Opinion ID: 166742
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Misconduct Conviction

Text: 37 The Supreme Court has instructed that, when reviewing a prison disciplinary proceeding, courts should determine whether any evidence in the record ... could support the conclusion reached by the disciplinary board. Hill, 472 U.S. at 455-56, 105 S.Ct. 2768. We applied this deferential standard of review in Gamble and held that no evidence supported the petitioners' misconduct convictions. After examining section 1541.1, we concluded that, in order to affirm the misconduct conviction for obtaining money by false pretenses under the any evidence standard, there must be evidence that the inmates attempted to obtain money by means of a trick, deception, or false representation. It is necessary that they knew it was a trick, deception, or false representation, and that they had the intent to cheat and defraud. Gamble, 375 F.3d at 1028. 38 The State has agreed that the decision in Gamble controls here and has acknowledged that no evidence exists to support Mr. Wilson's conviction. We appreciate this concession and hope that, in light of Gamble and the instant matter, the Oklahoma DOC will carefully oversee disciplinary proceedings and review its policies for ambiguities and contradictions so that such clearly problematic disciplinary actions are cured in an administrative setting, as they should be. As we noted in Gamble, [t]he inmates' understanding that requesting disbursement from their mandatory savings for the costs of obtaining their transcripts was a legal request is justified under Oklahoma case precedent and legislative history. Id. at 1030. 39 The Oklahoma DOC policy in effect in 2001 regarding the use of a mandatory savings account was contradictory and confusing, especially in light of the state legislature's specific allowance for this one class of expenditures from mandatory savings accounts. 2 Indeed, amendments that the state legislature made in 1995, permitting inmates to use mandatory savings accounts for costs associated with criminal cases and requiring courts to consider the availability of a mandatory savings account prior to granting in forma pauperis, `compel[ ] a prisoner to weigh the validity of a lawsuit against the cost of pursuing it.' Id. at 1031 (quoting Smith v. Moore, 50 P.3d 215, 218 n. 4 (Okla.2002)). The legislature's policy makes good sense: it alleviates public subsidization of court costs and deters prisoners from filing frivolous lawsuits, as they must use the small amount of savings they would have upon release from prison to pay for costs associated with their appeals. See id. Furthermore, [i]t would make little sense to allow savings account monies to be used to file a case and then forbid their use to provide courts with materials useful in resolving that case. Id. at 1033 (Henry, J., concurring). 40 Due process in a prison setting is very limited, but some safeguards remain to ensure that the few rights prisoners do retain are not violated by prison officials' arbitrary exercise of their power. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974) (explaining that limited due process rights apply in a prison disciplinary setting because there must be mutual accommodation between institutional needs and objectives and the provisions of the Constitution that are of general application). Among these safeguards is the requirement that disciplinary convictions that mandatorily affect time served be supported by some evidence, which is a minimal but nonetheless important standard.