All Incident Reports Overturned and Expunged By Middle Street Publishing AFTER BEING ISSUED THREE INCIDENT REPORTS FOR ALLEGEDLY CONDUCTING A BUSINESS, CHRISTOPHER ZOUKIS WAS RECENTLY VINDICATED ONCE AGAIN. It is with great pride and joy that we at Middle Street Publishing share the terrific news that embattled prison writer Christopher Zoukis has been vindicated once
By Mark Wilson The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held in March 2014 that a district court had abused its discretion when it dismissed a prisoner’s suit for failure to pay a filing fee without determining his ability to pay. Indiana prisoner Leonard Thomas filed suit in 2012, alleging inadequate medical care for his epilepsy.
By Mark Wilson The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held last September that prison officials are liable for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) committed by private employer contractors. Arizona law requires state prisoners to work 40 hours per week. Most are employed in the Arizona Department of Corrections Work Incentive Pay Program
By David M. Reutter The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held in September 2013 that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) does not create a private right of action against state officials in their individual capacities. Anthony Washington, incarcerated at New York’s Woodbourne Correctional Facility, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
By Mark Wilson An Oregon judge has held that a prosecutor improperly seized money from a prisoner’s trust account to pay a court-ordered “compensatory fine.” In 2006, Norman Earl Schlunt was convicted of poisoning and suffocating his business partner and sentenced to life in prison. He also was ordered to pay a $20,000 “compensatory fine”
The Kansas Supreme Court reversed a prisoner’s sentence for possession of contraband – a small amount of marijuana – after it held the sentencing court misinterpreted its statutory authority by concluding it could not consider a downward departure to the presumptive criminal sentence. Prisoner Waddell Warren was convicted of introducing a controlled substance into a
By Mark Wilson On July 31, 2013, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals joined the Seventh Circuit in holding that the Heck doctrine does not bar all parole condition challenges brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. California’s Sexual Predator Punishment and Control Act of 2006 – also known as Jessica’s Law or Proposition 83 –
While the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons has done a great job of promoting itself as the global leader in the humane treatment of prisoners, the reality is that the BOP is now operating at 143 percent of capacity, and its ability to deliver services to the 215,470 men, women, and children in its
By Christopher Zoukis
Prisoners incarcerated in both federal and state correctional systems are subject to prison disciplinary codes of conduct through which they can be sanctioned for committing disciplinary code violations. Often these disciplinary processes are nothing more than a proverbial kangaroo court. The prisoner is charged with misconduct, issued an incident report (sometimes called a “Disciplinary Report” or informally known as a “Ticket” or a “Shot”), brought before a hearing body consisting of the reporting officer’s peers, found guilty of the alleged prison disciplinary code violation(s), and sanctioned for the alleged conduct. Sadly, this is not an exaggeration as the process truly is this simple, straightforward and unfortunate. There are no true judges and juries present, only a colleague or two of the reporting officers who make the guilty/not guilty determination.
With the understanding that almost every prisoner who is charged with disciplinary misconduct will be found guilty of the alleged disciplinary code violation, it is vital for prisoners to know what to do when such issues arise. They must know what steps to take before even being issued the incident report for the alleged disciplinary code violation and how to intelligently proceed through the various hearings and stages in the disciplinary process. This article strives to provide a crash course in what to do when faced with a prison disciplinary proceeding and how to slant the odds in the accused’s favor. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners have a Due Process Clause right to a fair tribunal of disciplinary matters, vesting them with certain rights, including the right to written notice of a hearing, the right to an impartial tribunal, the right to present evidence, and a written statement of the evidence and findings made at the hearing. Each prisoner should be aware of these rights and should exercise them whenever they are facing such misconduct allegations.
Tip One: Remain Silent When Charged With Inmate Misconduct
The most important rule of thumb when faced with a prison disciplinary proceeding is to remain silent. As with traditional law enforcement, prison guards investigating inmate misconduct are not the prisoner’s friends. They are not there to search for the truth. They are not impartial fact finders: their job is simply to gather evidence for a conviction of the alleged misconduct. The best way to handle such prison guards is to remain silent or to only point out facts which support an acquittal. Most prisoners acknowledge some amount of guilt when speaking with such prison investigators and really hurt their chances at a favorable outcome by doing so. By remaining silent, this potentially crippling problem can be sidestepped in its entirety. A mere “I wish to remain silent,” “I have nothing to say at this point in time,” or “I reserve the right to remain silent” is all that needs to be said when confronted with prison disciplinary proceedings.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a district court’s application of a “de minimis harm” standard in dismissing a Wisconsin detainee’s claim that he was sexually groped.
In April 2008, James Washington, Jr. was a pretrial detainee at a Wisconsin jail when a guard, John P. Hively, allegedly fondled his “testicles and penis through [his] clothing” during a pat down, “then while strip searching him fondled his nude testicles for two or three seconds.” Washington filed a federal lawsuit against Hively, who denied the allegations.
The district court granted Hively’s motion for summary judgment. The court correctly recognized that it could not resolve the factual disputes on summary judgment. However, even presuming “that the defendant grabbed the plaintiff’s genitals in a way that was not related to penological interests,” the district court found Hively was entitled to summary judgment because Washington “presented evidence of only de minimis injury” and had “suffered at most an assault and battery.”
Washington appealed and the Seventh Circuit reversed, finding that “the judge’s references to ‘de minimis injury’ and ‘assault and battery’ inappropriately invoked excessive force cases,” which hold “that ‘de minimis uses of force are non-actionable.’”
The Court of Appeals found that “an unwanted touching of a person’s private parts, intended to humiliate the victim or gratify the assailant’s sexual desires, can violate a prisoner’s constitutional rights whether or not the ‘force’ exerted by the assailant is significant.”
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