United States District Court, D. Connecticut
INITIAL REVIEW ORDER REGARDING AMENDED
COMPLAINT
Stefan
R. Underhill United States District Judge
Garland
Knight (“Knight”), currently confined at
MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield,
Connecticut, filed this complaint pro se under 42
U.S.C. § 1983 for violating his rights under the Eighth
and Fourteenth Amendments and the Double Jeopardy Clause.
Before the court could complete the initial review of the
Complaint, Knight filed an Amended Complaint. The named
defendants in the Amended Complaint are the Municipality of
the Department of Correction (“DOC”),
Commissioner Scott Semple (“Semple”), Director of
Offender Classification and Population Management David Maiga
(“Maiga”), Warden Faucher
(“Faucher”), Counselor Supervisor D. Doran
(“Doran”), Counselor Supervisor Iooizia
(“Iooizia”), Hearing Officer Forest
(“Forest”), Correctional Counselor D. Crane
(“Crane”), and Second Staff Witness on the C11
Form Jane or John Doe (“Doe”). Classification
Committee Member Dumas was named in the Complaint but not the
Amended Complaint. Thus, the court considers any claims
against Dumas to have been withdrawn.
Under
section 1915A of Title 28 of the United States Code, I must
review prisoner civil complaints and dismiss any portion of
the complaint that is frivolous or malicious, that fails to
state a claim upon which relief may be granted, or that seeks
monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such
relief. 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. Although detailed allegations
are not required, the complaint must include sufficient facts
to afford the defendants fair notice of the claims and the
grounds upon which they are based and to demonstrate a
plausible right to relief. Bell Atlantic v. Twombly,
550 U.S. 544, 555-56 (2007). Conclusory allegations are not
sufficient. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678
(2009). The plaintiff must plead “enough facts to state
a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.”
Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570. Nevertheless, it is
well-established that “[p]ro se
complaints ‘must be construed liberally and interpreted
to raise the strongest arguments that they
suggest.'” Sykes v. Bank of Am., 723 F.3d
399, 403 (2d Cir. 2013) (quoting Triestman v. Fed. Bureau
of Prisons, 470 F.3d 471, 474 (2d Cir. 2006)); see
also Tracy v. Freshwater, 623 F.3d 90, 101-02 (2d Cir.
2010) (discussing special rules of solicitude for pro
se litigants).
I.
Allegations
On
January 16, 2018, Knight was sentenced to a term of
imprisonment of seven years, execution suspended after two
years, to be followed by three years of probation. He was
admitted to the Connecticut Department of Correction at
Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Institution. ECF No. 11 at 8,
¶ 1. On January 18, 2018, Knight received his Offender
Accountability Plan instructing him to obtain a job and
referring him to addiction services. He also received a
Classification Review Sheet showing his overall level was 2.
Id., ¶ 2.
On
January 25, 2018, Doran told Knight that a hearing had been
scheduled on January 29, 2018, to determine whether Knight
should have a sexual treatment needs score based on
non-conviction information. Id., ¶ 3. At the
hearing before the Classification Committee, Knight was asked
to comment on a 17-year-old police report. Knight denied the
allegations in the report. Id., ¶ 4. On January
31, 2018, the Classification Committee assigned Knight a
sexual treatment needs score of 3. His Offender
Accountability Plan was revised and Knight was transferred to
Brooklyn Correctional Institution, a facility specializing in
sex offender treatment. Id. at 8-9, ¶ 5.
On
February 3, 2018, Knight appealed the classification
decision. Id. at 9, ¶ 6. On February 5, 2018,
he attended orientation at Brooklyn Correctional Institution.
Id., ¶ 7. Knight's appeal was denied on
March 2, 2018. Id., ¶ 9 & ECF No. 1-1 at
11.
II.
Analysis
In the
Complaint, Knight argued that the use of a police report that
did not result in a conviction for sexual offenses to raise
his sexual treatment needs score violated his constitutional
rights. He alleged that the defendants denied him due process
as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and were
deliberately indifferent to his liberty interest under the
Eighth Amendment. He also contended that use of the police
report has subjected him to double jeopardy by punishing him
for a charge that was nolled in state court. Knight stated
that he has named Commissioner Semple as a defendant because
he is the “overseer of the Department of
Correction.” ECF No. 1 at 6. All other individuals have
initiated, implemented or upheld the practice of using
non-conviction police reports to determine sexual treatment
needs scores.
In the
Amended Complaint, Knight states that, in addition to the
claims in the Complaint, he intends to challenge the
classification manual policy as violating his rights under
the Eighth Amendment and Double Jeopardy Clause and as
violating of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A.
Due Process
Knight's
Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment claims in the Complaint
actually are one claim, that the change in classification
violated his right to due process of the law. To assert a due
process challenge to a classification decision, Knight must
show that he had a protected liberty interest in remaining
free from the classification and, if he has such an interest,
that the defendants deprived him of the interest without
affording him due process of law. See Walker v.
Fischer, 523 Fed.Appx. 43, 44 (2d Cir. 2013) (citing
Giano v. Selsky, 238 F.3d 223, 225 (2d Cir. 2001)).
The
Second Circuit has held that, if improper classification has
a stigmatizing effect, it can implicate a constitutional
liberty interest. See Vega v. Lantz, 596, F.3d 77,
81-82 (2d Cir. 2010). Vega was challenging his assignment of
a sex treatment needs score of “3, ” id.
at 80, the same score assigned to Knight. Vega argued that
his classification violated his right to due process because
he was classified as a sex offender even though he had not
been convicted of a sexual offense. He argued that the
misclassification “deprived him of a federal
constitutional liberty interest in not being falsely
stigmatized and a state-created liberty interest in not being
labeled as a sex offender absent a criminal
conviction.” Id.
The
Second Circuit considered Vega's claim as a
constitutional defamation claim. The court noted that,
although defamation usually is considered a state-law claim,
defamation by government officials may, under certain
circumstances, rise to constitutional dimension. Id.
at 81 (citing Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 701-10
(1976)). To state a constitutional claim, the plaintiff must
“demonstrate ‘a stigmatizing statement plus a
...