Due process for the reviled, Part II

Even the reviled have due process rights. The Court of Appeals holds that a notorious New York inmate may prevail on his due process claim after the New York corrections system kept him in solitary confinement following an arguably thoughtless series of reviews over whether to keep him locked up this way.

The case is Walker v. Bellnier, issued on July 25. The record shows this inmate will spend the rest of his life in prison, as the crimes that landed him in jail were brutal, and he continued to assault people inside jail. He is considered one of the most dangerous inmates in New York. So he was placed in solitary confinement for a 14-year period, ending in 2014. We call that process Disciplinary Segregation. Under the rules, the prison system may keep him locked up as such based on future predictive behavior. Under that process, he remains in solitary through 2022, when he was transferred to a different facility.

The problem, as the majority sees it, is that case law requires the prison to conduct a meaningful review of the plaintiff's eligibility for continued solitary confinement. The Court of Appeals (Carney and Robinson, with Menashi in dissent) cites studies showing how this lockup can adversely affect the mental health of inmates and cause severe psychiatric symptoms. Even conservative Supreme Court justices have said this. Other Supreme Court cases therefore require due process to ensure the inmate really belongs there, and officials must undertake periodic reviews to determine whether an inmate remains a security risk.

The majority says the record permits the finding that the prison system was just going through the motions in repeatedly finding that plaintiff belongs in solitary confinement even though it has been decades since his last violent attack and his prison record has improved over time. "Yet in every review since 2014, DOCCS officials used the same words in their assessments and offered no analysis of Walker's current possible inclination to violence, concluding -- to all appearances, inevitably -- that he posed a threat to the safety and security of the facility and must remain" in administrative segregation.

This is a complex case which took the Court of appeals more than 2.5 years to resolve. We have a lengthy dissent from Judge Menashi. The Second Circuit is not saying that plaintiff must win his case. It is saying he can win his case on this record. The case returns to the Northern District of New York for factfinding on this issue.