here. Prison offi cials charged Pittman with possession of contraband—a razor blade. Evidence supporting that ch arge included the incident report from Officer Boze, who found the razor blade in Pittman’s cell hidden in a textbook with Pittman’s name on it, as we ll as photographs of the te xtbook and razor blade. Pittman’s defense alluded to various scenar ios in which Officer Boze (or other prison officials) might have planted the razor, mixed up the textbook found inside his cell with other books found outside his cell, or otherwise mish andled his property in some way, but the DHO was not obligated to cr edit these conjectures over Officer Boze’s

account. Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 67 Pittman presents two challe nges to the disciplinary hear ing proceedings. First, he argues it was unreasonable for the DHO to render a decision without reviewing the video footage he requested. Second, he argues the DHO was not impartial because of her email exchange with Officer Boze before the hearing. We reject the first argumen t because, in substance, Pittman’s various requests to the DHO to review video evidence were so broad and wide ranging as to conflict with institutional safety and correctional goals. The DHO attested that “[Pittman’s] requests would have required [her] to review three cale ndar days of video from numerous locations in the ADX,” such that the requested review “would have taken so much time that it would ha ve prevented [her] from fulf illing [her] duties as a DHO in other cases.” R. vol. 1 at 429–30. To this end, Pittman’s reliance on Howard

— where we held a DHO violated an inmate’s due process rights by denying his request to review videotape from a single, identifi ed camera of a discrete incident (a prison fight), 487 F.3d at 813– 14—is misplaced. Pittman criticizes the dist rict court for crediting this aspect of the DHO’s attestation, noting she made it more than two years afte r the disciplinary hearing and arguing that “[t]he failure to review even some of the video indicates the DHO had no intention of viewing any of it, which demonstrates lack of good faith and lack of impartiality.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 16 n.6. But these criticism s are, at most, an invitation to reweigh the evidence before th e district court, which we cannot do when reviewing for clear error. See Anderson v. City of Bessemer City , 470 U.S. 564, Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 78 573–74 (1985) (“If the district court’s account of the eviden ce is plausible in light of the record viewed in its en tirety, the court of appeals may not reverse it even though convinced that had it been sitting as the trier of fact , it would have weighed the evidence differently.”). And, while Pitt man is correct about the timing of the attestation—the DHO did supplement her account of Pittman’s video request in her second declaration the government submitted in the § 2241 proceedings—he points to no inconsistencies between this account and any of he r earlier statements. We also reject Pittman’s second argum ent—that the DHO’s pre-hearing email communications with Officer Boze eviden ced improper bias. Although “[a]n impartial decisionmaker is a fundamental re quirement of due process that is fully applicable in the prison context,” Gwinn v. Awmiller , 354 F.3d 1211, 1220 (10th Cir. 2004) (interna l quotation marks omitted), “because honesty and integrity are presumed on the part of a tribunal, th ere must be some s ubstantial countervailing reason to conclude that a decisionmaker is actually biased with respect to factual issues being adjudicated,” id. Pittman offers no basis to conclude the neutrally phrased investigative questions the DHO po sed to Officer Boze over email evidence improper bias. Although such ex parte co mmunications are improper on the part of judges in criminal trials, see United States v. Carter , 973 F.2d 1509, 1515 (10th Cir. 1992) (c oncluding “Constitutional error oc curred” when trial judge answered juror questions outside the presen ce of defendant and c ounsel), these same constraints do not apply in pr ison disciplinary proceedings, see Wolff , 418 U.S. at
556. Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 89 Pittman’s argument that the emailed que stions were improper because they “should have been asked in the hearing itself, with Pittman presen t for them and able to cross-examine Officer Boze on her an swers,” Aplt. Openin g Br. at 28, is particularly misplaced in the prison discip linary hearing context where, unlike in criminal trials, the accused has no inherent due pr ocess right to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses. See Howard , 487 F.3d at 812–13. Pittman therefore did not set fort h a “substantial countervaili ng reason” to overcome the presumption of honesty and integrity on the part of the DHO and so did not establish a due process violation in his disciplinary proceedings. See Gwinn , 354 F.3d at 1220.
CONCLUSION We affirm the judgment of the district court.

Entered for the Court

Jerome A. Holmes Circuit Judge Appellate Case: 21-1114 Document: 010110706167 Date Filed: 07/06/2022 Page: 9