Habeas Relief – Due Process Violation

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Roscoe Chambers v. Andrew Ciolli, Warden

Case No.: 21-1485; 21-1486

Officials: ROVNER, SCUDDER, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Habeas Relief – Due Process Violation

Roscoe Chambers, a federal prisoner, appeals the denial of two petitions for a writ of habeas corpus, see 28 U.S.C. § 2241, asserting that he was denied due process in prison disciplinary hearings. The district court in both cases found that Chambers received the process he was due. Because the issues presented in the two appeals are similar, we have consolidated them for disposition and affirm.

Both of Chambers’s petitions concern his loss of good-time credit arising out of incidents that occurred during a six-month period between 2018 and 2019 at his prior facility, the United States Penitentiary Lewisburg in Pennsylvania. In the first case (No. 19-cv 50247), Chambers was disciplined with the loss of 41 days for refusing a prison guard’s instructions to provide a urine sample, disobeying a staff member’s order, and acting with insolence towards the staff member. After an initial hearing before a Unit Disciplinary Committee, the charges were referred to a disciplinary hearing officer who determined that Chambers had committed the infraction. The officer credited the account of the reporting guard over Chambers’s testimony that he never was asked for a urine sample and that this could be confirmed by surveillance video showing that the guard did not have a urine specimen cup while approaching his cell.

In both appeals, Chambers presses similar arguments to those that he raised in the district court. For substantially the same reasons, we agree with the district court’s analysis. Federal courts must affirm prison disciplinary decisions if they are supported by “some evidence,” Superintendent, Mass. Corr. Inst., Walpole v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 455 (1985), and the district court was right that the incident reports sufficed to clear that low bar. Further, the court was correct that prison officials may deny access to witnesses whose testimony would be irrelevant. See Pannell v. McBride, 306 F.3d 499, 503 (7th Cir. 2002). The court also appropriately concluded that the record in the second case lacked any evidence of bias. Chambers’s remaining arguments are frivolous.

Chambers, a frequent litigant, is warned that he risks monetary sanctions if he continues to repeat in future cases these arguments that we have found to be frivolous. See Alexander v. United States, 121 F.3d 312, 315–16 (7th Cir. 1997).

Affirmed

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Derek A Hawkins is Corporate Counsel, at Salesforce.