Court Opinion

ID: 9570312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:22:16.591429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:05:42.053626
License: Public Domain

*502Utter, J.
(dissenting in part) — I believe that the State Department of Corrections has compelling and legitimate reasons to control the use of illegal drugs in prison. I also agree with the majority that the United States Supreme Court has defined the nature and scope of the due process rights of prison inmates as considerably more limited than those enjoyed by other citizens. Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 555-56, 41 L. Ed. 2d 935, 94 S. Ct. 2963 (1974). Our own decisions have acknowledged this lesser degree of protections for inmates. In re Reismiller, 101 Wn.2d 291, 293, 678 P.2d 323 (1984); In re Young, 95 Wn.2d 216, 220, 622 P.2d 373 (1980).
Despite our agreement on these basic points, I cannot concur with the majority's conclusion on the narrow issue presented by this case. I agree that the Department’s procedure satisfied due process requirements as to the petitioners before the court against whom the Department had corroborating information of marijuana use beyond the EMIT tests. I disagree, however, with the majority's treatment of the other petitioners' cases.
In Reismiller, this court expressly adopted the "any evidence" or "some evidence" test from the federal courts for determining whether a prison disciplinary decision revoking good time credits had satisfied evidentiary requirements. However, a single positive result to an EMIT urinalysis test does not supply "some evidence" of marijuana use, unless the EMIT test has been determined to present probative evidence at all under the Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923) and State v. Canaday, 90 Wn.2d 808, 585 P.2d 1185 (1978) tests. If this court fails to submit the EMIT test to examination under the Frye-Canaday, standard, it condones the State's use of information estimated by some experts to be only 75 percent accurate, Peranzo v. Coughlin, 608 F. Supp. 1504, 1511 (S.D.N.Y. 1985), to deprive prison inmates of a substantial interest. As the United States Supreme Court stated in Wolff:
But though his rights may be diminished by the needs and exigencies of the institutional environment, a pris*503oner is not wholly stripped of constitutional protections when he is imprisoned for crime. There is no iron curtain drawn between the Constitution and the prisons of this country.
Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. at 555-56.
Although the full panoply of rights due defendants in criminal proceedings do not apply in prison disciplinary proceedings, the due process clause still operates to insure that state-created rights such as prisoners' good time are not arbitrarily abrogated. Wolff, 418 U.S. at 557. If this court accepts the State's use of a drug testing procedure that has not been judicially determined to be probative at all, the State is free to resort to entirely arbitrary bases for punishing prisoners, fairly or unfairly. Deprivation of prisoners' interests is left to the unfettered discretion of prison administrators and guards.
A coin toss will be at least 50 percent accurate in determining whether an infraction has occurred. Nonetheless, this would not provide "some evidence" that the infraction had occurred such as would justify deprivation of a liberty interest. Evidence presented by the Department in a disciplinary proceeding to deprive prisoners of good time must pass at least minimum standards of reliability, or the State may deprive inmates of their interests on the basis of wholly unscientific information. Because I believe that the majority opinion does not provide even minimal protection for prisoners against the arbitrary action of the State, I dissent.
Dore, J., concurs with Utter, J.