Wilkinson V. Austin - Opinion of The Court

Opinion of The Court

The Court first had to decide whether the prison inmates had a protected liberty interest in avoiding placement in OSP. In the Sixth Circuit, Ohio had taken the position that they did not. In the Supreme Court, however, Ohio conceded that they did. Of its own force, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not guarantee that state prisoners will not be placed in more restrictive conditions of confinement. However, individual state procedural guarantees may give rise to a protected liberty interest, as the Court had held in Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472 (1995). In Conner, the Court held that a protected liberty interest can arise only after examining the "ordinary incidents of prison life". Short periods of administrative segregation imposed as punishment for violating prison rules thus did not implicate a liberty interest, because inmates in the general population experience periods of lockdown, the degree of confinement in administrative segregation was not excessive, and the duration of the segregation period was not disruptive to the inmate's environment.

The Court did not find it necessary to define what the "ordinary incidents" of prison life were, vis-à-vis confinement in Supermax conditions, for "assignment to OSP imposes an atypical and significant hardship under any plausible baseline." Prisoners in OSP are forbidden "almost all human contact". They may not converse with each other from cell to cell. Lights are on 24 hours a day, though for some periods of time the light is dimmed. Inmates are allowed only one hour of exercise per day, in a small indoor room. These circumstances may be common to mere administrative segregation; however, unlike the administrative segregation considered in Conner, placement at OSP was for an indefinite period of time, and such placement rendered an inmate ineligible for parole. The Court found that the combination of these two sets of conditions rose to the level of an "atypical and significant hardship within the correctional context", and hence gave rise to a liberty interest in avoiding placement in OSP. This is so despite any purported necessity of controlling the danger posed by high-risk inmates.

Having found a liberty interest in avoiding placement in OSP, the Court went on to consider whether Ohio afforded its inmates the required procedural protections. The particular protections required emerged from a three-part balancing test first articulated in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976). The three factors are (1) the private interest affected by the official action, (2) the risk of an erroneous deprivation by the procedures used, and the marginal value of any increased protections, and (3) the burden on the government that adding those increased protections would impose. After weighing these factors, the Court concluded that Ohio afforded its inmates the requisite procedures. The interest in avoiding assignment to a Supermax facility must be "evaluated... within the context of the prison system and its attendant curtailment of liberties." Ohio afforded inmates notice that it was considering placing them in OSP and a fair opportunity for rebuttal; this was consistent with the procedural protections afforded in other prison administration contexts. Furthermore, Ohio's requirement that it explain the factual basis for the classification review and offer the inmate an opportunity for rebuttal "safeguards against the inmate being mistaken for another or being singled out for insufficient reason". At each of the three levels, the reviewing administrator can decline to recommend OSP placement, at which point the process terminates. The Court found this arrangement preferable to Ohio's former system, under which inmates were sometimes placed in OSP without any explanation at all. Because the inmate will always have an explanation of the reasons for recommended OSP placement, he will always have something to argue against when he proceeds to the next level of review or comes up for his next suitability hearing.

The third prong of Mathews addresses the burden on the state; in the prison context, this factor is a dominant consideration. Prison security, particularly the management of prison gangs, "provides the backdrop of the State's interest". As the State of California pointed out in an amicus brief, "clandestine, organized, fueled by race-based hostility, and committed to fear and violence as a means of disciplining their own and their rivals, gangs seek nothing less than to control prison life and to extend their power outside prison walls." Testifying against a member of the gang can bring swift, lethal retribution. And because many heinous gang members are serving life sentences, the ordinary deterrent of a prison sentence for new crimes is diminished.

Furthermore, prison is an expensive proposition. Ohio spends nearly $35,000 to house one inmate in a maximum security prison for one year, and over $49,000 to house an inmate at OSP for the same period of time. The prison system can devote its scarce resources to Supermax prisons for some dangerous inmates, or it can spend money on vocational and rehabilitative programs for inmates whose prospects are better. Courts should "give substantial deference to prison management decisions before mandating additional expenditures for elaborate procedural safeguards when correctional officers conclude that a prisoner has engaged in disruptive behavior". In light of the danger to potential witnesses on behalf of candidates for OSP placement, particularly the difficulty in predicting when certain inmate-witnesses will be the targets of reprisal from gangs, the Court concluded that allowing the inmate to call witnesses to testify at a classification hearing was not required by due process.

Finally, after balancing the Mathews factors, the Court concluded that Ohio's procedure for assigning inmates to OSP is adequate to safeguard an inmate's liberty interest in avoiding being sent there. The state was not directly trying to take away credit toward a sentence that an inmate had already earned, an action that requires greater procedural safeguards. The heavy reliance on the expertise of prison administrators also supported the conclusion that Ohio's procedures were adequate.