Opinion ID: 786612
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Liberty Interest under Sandin v. Conner

Text: 11 Inmates challenge the procedures for classification at level five under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, claiming that classification at that level and concomitant placement at OSP implicates a state-created liberty interest, and that the procedures in place before trial were inadequate to protect this interest. Therefore, our threshold inquiry is whether a state-created liberty interest exists with regard to placement in Ohio's supermax prison. This inquiry is controlled by Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995), which mandates that a state creates a liberty interest in avoiding certain prison conditions only where those conditions are an atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. Id. at 484, 115 S.Ct. 2293. Prior to Sandin, a state created a liberty interest through using `language of an unmistakably mandatory character' such that the incursion on liberty would not occur `absent specified substantive predicates.' Id. at 480, 115 S.Ct. 2293 (quoting Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 471-72, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983)). Sandin shifted the focus from parsing the language of state statutes and regulations to examining the severity of the conditions to which an inmate would be subject. 12 The district court thus properly made factual findings as to the conditions in OSP compared to the conditions in other Ohio prisons, specifically in the segregated units of maximum-security prisons, the most severe non-OSP conditions in the Ohio system. The court found that the extreme isolation visited upon the inmates at OSP, the lack of any outdoor recreation, the limitations upon personal property rights and access to telephones and counsel, and, finally, the ineligibility of OSP inmates for parole, all combined to create a significant and atypical hardship. The ODRC Officials' sole challenge on appeal to these careful findings is that the district court erred by comparing conditions at OSP to conditions at other Ohio prisons. They argue instead that the proper baseline in determining atypicality is the conditions at other supermax facilities around the country. Other circuits that have decided the question have split over whether the proper control group is the general prison population or inmates in typical segregation conditions. Compare Beverati v. Smith, 120 F.3d 500, 504 (4th Cir.1997) (finding the conditions [at issue] were more burdensome than those imposed on the general prison population although not sufficiently atypical), and Keenan v. Hall, 83 F.3d 1083, 1089 (9th Cir.1996) (a major difference between the conditions for the general prison population and the segregated population triggers a right to a hearing), with Griffin v. Vaughn, 112 F.3d 703, 708 (3d Cir.1997) (administrative custody is not extraordinary and stays of many months are not uncommon), and Brooks v. DiFasi, 112 F.3d 46, 49 (2d Cir.1997) (explicit factual comparison between administrative segregation and disciplinary segregation is necessary). See also Hatch v. District of Columbia, 184 F.3d 846, 847 (D.C.Cir.1999) (appropriate comparison is the most restrictive conditions ... routinely impose[d] on inmates serving similar sentences); Wagner v. Hanks, 128 F.3d 1173, 1177 (7th Cir.1997) (appropriate comparison is to the conditions of nondisciplinary segregation in the state's most restrictive prison). 7 None of the courts of appeals, however, have adopted the novel and restrictive control group urged by the ODRC Officials, which would as a matter of law make it impossible for any inmates but those in the most harsh prison in the country to make out a case for protection under Sandin. 13 The ODRC Officials point only to the Supreme Court's decision in Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238, 103 S.Ct. 1741, 75 L.Ed.2d 813 (1983), and dicta in Wagner, 128 F.3d at 1173, to support their argument. Olim involved a challenge to an interstate prison transfer; the Court held that no liberty interest was created by Hawaii state prison regulations, and that the Due Process Clause of its own force did not protect any liberty interest deprived by an interstate prison transfer. Olim, 461 U.S. at 245-49, 103 S.Ct. 1741. But Olim 's holding has limited applicability when dealing with a state-created liberty interest; that the Due Process Clause does not of its own force protect against interstate transfers has little to do with whether Ohio regulations create a liberty interest in remaining outside of a supermax prison. Sandin requires a situationally-based factual analysis; if it is typical that an Ohio prisoner experiences conditions similar to those of OSP, then state lines might truly be irrelevant. That, however, is not the case; of 44,000 prisoners in the Ohio system, only twenty to thirty have been transferred out of state — a number that itself might give rise to a typicality, if not hardship, if substantive state law limiting officials' discretion in transfer existed — and not a single one has been shown to have been transferred to a supermax. See Hatch, 184 F.3d at 857 (What matters, therefore, is not simply the possibility of transfer but also its likelihood. ). Olim, to the contrary, relied heavily on the fact of interstate transfer as a common occurrence, suggesting that no reasonable expectation existed that any particular inmate would serve his sentence within his state of conviction. Olim, 461 U.S. at 245-47, 103 S.Ct. 1741. Even if the proper comparison in this case were nationwide rather than statewide, the appropriate question would be whether the OSP represented an atypical hardship as compared to, at most, the typical conditions in administrative or disciplinary segregation to which transferred Ohio prisoners are subject, not those in supermaxes. 14 Finally, Wagner is not to the contrary. First, as the Inmates point out, the language relied upon by the ODRC Officials in support of their claim is dicta. See Wagner, 128 F.3d at 1176. Second, and more important, the Wagner court itself in its analysis misses the important distinction between cases narrowly defining the contours of the protection of the Due Process Clause of its own force and those deciding when state laws create a liberty interest. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that transfers in and of themselves do not implicate due process interests (although it has not to date dealt with transfer to a supermax prison), see Olim, 461 U.S. at 238, 103 S.Ct. 1741; Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 229, 96 S.Ct. 2532, 49 L.Ed.2d 451 (1976), but the Court has never held that state laws cannot create a liberty interest in avoiding a transfer to a particularly harsh facility. This key distinction goes wholly unaddressed by the ODRC Officials. 8 15 Ultimately, whether OSP is compared to the general prison population of Ohio, or instead to inmates in typical segregation conditions, which was the baseline used by the district court, OSP constitutes an atypical and significant hardship under Sandin, such that inmates enjoy a liberty interest in not being placed at OSP absent the state-mandated substantive predicates set out in new Policy 111-07. It is therefore unnecessary to determine which is the proper baseline for Sandin comparisons in order to decide this case, but we reject emphatically the ODRC Officials' argument that the baseline should be out-of-state supermax prisons. Whatever the ordinary incidents of prison life may encompass, they must be decided with reference to the particular prison system at issue, and can only be truly ordinary when experienced by a significant proportion of the prison population.