No due process claim for inmate who claims his disciplinary hearing was rigged against him

Inmates have constitutional rights, but their constitutional rights are fewer once they enter the prison, which has security concerns to balance out the right of due process and other protections. This inmate learns that the hard way.

The case is Baltas v. Jones, issued on December 15. Plaintiff says that the jailers began issuing false disciplinary complaints against him, landing him in the restrictive housing unit (RHU). When he was about to be released from RHU, a Captain emailed two other correction officers asking what are we going to do about this inmate, as he may be leaving RHU the next day. One CO, Jones, said they did not want him in the G-unit because there were too many inmates placed there. Jones then sent an email to other officers asking that plaintiff be processed for CD, which is restrictive housing for inmates who receive too many disciplinary notices and pose a safety risk in the jail. A CD hearing ensued and the hearing officer found that plaintiff had 64 different infractions on his record. Plaintiff wound up in CD.

This due process claim asserts that the hearing result was planned in advance, in violation of due process. He claims that a jail official admitted during the hearing that he had been ordered in advance to recommend plaintiff for CD. Sounds like a great due process case, right? A pre-ordained result means the plaintiff did not get a fair shake at the hearing.

Plaintiff loses the case. Yes, he had due process rights. But the Prison Litigation Reform Act, enacted in the mid-1990s, requires inmates to file an internal grievance prior to any lawsuit. This gives the jail a chance to correct the problem, or at least investigate the issue so it can create a record that might prove useful in court. In his grievances at the time of the hearing, plaintiff did assert a due process violation. He wrote that the outcome of the hearing was a foregone conclusion. But the Court of Appeals (Jacobs and Kearse) holds that plaintiff's grievance was not specific enough: he failed to assert that the outcome of the hearing was predetermined in the literal sense that the hearing officer was powerless to reach any other outcome beyond confinement to CD. He did not claim in the grievance what he claimed in federal court: that the hearing officer was simply doing what his boss told him to do. Plaintiff should have asserted in the grievance that the hearing officer was a pawn. This ruling imposes a strict specificity requirement guiding inmate grievances.  

Judge Lohier dissents, writing that the court has recognized a liberal grievance pleading standard under the PLRA, allowing for unsophisticated inmates to process their claims in-house before filing suit in court. Lohier finds the grievance here was enough to alert prison officials that the hearing denied him due process because he did not receive proper notice prior to the hearing, the hearing officer introduced false information during the hearing, and officers orchestrated the disciplinary allegations in advance to transfer him out of the facility or placement on restricted status. "Fairly read, Baltas's allegations at the very least suggest a broader, structural claim that 'Calderon was powerless to reach any other outcome' and that prison officials had conspired to create a rigged hearing without meaningful procedural protections."