Opinion ID: 201815
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Count 4: Violation of Due Process by Spoliation of Disciplinary Proceeding (Pendleton).

Text: 42 In Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974), the Supreme Court set forth the due process requirements associated with prison disciplinary hearings. Those requirements include written notice of the charges at least twenty-four hours in advance of the hearing, id. at 564, 94 S.Ct. 2963, and the ability to call witnesses and present documentary evidence, id. at 566, 94 S.Ct. 2963. 4 The Wolff Court also implied the obvious: that the essence of a fair hearing is an impartial decisionmaker. Id. at 570-71, 94 S.Ct. 2963. 43 The lower court's instructions on this point stated that the absence of any one of these protections could constitute a due process violation. Pendleton did not challenge that instruction in the court below. The instruction has, therefore, become the law of the case. See Milone v. Moceri Family, Inc., 847 F.2d 35, 38-39 (1st Cir.1988). 44 Although Pendleton's appellate brief is equally silent on the point, her counsel claimed during oral argument in this court that the decision in Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995), rendered nugatory the rights enumerated in Wolff. This newly minted argument is likely waived. See, e.g., Sandstrom v. ChemLawn Corp., 904 F.2d 83, 86 (1st Cir.1990) (noting that arguments not raised in an appellant's brief are waived, even though urged at oral argument). At best, it is forfeited. See Chestnut, 305 F.3d at 20. We need not dwell on such niceties, however, because Sandin, taken at face value, is of no help to Pendleton. 45 In Sandin, the Supreme Court explained that prison regulations creating procedures that were to be followed before taking away an inmate's ordinary privileges do not afford the inmate a liberty interest in avoiding the loss of those privileges unless such a loss will result in an atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. 515 U.S. at 483-84, 115 S.Ct. 2293. The Court held that a thirty-day period of punitive segregation, imposed on a convict, did not constitute such a hardship and, thus, could be levied without the punctilio that due process otherwise might require. Id. at 485-86, 115 S.Ct. 2293. That was so because such [d]iscipline by prison officials in response to ... misconduct falls within the expected perimeters of the sentence imposed by a court of law.  Id. at 485, 115 S.Ct. 2293 (emphasis supplied). 46 As the underscored language makes plain, the Sandin Court's rationale applies only to those convicted of crimes — not to pretrial detainees. The courts of appeals that have addressed this question are consentient on the point. See Benjamin v. Fraser, 264 F.3d 175, 189 (2d Cir.2001); Rapier v. Harris, 172 F.3d 999, 1004-05 (7th Cir.1999); Mitchell v. Dupnik, 75 F.3d 517, 523-25 (9th Cir.1996); see also Fuentes v. Wagner, 206 F.3d 335, 342 n. 9 (3d Cir.2000) (noting, in dictum, that the Sandin Court's analysis is inapplicable to pretrial detainees). We share that view. Pretrial detainees, unlike convicts, have a liberty interest in avoiding punishment — an interest that derives from the Constitution itself. See Sandin, 515 U.S. at 484, 115 S.Ct. 2293 (citing Bell, 441 U.S. at 535, 99 S.Ct. 1861, for the proposition that a pretrial detainee may not be punished prior to an adjudication of guilt in accordance with due process of law). Because the plaintiff in this case was a pretrial detainee at and prior to the time of the accusation and the hearing, Sandin is inapposite. 47 Pendleton raises — or, better put, attempts to raise — two additional challenges. First, she asserts that the evidence was insufficient to establish that she violated the plaintiff's procedural due process rights. Second, she posits that she was entitled to qualified immunity. Like Rivas, however, she failed either to make a motion for judgment as a matter of law at the close of all the evidence or to raise the qualified immunity defense by a timely motion. Given these lapses, the standard of review, described in Part II(A)(1), supra, proves fatal to her claims. 48 We begin with a procedural point. In this circuit, when a jury in a civil case is presented with multiple theories of liability on a single claim and returns a general verdict for the plaintiff, there ordinarily must be sufficient evidence presented to the jury to support each of the underlying theories (subject, however, to a generous harmless error standard). Gillespie v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 386 F.3d 21, 30 (1st Cir.2004). In this case, however, Pendleton did not make either a timely motion for judgment as a matter of law or a motion for a new trial; the district court's instruction that proof of any one such violation would suffice to prove the claim has become the law of the case; and Pendleton has failed to raise the multiple theory point in this court, instead choosing to make an all-or-nothing argument that the verdict must be discarded because there is insufficient evidence to support it on any theory. Given these tactical choices, we need only inquire whether at least one of the theories has some record support. 49 The record contains enough evidence to allow a rational jury to find that Pendleton was not an impartial decisionmaker. This compendium includes her own testimony that she declined to interview an alibi witness based on her preconceived (and wholly subjective) belief that the witness would lie and her rush to impose sanctions despite having been asked by prison officials to withhold judgment until they had completed a parallel internal investigation into the July 14 incident. Given this evidence, upholding the verdict on count 4 does not work a clear and gross injustice. See Faigin, 184 F.3d at 76; La Amiga del Pueblo, 937 F.2d at 691. 50 In the same vein, the district court did not plainly err in failing, sua sponte, to grant Pendleton qualified immunity. Wolff has long established the level of due process required before a pretrial detainee can be deprived of a liberty interest in a disciplinary hearing, see 418 U.S. at 564-71, 94 S.Ct. 2963, and, thus, the procedural due process rights asserted by the plaintiff were clearly established in 2002. See Collazo-Leon, 51 F.3d at 319 (holding that pretrial detainees must receive disciplinary hearings comporting with due process); see also Benjamin, 264 F.3d at 189-90 (holding that the procedures required by Wolff apply if the restraint on [a pretrial detainee's] liberty is imposed for disciplinary reasons); Mitchell, 75 F.3d at 525 (similar). 51 The next step must recognize the fact that, unlike in most qualified immunity cases, the jury has spoken here. When evaluating a qualified immunity defense after a trial, an inquiring court must accept the jury's supportable resolution of contested facts. See Acevedo-Garcia v. Monroig, 351 F.3d 547, 563 (1st Cir.2003); Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14, 23 (1st Cir.1999). In this instance, that principle leads us to conclude that Pendleton acted in contravention of the plaintiff's clearly established rights to an impartial decisionmaker. And, moreover, we think it self-evident that any reasonable officer in Pendleton's position would have understood that prejudging alibi witnesses without even interviewing them or hearing their testimony and rushing to impose sanctions before an internal investigation could be completed constituted a course of action inconsistent with the proper role of an impartial adjudicator. Cf. King v. Higgins, 702 F.2d 18, 20-21 (1st Cir.1983) (rejecting assertion of qualified immunity by officer overseeing prison hearing reminiscent of kangaroo court and noting that some aspects of fundamental fairness are so elemental as to need[] no specific judicial articulation). 52 For these reasons, we conclude that there was no plain error in the district court's failure, sua sponte, to terminate the case against Pendleton on qualified immunity grounds. 53