Court Opinion

ID: 9429001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:25.760383+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:16.736609
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The Court’s prior cases of course recognize that a valid criminal conviction and sentence extinguish a defendant’s otherwise protected right to be free from confinement. E. g., Connecticut Board of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U. S. 458, 464 (1981); Vitek v. Jones, 445 U. S. 480, 493 (1980); Greenholtz v. Nebraska Penal Inmates, 442 U. S. 1, 7 (1979); Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S. 215, 224 (1976). Although prison inmates retain a residuum of liberty, see Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539, 555-556 (1974), this liberty is not infringed by conditions of confinement that are “within the normal limits or range of custody which the conviction has authorized the State to impose.” Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S., at 225; see Montanye v. Haymes, 427 U. S. 236, 242 (1976); Vitek v. Jones, 445 U. S., at 493. In Meachum and Montanye, we held that certain prison transfers were “within the normal limits or range of custody” even though conditions of confinement were more severe in the prisons to which the inmates were transferred. Because I believe that a transfer to administrative segregation within a prison likewise is within the normal range of custody, I agree with the Court that respondent has not been deprived of “an interest independently protected by the Due Process Clause,” ante, at 468.
I also agree that the Pennsylvania statutes and prison regulations at issue in this case created an entitlement not to *479be placed in administrative segregation without due process. These statutes and regulations are similar to the ones at issue in Hughes v. Rowe, 449 U. S. 5 (1980), and Wright v. Enomoto, 462 F. Supp. 397 (ND Cal. 1976), summarily aff’d, 434 U. S. 1052 (1978), and our dispositions of those cases made clear that a liberty interest was created. We also found a state-created liberty interest in Greenholtz, swpra, even though the statutes at issue there permitted parole decisions to be based on partially subjective and predictive criteria. In cases in which we have declined to find a state-created liberty interest, we have noted that state law permitted prison transfers to be made “for whatever reason or for no reason at all,” Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S., at 228; that state law “impose[d] no conditions on the discretionary power to transfer,” Montanye v. Haymes, 427 U. S., at 243; or that state law gave a Board of Pardons “unfettered discretion,” Dumschat, 452 U. S., at 466. This is not such a case.
Having found a state-created liberty interest, I cannot agree with the Court that the procedures used here comported with due process. Accordingly, I join Parts II and III of Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion.