Court Opinion

ID: 9707817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:21:55.071984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:38.275155
License: Public Domain

HARRIS, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The prisoner is already accorded a statutory hearing superior to the additional one now required by the majority.
I. Existing safeguards seem adequate. Even those not incarcerated are not entitled to a predispositional hearing where there is no “likelihood of serious loss and where the procedures ... are sufficiently reliable to minimize the risk of erroneous determinations.” Memphis Light, Gas & Water Div. v. Craft, 436 U.S. 1, 19, 98 S.Ct. 1554, 1565, 56 L.Ed.2d 30, 45 (1978). See also Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977) (hearing not required before administering corporal punishment to student); Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co., 416 U.S. 600, 94 S.Ct. 1895, 40 L.Ed.2d 406 (1974) (hearing not required before writ to sequester debtor’s property).
II. That Walters owes $11,579.31 in restitution is a given, the obligation and the amount having been fixed following a formal court proceeding. The reformatory adopted its plan to collect twenty percent of money from all sources (rather from merely amounts received through institutional payroll). The policy change was adopted by the institution’s rules committee on posted notice to the prisoners.
Under Iowa Code section 910.7 (1993) any affected prisoner can petition the district court for a hearing on any restitution plan. The majority seems to think the statutory right- to hearing is post-deprivation, rather than predeprivation, and strikes it for that reason. The prisoners however have a clear right to make it predeprivation; the statute states that it is available at any time.
Even if we assume it fails as a predeprivation hearing and is post-deprivation, it is adequate. This is because due process is not violated by deprivation of a prisoner’s property if a meaningful post-deprivation remedy is available. Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 533, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 3204, 82 L.Ed.2d 393, 407-08 (1984). See annot. 66 A.L.R.4th 791, 841 (1988); 72 C.J.S. Prisoners § 75, at 485-86 (1987); 60 Am.Jur.2d Penal Corrections and Correctional Institutions § 106, at 1197 (1987).
The majority cannot have it both ways. Either an adequate predeprivation hearing has been provided by the system heretofore in place, or it was not. If, as I believe and as the prison authorities insist, an adequate pre-deprivation hearing is in place, Walters’ contention should be rejected on that basis. If, as the majority holds, the statute provides only a post-deprivation hearing, Walters’ con*834tention should be rejected because, under Hudson, it is adequate.
Prison officials are hard pressed to accord prisoners due process rights to which they are entitled. The challenged system here strikes me as eminently reasonable and adequate. I would reverse.