Saunders v. Warden, FCI-Sandstone

Background

Andre Saunders, appearing without a lawyer, was incarcerated at FCI-Sandstone. In January 2018, staff at FCI-Morgantown found a cell phone underneath a broom. Forensic analysis showed outgoing messages, including one sent to a number associated only with Saunders’s prison telephone account.

In June 2018, Saunders was charged with possessing a cell phone, which the Bureau of Prisons treats as a hazardous tool. He received the incident report and information about his rights. The Unit Disciplinary Committee referred the charge to a Discipline Hearing Officer (DHO). Saunders initially indicated that he did not want witnesses or a staff representative, but he later asked another inmate, identified as GT, to testify. GT said he had used the phone to contact the number and did not know Saunders had the number in his contact list.

The DHO considered the testimony and documents, found Saunders and GT not credible, and concluded that Saunders possessed the phone. Among other sanctions, the DHO revoked 41 days of Saunders’s good-conduct time.

Petition and Report and Recommendation

Saunders filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, a procedure allowing a prisoner to challenge the legality of custody or the loss of good-conduct time. He argued that the DHO’s decision was not supported by “some evidence,” the minimum evidentiary support required for a prison disciplinary decision under Superintendent, Mass. Corr. Inst., Walpole v. Hill. Saunders argued that the DHO relied on subjective and speculative information, and that the phone’s connection to his account was insufficient.

Magistrate Judge David T. Schultz recommended denying the petition. He concluded that an evidentiary hearing was unnecessary because the relevant facts were not disputed and the record was sufficient. He also concluded that the message sent to a number associated only with Saunders’s prison account was circumstantial evidence from which the DHO could rationally infer that Saunders possessed the phone. The magistrate judge explained that habeas review does not permit the court to reweigh evidence or reassess witness credibility.

Court’s Analysis

Judge Nelson reviewed de novo the portions of the recommendation to which Saunders objected. The court rejected Saunders’s request for an evidentiary hearing because he did not dispute that staff found the phone or that the number in the phone’s sent messages was associated only with his prison account. His dispute concerned the inference drawn from those facts, not the underlying facts themselves.

The court also rejected Saunders’s argument that he was raising only an evidence-sufficiency issue rather than a due-process claim. The court treated his challenge to the evidentiary support for the disciplinary decision as a challenge to a procedural safeguard protecting due-process rights.

Applying the “some evidence” standard, the court held that it did not need to decide whether Saunders actually possessed the phone or whether the DHO’s conclusion was the most persuasive one. The question was whether some evidence supported a rational inference that he possessed it. The court found that the phone’s message to a number associated only with Saunders’s prison account met that low threshold, even though another conclusion could have been drawn and the evidence was circumstantial.

Disposition

The court denied Saunders’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, adopted Magistrate Judge Schultz’s Report and Recommendation in its entirety, and overruled Saunders’s objections. The court ordered judgment to be entered accordingly.