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Home My WebLink About94-0103 MiscellaneousANTHONY MARTIN, : IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS OF - Petitioner : CUMBERLAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA : V. : JOSEPH D. LEHMAN, : COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTIONS, : JEFFREY A. BEARD, Ph.D, : SUPERINTENDENT OF SCIC, : Respondents : 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS IN RE: AMENDED PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS AD SUBJICIENDUM BEFORE OLER, J. ORDER OF COURT AND NOW, this ~day of November, 1994, upon consideration of the Petitioner's amended petition for writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, following a hearing and for the reasons stated in the accompanying Opinion, the petition is DENIED. BY THE COURT, ,/, .::? ~ichael ~. $cherer, ~sq. Court-appointed ~ttorney for ~et±tioner ~ark E. Guzzi, Esq. Assistant Counsel Department of Corrections P.O. Box 598 2520 Lisburn Road Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598 Attorney for Respondents :rc ANTHONY MARTIN, : IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS OF - Petitioner : CUMBERLAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA V. JOSEPH D. LEHMAN, : COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTIONS, : JEFFREY A. BEARD, Ph.D, : SUPERINTENDENT OF SCIC, : Respondents : 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS IN RE: AMENDED PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS AD SUBJICIENDUM BEFORE OLER, J. OPINION and ORDER OF COURT Oler, J. This habeas corpus ad subjiciendum case~ arises out of Petitioner's confinement in the Special Management Unit (SMU) at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. A hearing on the petition, as amended, was held on Friday, October 28, 1994. At the hearing, Petitioner testified that authorities at the SMU were poisoning his food and beverages and otherwise attempting to cause his death because of his religion. He requested relief in the form of a transfer to another prison. For the reasons stated in this Opinion, Petitioner's petition ~ "Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum" is defined as "[a] writ directed to the person detaining another, and commanding him to produce the body of the prisoner, (or person detained,) with the day and cause of his caption and detention, ad faciendum, subjiciendum et recipiendum, to do, submit to, and receive whatsoever the judge or court awarding the writ shall consider in that behalf." Black's Law Dictionary 837 (6th ed. 1990). "This is the well-known remedy for deliverance from illegal confinement, called by Sir William Blackstone the most celebrated writ in the English law, and the great and efficacious writ in all manner of illegal confinement." Id. 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS must be denied. STATEMENT OF FACTS The Petitioner is Anthony Martin, an inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Respondents are Department of Corrections officials. Petitioner was transferred in 1993 to the Camp Hill institution from the State Correctional Institution at Dallas, where he was said to have accumulated 47 Class I misconducts and "multiple" Class II infractions.2 In recommending Petitioner's transfer from SCI-Dallas, the superintendent at Dallas made the following observations, inter alia: The majority of these misconducts [at Dallas] consisted of assault or fighting, threatening a staff member, disruption with security and running of the institution, and using abusive language to an employee. There is also one infraction for indecent exposure .... The Program Review Committee is recommending a transfer of Anthony Martin to the SMU Prototype based on his continuous and past violent behavior while housed in the Restricted Housing Unit. His horrendous misconduct record and his acting out with his violence toward staff is relentless. Anthony Martin becomes explosive both physically and verbally at times which makes him unpredictable at any moment. He has assaulted exercise crew personnel, as well as other inmates in the Restricted Housing Unit at this Respondents' Exhibit 1. 2 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS facility. He has a history of violence and the Program Review Committee at SCI-Dallas- recommends his placement at Level V in the SMU at Camp Hill.3 Since arriving at Camp Hill, Petitioner has accumulated at least five additional misconducts, with the result that his disciplinary custody status is not scheduled to expire until January of 1995. On December 15, 1993, Petitioner filed a pro se "Writ of Habeas Corpus ad Subjicendum [sic]," requesting an order "dismissing and discharging relator from ... cruel and unusual punishment and illegal confinement being inflicted on his body, mind and person and enforce the laws that protect relator under the Constitutional amendments of the United States."4 Petitioner, through court-appointed counsel, filed an amended petition on October 7, 1994, and on October 18, 1994, Respondents filed an answer to the amended petition. At the hearing on the amended petition on October 28, 1994, both Petitioner and Respondents presented evidence. ~ Id. Level V in the SMU at Camp Hill is the disciplinary custody phase of the SMU program. Petitioner was thus transferred from disciplinary custody at Dallas to disciplinary custody at Camp Hill. 4 Counsel was appointed for Petitioner on December 21, 1993, by the Honorable Edgar B. Bayley. Respondents filed preliminary objections to Petitioner's petition on January 31, 1994. Petitioner requested a hearing on August 12, 1994, on his petition, and a hearing was accordingly scheduled. On October 7, 1994, Petitioner was granted the right to file an amended petition, rendering moot the preliminary objections filed to the initial petition. 3 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS Petitioner testified that authorities at the Camp Hill State Correctional Institution were attempting to murder him by means of poison, in the form of a clear liquid placed in his food and a brown powdery substance contained in, inter alia, his coffee. A small sample of a brown powdery substance which he testified he had collected from his coffee was admitted as an exhibit. Petitioner stated that these toxic substances made him ill and that several inmates with whom he shared his food also became ill. He testified that since arriving at the Camp Hill institution from Dallas his weight had droPped from 190 pounds to 120 pounds. Petitioner attributed the attempt by authorities to murder him to a desire to punish Muslims for their alleged involvement in a Camp Hill prison riot occurring in 1989. He had not, however, himself been at the Camp Hill institution during the time of the riot. Petitioner also testified and/or asserted in his amended petition that his confinement at the SMU was being prolonged by fabricated or exaggerated misconduct reports, that he was not being seen by medical personnel on a regular basis, that his prison records were being altered, and that he had not been afforded a proper administrative custody hearing when he was transferred from Dallas to the SMU at Camp Hill. He stated that the relief he was seeking was a transfer to another prison. On behalf of Respondents, Arthur J. Auxer, III, the unit manager of the SMU at Camp Hill, testified. He disputed on a 4 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS factual basis the various contentions of Petitioner, pointing out, inter alia, that according to Petitioner's records from Dallas he had weighed 122 pounds at that institution prior to his transfer to Camp Hill. He testified that Petitioner had not appealed any of his misconduct penalties at the SMU through the administrative procedures provided, and had declined to appear for a hearing on a grievance he had filed with respect to his food. Mr. Auxer stated that the SMU had been successful in returning about 25% of its inmates to general population within the institution. Some of those returned, according to his testimony, were Muslims. The Court finds the testimony of Mr. Auxer to have been credible. The allegations of Petitioner, while quite possibly sincerely advanced by him, are not found to have been similarly persuasive. STATEMENT OF LAW "A writ of habeas corpus is an extraordinary measure that is only granted where no relief exists or after other options have been exhausted or have proven to be ineffectual or nonexistent. Furthermore, habeas corpus is not appropriate where a problem is susceptible to correction or alleviation by recourse to prison officials' administrative procedures." Clifford v. Freeman, 40 Cumberland L.J. 137, 138-39 (1989) (Sheely, P.J.) (citations omitted). On the other hand, "[t]here is no question that a habeas corpus petition is available to challenge prison conditions 5 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS constituting cruel and unusual conditions." Id. at 139. In general, the assignment of prisoners among the state correctional institutions is not a matter which courts have interfered in. See, e.g., Clifford v. Freeman, 40 Cumberland L.J. 137 (1989) (request for transfer from State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill to another prison declined on jurisdictional grounds). Under regulations promulgated by the Department of Corrections, "[n]o inmate shall have a right to be housed in a particular institution or in a particular area within an institution." 37 Pa. Code §93.11. There is not, as a general rule, a constitutional right to a hearing prior to a prisoner's transfer from one state prison to another. Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 96 S. Ct. 2532, 49 L. Ed. 2d 451 (1976).~ Nor do Pennsylvania regulations require that a ~ In Meachum, the Supreme Court stated as follows: [T]he Due Process Clause [does not] in and of itself protect a duly convicted prisoner against transfer from one institution to another within the state prison system. Confinement in any of the State's institutions is within the normal limits or range of custody which the conviction has authorized the State to impose. That life in one prison is much more disagreeable than in another does not in itself signify that a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest is implicated when a prisoner is transferred to the institution with the more severe rules. Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 225, 96 S. Ct. 2532, __, 49 L. Ed. 2d 451, 459 (1976). 6 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS hearing be held prior to the transfer of a prisoner from disciplinary custody status at one state prison to disciplinary custody status in the SMU at Camp Hill. Commonwealth ex rel. Price v. Lehman, No. 94-0107 Miscellaneous Term (Cumberland Co. July 19, 1994); cf. Thompson v. Lehman, No. 94-0104 Miscellaneous Term (Cumberland Co. September 22, 1994) (Bayley, J.) (transfer of prisoner on administrative custody status to SMU at Camp Hill). APPLICATION OF LAW TO FACTS In the present case, an application of the principles of law recited above to the facts as found by the Court militates against granting Petitioner's request for a transfer to another prison or awarding sua sponte some other form of relief. First, transfers within the state prison system are generally regarded as within the province of prison officials. Second, Petitioner's confinement within the SMU at Camp Hill has not been shown to be illegal - either in the sense that it occurred without a necessary hearing or that the conditions of incarceration are cruel and unusual. Finally, Petitioner has failed to pursue or exhaust his administrative remedies with respect to misconduct determinations and the condition of his food and beverages.6 For these reasons, the following Order will be entered: 6 Nothing herein is intended to represent a holding that, in the presence of credible evidence of an attempt by prison authorities to murder a prisoner through poison, a failure of the prisoner to pursue a grievance with those officials would be dispositive of his or her right to relief. 7 94-103 MISCELLANEOUS ORDER OF COURT AND NOW, this ~ day of November, 1994, upon consideration of the Petitioner's amended petition for writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, following a hearing and for the reasons stated in the accompanying Opinion, the petition is DENIED. BY THE COURT, s/ J. Wesley Oler, Jr. J. Wesley Oler, Jr., J. Michael A. Scherer, Esq. Court-appointed Attorney for Petitioner Mark E. Guzzi, Esq. Assistant Counsel Department of Corrections P.O. Box 598 2520 Lisburn Road Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598 Attorney for Respondents :rc 8