Court Opinion

ID: 9483466
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:21:17.877381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:38.654310
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The amended complaint clearly alleges that the plaintiff told the disciplinary committee that another cell, housing, like his, four inmates, had equal access to the vent in which the weapons were found. The correction officer’s “ticket,” the only other evidence before the committee, stated only that the weapons had been found in a shakedown of the plaintiff’s cell. This was consistent with the weapons’ having been found in the vent on which the cell gave and which was accessible from the cell. (In fact what happened, all agree, is that in the course of the shakedown the officer opened the screen covering the vent, looked inside, and found the weapons.) On the record before the committee, the probability that the plaintiff had possessed one or more of these weapons cannot be reckoned as greater than one in eight, or 12.5 percent. That is not my idea of “some evidence,” Superintendent v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 454, 105 S.Ct. 2768, 2773 (1985), unless purely collective guilt is deemed to satisfy due process — which in prison circumstances it might be, cf. Ustrak v. Fairman, 781 F.2d 573, 575 (7th Cir.1986), but the defendants do not defend the disciplinary committee’s action on that ground. Hill itself is distinguishable. The three inmates were seen fleeing the scene of the crime. Each was thus acting guilty; the probability that each was guilty was considerable. Here it is entirely possible that only one of the eight inmates who had access to the vent possessed the six weapons, and there is no evidence to suggest that Hamilton was more likely to be that one than any of the seven other inmates were. Nor is it argued that the six weapons are likely to have been jointly owned by all inmates having access to the place where they were kept.
We know in fact that more than eight inmates had access to the vents — 32 in *348all — though how likely it is that a weapon thrown from another floor would have lodged in this second-floor vent is unclear. It is true that the amended complaint does not allege that Hamilton apprised the disciplinary committee of this fact and maybe the members of the committee didn’t know it. But any objection based on that point was waived by the defendants in the district court and in this court — which has inexplicably relieved them from the normal consequence of waiver. Wilson v. O’Leary, 895 F.2d 378, 384 (7th Cir.1990); Thomas v. Indiana, 910 F.2d 1413, 1415 (7th Cir.1990). If all 32 were equiprobable malefactors, then on no interpretation of “some evidence” could Hamilton’s punishment stand. I don’t think it can stand even if we ignore all but the eight to whom the amended complaint explicitly referred.