Opinion ID: 1406027
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Farid's Vagueness Challenge

Text: The first question we consider is whether, in the special constitutional context of prison regulations, the rules under which Farid was disciplined were unconstitutionally vague as applied to him. We agree with the District Court that they were. It is well established that while inmates do not shed all constitutional rights at the prison gates, . . . [l]awful incarceration brings about the necessary withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights. Chatin v. Coombe, 186 F.3d 82, 87 (2d Cir.1999) (internal quotation marks omitted). In light of this background principle, we have approved a two-prong test for determining whether a prison rule is unconstitutionally vague as applied: [A] court must first determine whether the statute gives the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited and then consider whether the law provides explicit standards for those who apply it. Id. In Chatin, which the parties agree is the most relevant precedent, we considered whether a DOCS disciplinary rule barring [r]eligious services, speeches or addresses by inmates other than those approved by the Superintendent was unconstitutionally vague as applied to silent, individual prayer. Id. at 84 (quoting Rule 105.11). We found that it was, rejecting DOCS's argument that the rule's vagueness was cured by an internal DOCS Directive and memorandum from prison staff, which together clarified that silent prayer was covered by the rule. Id. at 87-89, 91. We held that prisoners are not required to integrate multiple directives in order to divine the rules governing their conduct. Id. at 88-89. Here, Farid was charged with violating the prison's bans on contraband (Rule 113.23) and smuggling (Rule 114.10). [4] As noted above, the catch-all contraband provision states: In addition to those items of contraband specifically identified by this rule series, an inmate shall not possess any item unless it has been specifically authorized by the superintendent or designee, the rules of the department or the local rules of the facility. This Rule, by its express terms[,] is addressed to `possess[ion]' of an `item.' It is not directed to organizational activity, distribution of materials within the prison facility or the manner in which the mails are used. Farid III, 514 F.Supp.2d at 490. The anti-smuggling rule provides that an inmate shall not smuggle or attempt to smuggle or solicit others to smuggle any item in or out of the facility or from one area to another. In Farid's case, the application of the smuggling prohibition was based entirely on his alleged violation of the contraband rulethe fact that the booklet was found to be contraband meant that distributing it was smuggling. We agree with the District Court that these rules were unconstitutionally vague as applied to Farid, both because they failed to give him adequate notice and because they failed adequately to constrain the discretion of the prison officials who had the power to impose them. Because the smuggling charge under Rule 114.10 was based entirely on the status of the materials as contraband, we begin with Rule 113.23, the catch-all contraband rule. (If the contraband charge is constitutionally infirm, it follows that the smuggling charge also must fail.) The basic shortcoming with the contraband rule, as applied here, is precisely the one identified by the District Court: There is nothing in the rule indicating that materials which violate a prison organization's internal by-laws are contraband in violation of the prison's rules. The internal by-laws of the LTC require each member to receive and become familiar with their contents. They expressly provide that [a]ll correspondence . . . must be reviewed and approved by the staff advisor. All communications with the staff advisor are to be made through the Chairman of the LTC. Section 11.02 of the by-laws states that [a] member determined to have violated a provision of the Constitution, By-laws or facility or departmental policies and procedures may, after being afforded an opportunity to be heard and to present his views, be sanctioned in accordance with this section. Sanctions include censure, suspension or expulsion from the group. Assumingas seems to be the casethat the pamphlet here violated these by-laws, Farid was subject to these specific sanctions. But he was instead disciplined under prison regulations. There is nothing at all in the by-laws that gives notice that discipline under prison regulations, which permit far more severe sanctionssuch as the three months in the SHU which Farid had to servethan expulsion from a prisoner organization, can be a consequence of doing nothing more than infringing the LTC's by-laws. Farid's knowledge of the LTC by-laws, therefore, did not suffice to give him notice, actual or constructive, that his breach of the by-laws could be deemed to violate prison regulations. Accordingly, unless he had other reasons to know that what he did was against prison rules, these regulations were improperly applied to him. Of course, a breach of a group's by-laws can also, independently, violate prison rules. And Defendants argue that this is the case here. They point out that the contraband rule is broad, and contend that this breadth saves it from Farid's challenge. As we have seen, the rule identifies as contraband that which is not specifically authorized by the superintendent or designee, the rules of the department or the local rules of the facility. Defendants assert that far from demonstrating vagueness, the breadth of this prohibition sufficed to let Farid know that anything lacking the prior approval of the superintendent was contraband under prison regulations. But this explanation is neither convincing nor consistent with Defendants' other statements, such as Defendant Miller's testimony that Farid would not have been in violation of the prison rules if he had simply produced and possessed the pamphlet himself without including the LTC's imprimatur on it. Farid III, 514 F.Supp.2d at 490 (Defendant Miller[,] who presided at the hearing, asserted that had defendant complied with the by-laws of LTC, `The Politics of Parole' would not have been contraband.). As appliedthat is, on the facts before usit was solely the alleged violation of the LTC's by-laws (i.e., the failure to have the document approved according to that organization's rules) which led to the pamphlet's classification as contraband. And that is not sufficient to give Farid adequate notice of a potential punishment under the prison's regulations. The law does not require Farid to engage in some kind of interpretive construction, combining the LTC's by-laws with the prison rules in order to determine whether materials that violate the former might at the will of prison officials be read to constitute contraband under the latter. That is precisely the kind of interpretive burden that we rejected in Chatin, and we do so again here. Defendants repeatedly emphasize that Farid had actual notice of the LTC rules, particularly since he and other LTC members had been notifiedrecently and specificallythat LTC correspondence must be authorized. In the spring of 1999, about a year before Farid was disciplined, members of the LTC violated prison rules by organizing a conference at WCF without following proper procedures. Defendant Keane, WCF's Superintendent, sent a letter to members of the LTC informing them that they must follow the proper procedures for inviting community guests to participate in correctional facility functions. Keane attached to this letter the LTC by-laws and the DOCS Directive regarding inmate organizations. [5] And, that Farid was aware of the regulations is evident, Defendants say, because of the furtive nature of his activity in producing the pamphletit was written on a computer that he was not authorized to use for private purposes. Defs' Br. 28. All of this, they argue, differentiates the present case from Chatin, because the prisoner in that case was neither warned that his conduct was proscribed nor subjectively believed it to be. See Chatin, 186 F.3d at 87-88. And unlike Chatin, where discipline was based solely on DOCS rules which were not distributed to inmates, 186 F.3d at 84, Farid violated the LTC by-laws, which were available to, and signed by, all members of the LTC. So long as Farid actually knew that his conduct was prohibited, Defendants assert his failure-of-notice vagueness claim must fail. See Duamutef v. O'Keefe, 98 F.3d 22, 25 (2d Cir.1996). This argument did not convince the District Court, and it does not convince us. See Farid III, 514 F.Supp.2d at 491 (The respondents [fare] no better by trying to link possession and distribution of the booklet to an earlier warning by the Superintendent to the LTC that members of the outside community may not be invited to the prison without advance notice and permission.). The warning surely served to remind Farid and the other members of the LTC that they had signed by-laws and were bound by them. But that does not cure the problem the District Court identified, which is that, in Farid's case, his behavior was punished not as a violation of the by-laws of the LTC but as a breach of prison rules. [6] Moreover, even if we agreed with Defendants that Farid had adequate notice that failure to have the pamphlet approved in accordance with LTC by-laws might subject him to prison discipline, that conclusion would only satisfy half of the vagueness inquiry we outlined in Chatin. In addition to being unconstitutional for failure to provide notice, a statute or regulation may be unconstitutionally vague when it fails to provide sufficiently explicit standards for those who apply it when it `impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to policemen, judges and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis.' Chatin, 186 F.3d at 89 (quoting Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972)). In other words, in order to survive a vagueness challenge, a rule must both provide adequate notice to those who are governed by it and adequately cabin the discretion of those who apply it. The prison rules against contraband and smuggling, as applied to Plaintiff here, gave almost complete enforcement discretion to prison officials. Although the District Court did not give extensive consideration to this issue, it concluded that the application of the contraband and anti-smuggling rules contained no explicit standards and placed unfettered discretion in the hands of the prison staff insofar as the rules were applied to written materials. Farid III, 514 F.Supp.2d at 492. Indeed, the catch-all contraband rule allowed prison officials to determine in their unbounded discretion what was and was not specifically authorized in the facility. Farid was disciplined under prison rules prohibiting smuggling and the possession of contraband. But the only thing that made his pamphlet contraband which in turn meant that he engaged in smuggling by giving it to other inmateswas the fact that the pamphlet was not approved in accordance with the internal by-laws of his prisoner organization, the LTC. We agree with the District Court that the application of prison rules in these circumstances was unconstitutionally vague both because it failed to give Farid notice that his actions were prohibited and because it failed adequately to cabin the discretion of prison officials.