Court Opinion

ID: 9428094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:46.340015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:11.764275
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
dissenting.
In its effort to distill some vaguely tenable claim from petitioner’s complaint, the Court ignores crucial admissions in *18the complaint itself which fatally undermine any claim of constitutional deprivation. As I read the Court opinion, it holds that the District Court erred in dismissing petitioner’s complaint solely because the complaint can be construed to allege that petitioner was placed in segregation without a prior hearing, although he was given an adequate hearing before a review board 40 hours later. The Court recognizes that petitioner admitted before the review board that he violated prison regulations by consuming homemade alcohol, ante, at 7-8, but fails to recognize that he had also admitted his guilt at the time of the incident. In his amended complaint petitioner alleged:
“[I] was placed in segregation unnecessarily on September 20, 1977, because there was no violence involved, and I was not a 'clear and present’ danger. Additionally, I had admitted to Captain C. D. Tuttle that I had been drinking.” Amended Complaint 13.1
The complaint also reveals that petitioner has “a problem with alcohol.” Id., at 14.2 In light of these admissions it is difficult to see what purpose the hearing which the Court rules may have been constitutionally required would have served. The hearing would not be held to determine if petitioner violated prison regulations; he admitted that he had when apprehended. Nor would the hearing be held to determine appropriate punishment. That hearing, before the re*19view board, was held 40 hours later, and the Court concedes that no matter how liberally petitioner’s complaint is construed it does not state any claim concerning the conduct of that hearing or the punishment. Ante, at 10. The sole purpose the hearing could have served would be to determine if petitioner should have been removed from the general prison population for the short period between the occurrence of the incident at 7:30 the night of September 20 and the review board hearing held before noon on September 22.
In light of the facts admitted by petitioner, however, it is clear that he cannot state a claim against the prison officials for not holding such a hearing. The reports of the conduct of which petitioner admitted being guilty described his condition as “tipsy, speech slurred” and stated that petitioner “had all the appearance of being drunk” and “appeared to be intoxicated.” In his grievance filed on September 24 petitioner again admitted that he had gotten “drunk” the night of. the 20th.3 *20Intoxicated inmates surely pose a serious threat to prison security and safety, and the placing of petitioner in temporary investigative status was authorized by a prison regulation providing for such action “in the interest of institutional security and safety.” This Court has on several occasions stressed that “ 'central to all other corrections goals is the institutional consideration of internal security within corrections facilities themselves/ ” Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520, 546-547 (1979) (quoting Pell v. Procunier, 417 U. S. 817, 823 (1974)). See Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, 433 U. S. 119, 129 (1977); Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U. S. 396, 412 (1974). “Prison officials must be free to take appropriate action to ensure the safety of inmates and corrections personnel .. . .” Bell v. Wolfish, supra, at 547. This Court has also repeatedly recognized that the judiciary, “ill-equipped” to deal with “complex and difficult” problems of running a prison, must accord the decisions of prison officials great deference. See, e. g., Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, supra, at 126; Procunier v. Martinez, supra, at 405. This rule applies with its greatest force when prison officials act to preserve the central goal of institutional discipline. “Prison administrators . . . should be accorded wide-ranging deference in the adoption and execution of policies and practices that in their judgment are needed to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security.” Bell v. Wolfish, supra, at 547. Against this well-established background, and with petitioner’s admitted violation of prison regulations by consuming homemade alcohol, it is clear that the prison officials acted within their discretion in removing petitioner from the general prison population. Even the Court of Appeals authority relied upon by the Court recognized that claims such as the present one must be based on allegations of “bad faith” or “mere pretext.” Hayes v. Walker, 555 F. 2d 625, 633 (CA7 1977) (quoting La Batt v. Twomey, 513 F. 2d 641, 647 (CA7 1975)). Because petitioner has admitted to being intoxicated, however, it is clear that he cannot claim *21the prison officials acted out of bad faith or on mere pretext. Their decision to remove him from the general prison population was “rationally related to the reasonable, indeed to the central, objectives of prison administration,” Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, supra, at 129.
Indeed, it is difficult to envision exactly how an intoxicated inmate would participate in any meaningful way in a hearing held immediately after the drinking incident. A strong argument could certainly be advanced that it would have been a violation of petitioner’s rights to hold a hearing when he was, as he admitted, drunk.
This case is thus like Codd v. Velger, 429 U. S. 624 (1977), where we held that no constitutional violation occurred when an untenured employee was discharged without a hearing. No hearing was required to permit the employee to clear his name, since he did not dispute the truth of the allegedly stigmatizing reason for the discharge. Here the case is even stronger, since petitioner not only does not contend he was innocent of any violation but also admitted his guilt at the time of the incident. In Codd no hearing was required on whether the discharge was justified in light of the employee’s conduct because the employee had no property interest in continued employment. So, too, here no hearing was required on whether removal from the general prison population pending convening of the review board was justified, since this decision is within the discretion of prison officials and, in view of petitioner’s admissions, no abuse of discretion can be shown.4
*22Even if petitioner had not represented a threat to prison security himself, his removal from the general prison population for a brief period 5 was fully justified in order to protect the integrity of the later hearing before the review board. Permitting inmates to return to the general prison population following a serious breach of prison discipline or violation of prison rules poses difficulties in terms of alibi construction and witness intimidation. The problems were certainly present in this case, where one of three inmates involved in a single incident admitted the charges but the other two denied them. The argument that such investigative justifications cannot outweigh the burden imposed on an innocent or possibly innocent inmate, whatever its merit in other cases, is of course not applicable in this case where petitioner has admitted and continues to admit his guilt.
Nothing in the foregoing detracts from the rule of Haines v. Kerner, 404 U. S. 519 (1972), concerning the liberality with which pro se inmate complaints are to be read, since the complaint itself contains the admission of guilt which undermines any colorable claim. I would also note that petitioner filed his original and amended complaints on forms designed to make it easier for pro se inmates to articulate their claims. Such forms should make the problem of Haines v. Kerner recur less frequently by isolating the relevant information for the district court judge. The Court notes that the District Court gave petitioner’s complaint “careful consideration,” and Judge Swygert below argued that “it is quite evi*23dent from the detailed treatment given by the [District [C]ourt to the issues . . . that the suit was not groundless or meritless.” It is odd, however, to reverse a District Court for spending considerable time and effort before concluding that a complaint was meritless. The fact that the District Court carefully examined petitioner’s complaint for any possible claim before dismissing it is hardly evidence that a colorable claim must exist. Quite the contrary, it is a strong indication that no claim could be found no matter how deeply the District Court probed.
The award of attorney’s fees was entirely proper in this case. The District Court expressly found that petitioner’s suit was meritless in response to respondents’ motion, which was based on Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U. S. 412 (1978), and cited that case extensively. It is clear, therefore, that the District Court was using “meritless” as that term was understood in Christiansburg, supra, at 421 (“the term ‘meritless’ is to be understood as meaning groundless or without foundation, rather than simply that the plaintiff has ultimately lost his case”).
The decision whether to award, attorney’s fees under 42 U. S. C. § 1988 is committed to the discretion of the district courts, who are intimately familiar with the course of the litigation. Like the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, I cannot say that the District Court abused its discretion in awarding attorney’s fees in this case. In light of petitioner’s own admissions it was clear from the outset that he could state no cognizable claim. This is not a case, such as was suggested in Christiansburg, supra, at 422, where the claim appeared meritorious at the outset and only later was refuted by facts which emerged on discovery or at trial. The decisive facts were stated in the complaint and they were not merely “questionable” or “unfavorable,” as the Court suggests, ante, at 15; they were dispositive.

 The resident information report filled out by Captain Tuttle and served on petitioner the night the incident occurred confirms that petitioner admitted to drinking at that time.

 The nature of this problem was elaborated in a grievance filed by petitioner two days after the review board hearing. There he stated he has “had a problem with [a]lcohol ever since I was fifteen years old, and nowhere in my past record will you find any sort of arrest that didn’t involve [a]lcohol or drugs.”

 The Court, ante, at 13, n. 12, states that our conclusion that petitioner was intoxicated rests on reports by the officers and petitioner’s admission that he had been drinking. This statement overlooks the September 24 grievance filed by petitioner, wherein he reviewed what he considered the highlights of his prison career and asked “why, with all the things I had going for myself, and being so close to appearing before the Parole Board, did I get drunk and louse up the good record I had?” (emphasis supplied). It also overlooks that petitioner admitted being guilty of the conduct set forth in the reports which described his condition as noted in the text. Petitioner did not argue before the review board, as one of his drinking companions did, that although he had been drinking he was not intoxicated. But even more importantly, the Court’s effort to distinguish between an inmate who has been drinking in violation of prison regulations and an intoxicated inmate, or an intoxicated inmate who poses a threat to prison security and safety and one who does not, places an intolerable burden on prison officials, who apparently must, at the risk of money damages, decide precisely when a drinking inmate is drunk or even how a particular inmate will react when drunk. This is completely at odds with the established rule that prison officials are accorded great deference in the discharge of their central responsibility for prison security and discipline, see infra, at 20.

 The Court’s citation of Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471 (1972), and Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S. 247 (1978), begs the question whether a hearing prior to the review board hearing was required in this case. In both of these cases the Court held that a hearing was generally required prior to the deprivations involved, so that even if the deprivations were later found to have been justified, a constitutional violation occurred if no prior hearing had been held. Here, however, the Court recognizes that “appropriate findings” by the District Court concerning petitioner’s intoxication or investigative concerns would be dispositive, presumably *22because they would indicate no hearing was required. Thus so far as is discernible the Court’s reasoning is not the lack of hearing before confinement, but the fact of possible wrongful confinement without a prior hearing. Findings are not necessary when petitioner’s own admissions conclusively undermine any possible claim that the prison officials acted in bad faith or on mere pretext.

 Prison regulations permit segregation on temporary investigative status for no more than 72 hours; petitioner had his review board hearing within 40 hours of the incident.