Opinion ID: 786612
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Procedural Modifications

Text: 22 That a liberty interest exists in avoiding classification at level five and concurrent placement in OSP is in many ways the easy half of the Sandin analysis. What is much less clear after Sandin is how to determine what process is due to protect that interest. Before Sandin, state-created liberty interests of prisoners were either protected by an adversary hearing on the record following Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 563-73, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974), or a more free-form hearing following Hewitt, 459 U.S. at 477, 103 S.Ct. 864. Wolff dealt with the process due in finding a disciplinary infraction punished by the rescission of good-time credits; Hewitt involved a challenged placement in administrative segregation, pending the outcome of an investigation into misconduct. Cases following the Hewitt/Wolff split have classified various factual situations depending upon the category into which the challenged process fell: disciplinary or administrative, historical or prospective, objective or subjective, Wolff or Hewitt. On appeal, the ODRC Officials assert that this mechanical dichotomy still has force after Sandin, that classification at level five and placement at OSP is a forward-looking, Hewitt -type procedure, and that our inquiry should end there, with a decision that only  Hewitt process is due. We are convinced, however, that Sandin called into question not only the mechanistic way in which the circuit courts previously found liberty interests in prison regulations, but also the mechanistic fashion in which they applied the Hewitt/Wolff dichotomy. 10 After Sandin, both steps of the analysis — the creation of a liberty interest and the determination of the process due to protect that interest — must carefully reference the severity of the deprivation at stake. It is not enough to say that a particular decision is forward-looking; instead, reference must be made to the interests at stake, for the inmate and for the state. It is not the nature of the decision which strikes the due process balance; it is the nature of the interests on both sides of that balance. 11 With that in mind, we approve of the district court's grounding of its decision in the due process balancing test outlined in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. at 335, 96 S.Ct. 893, and consider the procedural modifications in light of that test. Mathews 23 requires consideration of three distinct factors: First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail. 24 Id. 25 The district court made fifteen specific modifications to new 111-07, including the improper substantive modifications dealt with above. A first set deals with the classification hearing itself, and closely tracks Wolff. First, when classification proceedings are initiated, the notice already stipulated by new 111-07 shall include an exhaustive list of the reasons to be considered for placement and a summary of the evidence to be presented. Second, the inmate shall be allowed to present witnesses and documentary evidence at classification hearings, where permitting him to do so will not be unduly hazardous or burdensome to institutional safety or correctional goals. J.A. at 530 (citing Wolff, 418 U.S. at 566, 94 S.Ct. 2963). Finally, a record is to be made of the proceeding itself, and if the ODRC wishes to rely on confidential witnesses, it must indicate that reliance and disclose as much of the confidential testimony as possible. 26 A second group of modifications required by the district court centers on the administrative appellate procedure laid out in new 111-07. Because no comparable appellate procedure was at issue in Wolff, see 418 U.S. at 565, 94 S.Ct. 2963, these requirements do not track that case as closely. The district court found that the previous system of administrative review, in which each intervening appellate decisionmaker had plenary power to reverse the prior decisionmaker without any statement of reasons for the decision given to the inmate, had led to suspect inmate classifications. The specific changes ordered by the district court were: that the inmate is to receive the classification committee's recommendation and notice of his right to and method of appeal; that the warden is to engage in independent review of the committee's recommendation, and if in doing so, relies upon a confidential witness statement not already made known to the prisoner, shall follow the procedure outlined above, including allowing the inmate to respond in writing; that the warden shall, if she approves the recommendation, send a copy of that recommendation to the inmate; and that the Bureau of Classification shall follow the same procedure in relying on new confidential witness statements, shall allow the inmate to submit documentary evidence, and will, if the inmate is recommended for level five placement, record a detailed and specific justification for the decision. Finally, the district court, in its May 15, 2002, order, required that none of the members of the original classification committee shall take part in the decision of the prisoner's appeal to the warden or to the Bureau. 27 The first factor of the Mathews balancing test, the private interest at stake, is significant; placement at OSP is indefinite and reviewed only annually, unlike placement in disciplinary segregation in the Ohio prison system, which lasts only thirty days, or administrative segregation, which is reviewed every thirty days. Prisoners placed at OSP are deprived of all significant human contact and have other restrictions placed upon their movement and their personal privileges; they are also ineligible for parole during their stay at OSP. In this first factor, Sandin affects the due process balance: because only those conditions that constitute atypical and significant hardships give rise to liberty interests, those interests will necessarily be of a weight requiring greater due process protection. 12 As to the second factor, the risk of error, the district court made specific findings concerning past erroneous and haphazard placements at OSP, which go unchallenged on appeal. We will consider the probative value of particular procedures in the next paragraph. As to the third factor, the ODRC clearly has an interest in guaranteeing the safety of its staff and inmates through the swift isolation of dangerous inmates. However, the ODRC has a mechanism to assure safety, one which does not require extensive process, and which, unlike OSP placement, is easily and swiftly reversible in the case of error: administrative segregation. 28 Looking at each of the modifications ordered by the district court individually, we remain unconvinced that the district court abused its discretion in finding that each procedural modification it made was mandated by the weighty private interest at stake and the risk of error and was unmitigated by the governmental interests at stake. We examine first the requirement identified by the ODRC Officials both in their brief and at oral argument as the most burdensome: requiring officials to limit their placement decision to only those matters detailed in the notice given to the inmate. They argue that this requirement will constrict substantive discretion by disallowing reliance on rumor, reputation, and even more imponderable factors. Appellants' Reply Br. at 8 (quoting Hewitt, 459 U.S. at 474, 103 S.Ct. 864). This argument is unavailing. Placement at OSP implicates a liberty interest because of the ODRC's own regulations limiting the substantive discretion of prison officials; they can place inmates at OSP only in the presence of certain factual predicates, all of which are historical in nature. Having set out a detailed and restricted list of reasons why inmates can be put at OSP, the ODRC cannot turn around and argue that the district court's order decreases their ability to rely on rumor, reputation, and even more imponderable factors, for those factors are illegitimate under their own placement scheme. 13 The district court required that the defendants will provide the inmate with written notice of all the grounds believed to justify his placement at level five and a summary of the evidence that the defendants will rely upon for the placement. Austin II, 204 F.Supp.2d at 1026. We do not find that this requirement's burdens on the ODRC outweigh its probative and protective value. 29 Having found that the additional procedural requirement identified by the ODRC Officials as the most burdensome passes muster under Mathews v. Eldridge, we conclude that those which pose a lesser burden on the ODRC are also appropriate. The ODRC Officials, both in their brief and at oral argument, did not in fact point to any other single procedural requirement as being particularly burdensome. We note, moreover, that many of the procedures ordered by the district court are an attempt to reconcile an elaborate administrative appeals scheme created by the ODRC Officials with the requirement that the inmate know the reason for any decision made about his fate; where a higher-up decisionmaker reverses the decision of the original factfinder, a brief description of the grounds for that reversal is constitutionally necessary.