Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/427/215/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 00:00:23+00:00

Document:
Rehearing Denied Oct. 4, 1976. See 429 U.S. 873, 97 S.Ct. 191.
(c) To hold that Any substantial deprivation imposed by prison authorities triggers the procedural protections of the Due Process Clause would subject to judicial review a wide spectrum of discretionary actions that traditionally have been the business of prison administrators rather than of the federal courts. Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935, distinguished. Pp. 225-227.
Michael C. Donahue, Boston, Mass., for petitioners.
Keith A. Jones, Washington, D.C., for United States, as amicus curiae, by special leave of Court.
Richard E. Shapiro, Boston, Mass., for respondents.
Individual classification hearings were held, each respondent being represented by counsel. Each hearing began by the reading of a prepared statement by the Classification Board. The Board then heard, In camera and out of the respondents' presence, the testimony of petitioner Meachum, the Norfolk prison superintendent, who repeated the information that had been received from informants. Each respondent was then told that the edence supported the allegations contained in the notice but was not then or ever given transcripts or summaries of Meachum's testimony before the Board. Each respondent was allowed to present evidence in his own behalf; and each denied involvement in the particular infraction being investigated. Some respondents submitted supportive testimony or written statements from correction officers. A social worker also testified in the presence of each respondent, furnishing the respondent's criminal and custodial record, including prior rule infractions, if any, and other aspects of his performance and "general adjustment" at Norfolk.
The Board recommended that Royce be placed in administrative segregation for 30 days; that Fano, Dussault, and McPhearson be transferred to Walpole, a maximum-security institution where the the living conditions are substantially less favorable to the prisoners than those at Norfolk and that DeBrosky and Hathaway be transferred to Bridgewater which has both maximum- and medium-security facilities. The reasons for its actions were stated in the Board's reports, 2 which, however, were not then available to respondents. Although respondents were aware of the general import of the informants' allegations and were told that the recommendations drew upon informant sources, the details of this information were not revealed to respondents and are not included in the Board's reports which are part of the record before us.
We granted the prison officials' petition for writ of certiorari, 423 U.S. 1013, 96 S.Ct. 444, 46 L.Ed.2d 384 (1975), in order to determine whether the Constitution required petitioners to conduct a factfinding hearing in connection with the transfers in this case where state law does not condition the authority to transfer on the occurrence of specific acts of misconduct or other events and, if so, whether the hearings granted in this case were adequate. In light of our resolution of the first issue, we do not reach the second.
The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any State from depriving a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The initial inquiry is whether the transfer of respondents from Norfolk to Walpole and Bridgewater infringed or implicated a "liberty" interest of respondents within the meaning of the Due Process Clause. Contrary to the Court of Appeals, we hold that it did not. We reject at the outset the notion that any grievous loss visited upon a person by the State is sufficient to invoke the procedural protections of the DuProcess Clause. In Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), a university professor was deprived of his job, a loss which was surely a matter of great substance, but because the professor had no property interest in his position, due process procedures were not required in connection with his dismissal. We there held that the determining factor is the nature of the interest involved rather than its weight. Id., at 570-571, 92 S.Ct., at 2705-06.
Similarly, we cannot agree that Any change in the conditions of confinement having a substantial adverse impact on the prisoner involved is sufficient to invoke the protections of the Due Process Clause. The Due Process Clause by its own force forbids the State from convicting any person of crime and depriving him of his liberty without complying fully with the requirements of the Clause. But given a valid conviction, the criminal defendant has been constitutionally deprived of his liberty to the extent that the State may confine him and subject him to the rules of its prison system so long as the conditions of confinement do not otherwise violate the Constitution. The Constitution does not require that the State have more than one prison for convicted felons; nor does it guarantee that the convicted prisoner will be placed in any particular prison, if, as is likely, the State has more than one correctional institution. The initial decision to assign the convict to a particular institution is not subject to audit under the Due Process Clause, although the degree of confinement in one prison may be quite different from that in another. The conviction has sufficiently extinguished the defendant's liberty interest to empower the State to confine him in Any Of its prisons.
Our cases hold that the convicted felon does not forfeit all constitutional protections by reason of his conviction and confinement in prison. He retains a variety of important rights that the courts must be alert to protect. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S., at 556, 94 S.Ct., at 2974, and cases there cited. But none of these cases reaches this one; and to hold as we are urged to do that Any substantial deprivation imposed by prison authorities triggers the procedural protections of the Due Process Clause would subject to judicial review a wide spectrum of discretionary actions that traditionally have been the business of prison administrators rather than of the federal courts.
Transfers between institutions, for example, are made for a variety of reasons and often involve no more than informed predictions as to what would be best serve institutional security or the safety and welfare of the inmate. Yet under the approach urged here, any transfer, for whatever reason, would require a hearing as long as it could be said that the transfer would place the prisoner in substantially more burdensome conditions that he had been experiencing. We are unwilling to go so far.
"(A) person's liberty is equally protected, even when the liberty itself is a statutory creation of the State. The touchstone of due process is protection of the individual against arbitrary action of government, Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114, 123, 9 S.Ct. 231, 233, 32 L.Ed. 623 (1889). Since prisoners in Nebraska can only lose good-time credits if they are guilty of serious misconduct, the determination of whether such behavior has occurred becomes critical, and the minimum requirements of procedural due process appropriate for the circumstances must be observed." Id., At 558, 94 S.Ct., at 2976.
The liberty interest protected in Wolff had its roots in state law, and the minimum procedures appropriated under the circumstances were held required by the Due Process Clause "to insure that the state-created right is not arbitrarily abrogated." Id., at 557, 94 S.Ct., at 2975. This is consistent with our approach in other due process cases such as Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 95 S.Ct. 729, 42 L.Ed.2d 725 (1975); Board of Regents v. Roth, supra ; Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972); Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970).
Here, Massachusetts law conferred no right on the prisoner to remain in the prison to which he was initially assigned, defeasible only upon proof of specific acts of misconduct. Insofar as we are advised, transfers between Massachusetts prisons are not conditioned upon the occurrence of specified events. 7 On the contrary, transfer in a wide variety of circumstances is vested in prison officials. The predicate for invoking the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment as construed and applied in Wolff v. McDonnell is totally nonexistt in this case.
The Court's rationale is more disturbing than its narrow holding. If the Court had merely held that the transfer of a prisoner from one penal institution to another does not cause a sufficiently grievous loss to amount to a deprivation of liberty within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, 1 I would disagree with the conclusion but not with the constitutional analysis. The Court's holding today, however, appears to rest on a conception of "liberty" which I consider fundamentally incorrect.
The Court indicates that a "liberty interest" may have either of two sources. According to the Court, a liberty interest may "originate in the Constitution," Supra, at 226, or it may have "its roots in state law." Ibid. Apart from those two possible origins, the Court is unable to find that a person has a constitutionally protected interest in liberty.
If a man were a creature of the state, the analysis would be correct. But neither the Bill of Rights nor the laws of sovereign States create the liberty which the Due Process Clause protects. The relevant constitutional provisions are limitations on the power of the sovereign to infringe on the liberty of the citizen. The relevant state laws either create property rights, or they curtail the freedom of the citizen who must live in an ordered society. Of course, law is essential to the exercise and enjoyment of individual liberty in a complex society. But it is not the source of liberty, and surely not the exclusive source.
The moderating trend culminated in this Court's landmark holding that notwithstanding the conditions of legal custody pursuant to a criminal conviction, a parolee has a measure of liberty that is entitled to constitutional protection.
"We see, therefore, that the liberty of a parolee, although indeterminate, includes many of the core values of unqualified liberty and its termination inflicts a 'grievous loss' on the parolee and often on others. It is hardly useful any longer to try to deal with this problem in terms of whether the parolee's liberty is a 'right' or a 'privilege.' By whatever name, the liberty is valuable and must be seen as within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. Its termination calls for some orderly process, however informal." Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 482, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 2601, 33 L.Ed.2d 484.
"In view of the fact that physical confinement is merely one species of legal custody, we are persuaded that Morrissey actually portends a more basic conceptual holding: liberty protected by the due process clause may indeed must to some extent coexist with legal custody pursuant to conviction. The deprivation of liberty following an adjudication of guilt is partial, not total. A residuum of constitutionally protected rights remains.
"As we noted in Morales v. Schmidt, the view once held that an inmate is a mere slave is now totally rejected. The restraints and the punishment which a criminal conviction entails do not place the citizen beyond the ethical tradition that accords respect to the dignity and intrinsic worth of every individual. 21 'Liberty' and 'custody' are not mutually exclusive concepts.
"If the Morrissey Decision is not narrowly limited by the distinction between physical confinement and conditional liberty to live at large in society,5 it requires that due process precede any substantial deprivation of the liberty of persons in custody. We believe a due regard for the interests of the individual inmate, as well as the interests of that substantial segment of our total society represented by inmates,6 requires that Morrissey be so read." United States ex rel. Miller v. Twomey, 479 F.2d 701, 712-713.
It demeans the holding in Morrissey more importantly it demeans the concept of liberty itself to ascribe to that holding nothing more than a protection of an interest that the State has created through its own prison regulations. For if the inmate's protected liberty interests are no greater than the State chooses to allow, he is really little more than the slave described in the 19th century cases. I think it clear that even the inmate retains an unalienable interest in liberty at the very minimum the right to be treated with dignity which the Constitution may never ignore.
This basic premise is not so inconsistent with recognition of the obvious fact that the State must have wide latitude in determining the conditions of confinement that will be imposed following conviction of crime. To supervise and control its prison population, the State must retain the power to change the conditions for individuals, or for groups of prisoners, quickly and without judicial review. In many respects the State's problems in governing its inmate population are comparable to those encountered in governing a military force. Prompt and unquestioning obedience by the individual, even to commands he does not understand, may be essential to the preservation of order and discipline. Nevertheless, within the limits imposed by the basic restraints governing the controlled population, each individual retains his dignity and, in time, acquires a status that is entitled to respect.
Imprisonment is intended to accomplish more than the temporary removal of the the offender from society in order to prevent him from committing like offenses during the period of his incarceration. While custody denies the inmate the opportunity to offend, it also gives him an opportunity to improve himself and to acquire skills and habits that will help him to participate in an open society after his release. Within the prison community, if my basic hypothesis is correct, he has a protected right to pursue his limited rehabilitative goals, or at the minimum, to maintain whatever attributes of dignity are associated with his status in a tightly controlled society. It is unquestionably within the power of the State to change that status, abruptly and adversely; but if the change is sufficiently grievous, it may not be imposed arbitrarily. In such case due process must be afforded.
That does not mean, of course, that every adversity amounts to a deprivation within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. 4 There must be grievous loss, and that term itself is somewhat flexible. I woulcertainly not consider every transfer within a prison system, even to more onerous conditions of confinement, such a loss. On the other hand, I am unable to identify a principled basis for differentiating between a transfer from the general prison population to solitary confinement and a transfer involving equally disparate conditions between one physical facility and another.
"1. The 'reliable sources' were deemed acceptable as reliable because they had produced truthful and verifiable information prior to incidents, which were then avoided and serious harm prevented.
"2. The seriousness of his involvements were considered extreme. The danger posed by weapons and materials used for violence weighs very heavily against remaining in this population. In addition, the type of involvement of this man as an organizer, leader and (e)nforcer was considered detrimental to the institution, and prohibitive to rehabilitative programming at MCI Norfolk at this time."
"1. Informant Information was judged sufficient in detail and reliability to be weighed seriously in the board(')s decision making. The information regarding the subject's attitude and motivation seemed adequately supported by the man's record and his attitude before the board. (He stated he had never received fair treatment at classification.) The reliability of the information was judged as quite reliable in that it came from three sources. When asked, Mr. Meachum provided details of the course of events on the night of Oct. 13th which substantiated in general terms the informant information presented (see attached letter).
specifics that these were the two mentioned in the charges. The more he talked, the more he appeared involved.
"2. The 'reliable sources' were deemed acceptable as reliable because they had produced truthful information prior to incidents that were then avoided and serious harm prevented.
cated interest in poetry, avocation, and school would also reaffirm his intent for self improvement."
"We attach no significance for present purposes to the fact that these proceedings were for 'classification' rather than 'discipline.' Defendants assert that 'there are in the instant case as many administrative overtones as disciplinary ones,' but we have already indicated that in our view the motive of prison officials, as such, is not properly a part of the due process calculus. Gomes v. Travisono, 510 F.2d 537, 541 (1st Cir. 1974). Whether the transfer is thought of as punishment or as a way of preserving institutional order, the effects on the inmate are the same and the appropriateness of the action depends upon the accuracy of the official allegation of misconduct." 520 F.2d, at 376 n. 2.
See also Gomes v. Travisono, 510 F.2d 537 (CA 1 1974) modifying and affirming, 490 F.2d 1209 (1973).
Other Courts of Appeals, including the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, see Montanye v. Haymes, 427 U.S. 236, 96 S.Ct. 2543, 49 L.Ed.2d 466, have held that minimum procedures must accompany only disciplinary transfers. Aikens v. Lash, 514 F.2d 55 (C.A.7 1975); Carroll v. Sielaff, 514 F.2d 415 (C.A.7 1975); Ault v. Holmes, 506 F.2d 288 (C.A.6 1974); Stone v. Egeler, 506 F.2d 287 (C.A.6 1974). See also Bryant v. Hardy, 488 F.2d 72 (C.A.4 1973). Still others have indicated that transfers of inmates do not call for due process hearings. Gray v. Creamer, 465 F.2d 179, 187 (C.A.3 1972); Hillen v. Director, 455 F.2d 510 (C.A.9 1972); cf. Fajeriak v. McGinnis, 493 F.2d 468 (C.A.9 1974).
Nor do we think the situation is substantially different because a record will be made of the transfer and the reasons which underlay it, thus perhaps affecting the future conditions of confinement, including the possibilities of parole. The granting of parole has itself not yet been deemed a function to which due process requirements are applicable. See Scott v. Kentucky Parole Board, No. 74-6438, cert. granted, 423 U.S. 1031, 96 S.Ct. 561, 46 L.Ed.2d 404 (1975). If such holding eventuates, it will be time enough to consider respondents' contentions that there is unfounded information contained in their files.
"No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . .." U.S.Const., Amdt. 14, § 1.
Section 1 provides: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, Except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, Shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." U.S.Const., Amdt. 13, § 1 (emphasis added).
Morales v. Schmidt, 489 F.2d 1335, 1338 (C.A.7 1973), modified on rehearing en banc, 494 F.2d 85 (1974).
'"A first tenet of our governmental, religious, and ethical tradition is the intrinsic worth of every individual, no matter how degenerate. It is a radical departure from that tradition to subject a defined class of persons, even criminals, to a regime in which their right to liberty is determined by officials wholly unaccountable in the exercise of their power. . . ." 443 F.2d (942), at 952 no. 1.
" See Task Force Report, at 6-12. See especially the discussion of " Blurring Lines Between Institution and Community," at 10-11. Id., at 713 n. 23.
" 'A substantial portion of our population is affected by the law in this area. Approximately 1.3 million people are at any one time subject to correctional authority; untold millions have criminal records. There is increasing doubt as to the propriety of treating this large group of persons as, in varying degrees, outcasts from society. And there is increasing recognition that such treatment is not in the ultimate interests of society. Denying offenders any chance to challenge arbitrary assertions of power by correctional officials, and barring them from legitimate opportunities such as employment, are inconsistent with the correctional goal of rehabilitation, which emphasizes the need to instill respect for and willingness to cooperate with society and to help the offender assume the role of a normal citizen.' Task Force Report at 82."
"This does not mean, however, that every decision by prison officials should be subject to judicial review or that the courts rather than experienced administrators should write prison regulations. Morrissey Reminds us that due process is a flexible concept which takes account of the importance of the interests at stake; thus, it is abundantly clear that a myriad of problems of prison administration must remain beyond the scope of proper judicial concern. Only significant deprivations of liberty raise constitutional issues under Morrissey. Moreover, in determining whether to require due process, we need not choose between the 'full panoply' of rights accorded a defendant in a criminal prosecution, on the one hand, and no safeguards whatsoever, on the other. Rather, as Morrissey Aptly illustrates, the requirements of due process may be shaped to fit the needs of a particular situation." United States ex rel. Miller v. Twomey, 479 F.2d, at 713.
There is no question that respondents in this case suffered loss because of the transfer. Hathaway lost his laundry business a source of income which he had been running at Norfolk; Dussault lost his job as a plumber, in which he had been performing "a difficult job especially well"; Royce was separated from counselors with whom he had a "good relationship" which had helped him in his effort "to get himself together." These losses were in addition to the generally more restrictive conditions inherent in a maximum-security institution as compared to a medium-security institution.

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