Opinion
C. A. 22-188WES
10-17-2022
TIMOTHY DEBRITTO, Plaintiff, v. PATRICIA COYNE-FAGUE, et al., Defendants.
AMENDED REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
PATRICIA A. SULLIVAN, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE.
Pro se Plaintiff Timothy DeBritto is a prisoner held in Maximum Security at Rhode Island's Adult Correctional Institutions (“ACI”) serving a forty-year sentence for Murder II with a good time release date of June 9, 2052. On May 10, 2022, he filed a complaint (ECF No. 1) on behalf of himself and two other prisoners against various Rhode Island officials alleging that, as Maximum Security prisoners, they had been denied access to vocational and rehabilitation programming in violation of their rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Plaintiff accompanied the complaint with an application to proceed in forma pauperis (“IFP”). ECF No. 2. After I issued a report and recommendation (“R+R,” ECF No. 4) finding that the complaint failed to state a viable federal claim and recommending that the case be dismissed, Plaintiff paid the filing fee, mooting his IFP motion, and filed an amended complaint. ECF No. 6.
Because he is a pro se litigant, I have leniently reviewed Plaintiff's allegations and legal claims. See Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520-521 (1972) (per curiam).
See Rhode Island v. DeBritto, Case No. P1-2013-0725CG, Judgment of Conviction (R.I. Super. Ct. Mar. 14, 2014); State of Rhode Island Department of Corrections Inmate Search, www.doc.ri.gov/inmate-search (last visited Oct. 17, 2022).
The reader's familiarity with the R+R is assumed.
In light of the Prison Litigation Reform Act's requirement that the Court must screen prisoner complaints and dismiss any claims that are frivolous, malicious or fail to state a claim without regard to whether the filing fee has been paid, 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a), (b)(1), the District Court referred the amended complaint back to me for further screening. Because the amended complaint moots the recommendation in the R+R that the original complaint should be dismissed, in response to this referral, I have screened the amended complaint and now issue this amended report and recommendation. For the reasons that follow, I find that the amended complaint still fails to state a viable federal law claim and that the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to entertain Plaintiff's state law claims. Accordingly, I renew my recommendation that the case should be dismissed.
See Barnett v. Massachusetts, Civil Action No. 13-10038-DPW, 2013 WL 210616, at *2 (D. Mass. Jan. 17, 2013) (when claimant is a prisoner, courts should “dismiss the action regardless of whether or not the plaintiff has paid the filing fee, if the complaint lacks an arguable basis in law or fact, fails to state a claim, or seeks relief from a defendant immune from such relief”).
I. Background
Plaintiff alleges that he has been held at Maximum Security since 2012 and has repeatedly tried to enroll in educational and vocational programs but has repeatedly been told that “maximum security does not provide vocational programs.” ECF No. 6 at 5, 10. As Defendants, Plaintiff names Rhode Island Governor Daniel McKee in his official capacity and four senior officials of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (“RIDOC”), Patricia Coyne-Fague, Rui Diniz, Barry Weiner and Linda Amado, in their individual and official capacities. Id. at 2-4. Plaintiff alleges that the Governor has the duty to ensure the faithful execution of the laws of Rhode Island and that the RIDOC Defendants are tasked with ensuring that every inmate has appropriate vocational and rehabilitative programs as required by state law. Id. at 6.
Citing Palmigiano v. Garrahy, 443 F.Supp. 956 (D.R.I. 1977), remanded, 599 F.2d 17 (1st Cir. 1979), Plaintiff's amended complaint is laser-focused on certain provisions of Chapter 56 of Title 42 of the Rhode Island General Laws dealing with classification and rehabilitation. ECF No. 6 at 6 (citing, inter alia, R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 42-56-1, 42-56-10, 42-56-29, 42-56-30, 4256-31). These provisions:
(1) set out the legislative finding that “[e]fforts to rehabilitate and restore criminal offenders . . . are essential to the reduction of crime,” and the legislative purpose of preparing incarcerated persons for “release, aftercare, and supervision in the community,” R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-56-1(a)(2), (b);
(2) empower RIDOC's director with establishing a system of classification that addresses each offender's individual needs for rehabilitation, R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-56-10(12);
(3) require RIDOC to have an educational and vocational training unit whose duty is “to determine the needs and the aptitude of [each person imprisoned at the ACI] to furnish the means that shall be best designed to effect the rehabilitation,” R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-56-19;
(4) require RIDOC to have security standards and to perform a risk/rehabilitation assessment at intake to determine what is “necessary and appropriate to prepare the person to become a useful member of society,” R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-56-29; and
(5) establish a classification board to make security classification and rehabilitation recommendations to RIDOC's director at intake and from time to time thereafter, R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-56-30 to 31.
Plaintiff alleges that immurement in Maximum Security where RIDOC offers no training programs amounts to a violation of these statutes. Plaintiff further claims that these state statutes give rise to a liberty interest that is protected by the Fourteen Amendment of the United States Constitution, as well as that the RIDOC's failure to comply with these statutes deprives him of his right under the Eighth Amendment to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. ECF Nos. 6; 6-1. He seeks nominal and punitive damages. ECF No. 6 at 7.
The amended complaint is supplemented by Plaintiff's “Memorandum in Support of Amended Complaint.” ECF No. 6-1. This Memorandum is a wide-ranging essay largely based on the forty-five-year-old decision of this Court in Palmigiano; indeed, significant portions of the Memorandum are drawn virtually verbatim from Palmigiano. E.g., compare ECF No. 6-1 at 1 (“The Maximum Security building is over 140 years old”), with 443 F.Supp. at 960 (“The Maximum Security Building is over 100 years old”). As applicable in the present (ignoring statements lifted verbatim from Palmigiano, which describe “current” conditions as of 1977), the Memorandum alleges only that the current RIDOC director has acknowledged that the ventilation problems in Maximum Security highlighted in Palmigiano have not been addressed although it does not supply facts regarding how this has impacted Plaintiff. ECF No. 6-1 at 2. The Memorandum is otherwise devoid of factual matter describing how or whether Plaintiff has been injured by conditions persisting to the present. Apart from quoting and paraphrasing Palmigiano, the Memorandum principally is a presentation of Plaintiff's legal arguments.
II. Standard of Review
Section 1915A of Title 28 requires a federal court to dismiss an action brought by a prisoner if the court determines, taking all allegations as true and having drawn all reasonable inferences in favor of the claimant, Vasquez-Castro v. Office of General Counsel, No. 17-1983, 2018 WL 11199005, at *1 (1st Cir. June 15, 2018), that the action is frivolous, fails to state a claim or seeks damages from a defendant with immunity. 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b)(1). The standard for dismissal of an action at screening is identical to the standard for dismissal on a motion to dismiss brought under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). See Diaz v. Rhode Island, C. A. No. 21-208-JJM-PAS, 2021 WL 200048, at *1 (D.R.I. May 19, 2021). That is, “[t]o survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted).
III. Applicable Law and Analysis
The Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause provides that a state shall not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. U.S. Const. amend. XIV. Plaintiff alleges that Defendants deprived him of a liberty interest by refusing to allow him to participate in educational and rehabilitative programming. However, it is well settled that participation in a rehabilitative or educational prison program does not implicate a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., Washington v. Borejon, 324 Fed.Appx. 741, 741 (10th Cir. 2009); Stanley v. Litscher, 213 F.3d 340, 342 (7th Cir. 2000); Fiallo v. de Batista, 666 F.2d 729, 730-32 (1st Cir. 1981). “[T]here is no federal constitutional right to rehabilitative training or treatment and as a result there is no violation of [plaintiff's] civil rights based upon such a constitutional right.” Morales Montanez v. Puerto Rico, Civil No. 08-1945 (FAB)(JA), 2009 WL 1617929, at *5 (D.P.R. May 29, 2009).
To rebut these principles, Plaintiff directs the Court to Palmigiano, arguing that it is a case in which this Court entertained a claim based on the denial of educational and rehabilitative programming. ECF No. 6-1. Plaintiff's reliance on Palmigiano is misplaced - Palmigiano does not hold that the failure to offer educational and rehabilitative programming states a claim arising under the United States Constitution or laws. Rather, Palmigiano found that other conditions then existing at the Adult Correctional Institutions were so reprehensible as to amount to constitutional violations; the Court considered the lack of programming and resulting idleness to be a contributing factor to these violations. Otherwise, Palmigiano is clear - it holds that the failure to offer educational and rehabilitative programming is a state law claim over which the Court was exercising “pendent,” not original jurisdiction. Palmigiano, 443 F.Supp. at 980 (RIDOC's failure to obey Rhode Island statutes addressing rehabilitation of offenders “is actionable as a matter of state law, and is remediable in this Court by way of pendent jurisdiction.”) (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
Nor can Plaintiff rely on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment simply because programming is not available to prisoners in Maximum Security, while prisoners classified differently, for example in Minimum Security, may access it. Such a claim fails because there is a rational basis for different treatment of inmates classified differently with respect to programing. See, e.g., Canseco v. Spearman, No. 2:17-cv-1133 DBP, 2018 WL 347794, at *6 (E.D. Cal. Jan. 9, 2018) (differing access to programing by prisoners with differing security classifications “fails[s] to state an Equal Protection claim upon which relief may be granted”); Linton v. O'Brien, 142 F.Supp.3d 215, 219-20 (D. Mass. 2015) (dismissing equal protection claim based on denial of programs to prisoners in disciplinary unit; where “DOC has limited resources to allocate to rehabilitative educational programs, and there is a rational basis for its different treatment of inmates in” the disciplinary unit, “Court will not use the Equal Protection Clause to second-guess the DOC's policy decisions”). Plaintiff's Eighth Amendment claim based on the denial of access to programs is equally without merit. Moore v. Weeden, C. A. No. 09-434 S, 2010 WL 737655, at *4 (D.R.I. Mar. 1, 2010) (“to the extent that plaintiff may be claiming that the failure to provide him access to rehabilitative programming amounts to a deprivation of essential treatment in violation of the Eighth Amendment, he is mistaken”); Quinones v. Miner, No. CA 06-136 T, 2006 WL 1371645, at *5 (D.R.I. May 18, 2006) (denial of access to rehabilitative programs does not constitute denial of basic human need and cannot provide a basis for a constitutional claim under the Eighth Amendment), adopted, No. CA 06136 T, ECF No. 5 (D.R.I. May 18, 2006).
In his Memorandum, Plaintiff argues that, as a claimant alleging that he has been deprived of a state-created liberty interest, he may “invoke” the Fourteenth Amendment. ECF No. 6-1 at 5. However, it is well settled that a state-created liberty interest gives rise to a claim arising under of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment only when a state has placed a constitutionally flawed substantive limit on the exercise of official discretion. Forbes v. Wall, C. A. No. 14-322-ML, 2015 WL 4663551, at *4 (D.R.I. Aug. 6, 2015). Plaintiffs amended complaint does not rest on substantive limits imposed on the RIDOC's exercise of official discretion regarding how to implement the requirements of Chapter 56 of Title 42. Therefore, this argument is unavailing. See, e.g., Griffin v. N.H. Dep't of Corr., No. 17-CV-194-PB, 2017 WL 4404400, at *3 (D.N.H. Sept. 21, 2017) (“state-created liberty interest in parole [is not] protected by the Fourteenth Amendment”), adopted sub nom. Griffin v. NH Dep't of Corr., 2017 WL 4402395 (D.N.H. Oct. 1, 2017); Ventre v. Forgues, Civil Action No. 11-40205-TSH, 2013 WL 597643, at *4 (D. Mass. Feb. 14, 2013) (constitutional claim arises under due process clause of Fourteenth Amendment only when state action imposes atypical and significant hardship; “[p]rison programs and employment are discretionary opportunities and plaintiff cannot argue that he has legitimate entitlement to such opportunities”) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Confirming that Plaintiff's arguments fail to save his amended complaint are pertinent decisions of this Court, for example, dismissing for failure to state a claim based on the United States Constitution the allegation inter alia of injury caused by the “lack of programming, meaningful jobs and recreation, leading to monotony and idleness” in violation of R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 42-56-1, etseq. Defusco v. Moran, Civ. A. No. 89-0135L, 1990 WL 17159, at *1-2 (D.R.I. Feb. 14, 1990); see Letourneau v. Wall, C. A. No. 12-848-M, 2013 WL 2181294, at *3-4 (D.R.I. May 20, 2013) (“Rhode Island has not enacted any statute or regulation that gives rise to any statutory inmate liberty interest in its prison-inmate classification system.”) (quoting Bishop v. State, 667 A.2d 275, 278 (R.I.1995)). Nor can Plaintiff rely on Palmigiano itself as the foundation for a federal cause of action. As this Court held in subsequent proceedings in Palmigiano, it was dismissed by stipulation in July 1995 based on RIDOC's substantial compliance with the terms of a settlement between the parties, which terminated the Court's jurisdiction over the case. Palmigiano v. Sundlun, 482 F.Supp.2d 207, 208-16 (D.R.I. 2007).
Based on foregoing, I find that none of Plaintiff's federal claims are viable and all should be dismissed. See Ashker v. Schwarzenegger, No. C 05-03286 CW, 2009 WL 801557, at *19-20 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 25, 2009) (“summary judgment is granted in favor of [d]efendants on the due process and equal protection claims based on lack of access to programs”), affd, 465 Fed.Appx. 718 (9th Cir. 2012).
In addition to invoking the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, Plaintiff rests his amended complaint on Rhode Island law, alleging that Defendants' failure to provide rehabilitative programming constitutes a breach of the contract formed when Palmigiano was settled, as well as that this conduct violates the provisions the Rhode Island law cited above. To support his assertion that these state law claims may be pursued in federal court, echoing Palmigiano, 443 F.Supp. at 980, Plaintiff invokes the Court's “pendent jurisdiction,” ECF No. 61 at 8, which the Court interprets as reliance on supplemental jurisdiction as codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1367.
The problem with Plaintiff's argument is that supplemental jurisdiction pursuant to § 1367(a) is available only if the Court has original jurisdiction over related federal question claims. That is not true for this case because Plaintiff's Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment claims are not independently viable. With no viable claim arising under federal law and no diversity of citizenship, see ECF No. 6-3, between the parties, the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over Plaintiff's state law claims. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1332; Randall v. Brosco, C. A. No. 18-69WES, 2018 WL 3133427, at *1 (D.R.I. Mar. 19, 2018) (“complaint . . . dismissed because the Court lacks jurisdiction to consider a state law claim asserted by one citizen of Rhode Island against another”), adopted, 2018 WL 3128988 (D.R.I. June 26, 2018). These claims too must be dismissed, albeit without prejudice.
While these deficiencies are fatal and sufficient to require dismissal of the case, I pause to note that a significant difference between the original complaint and the amended complaint is the appended Memorandum, which vaguely adverts to an array of conditions existing forty-five years ago. This Memorandum entirely lacks facts explaining why Plaintiff has a claim of constitutional dimensions as to these conditions against the named Defendants arising in the three-year period leading up to his filing of this case in May 2022. To that extent, it fails to meet the standard that a pleading must comply with Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a), which requires that it must “give the defendant fair notice of what the . . . claim is and the grounds upon which it rests,” Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 554, 555 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted), and must “set forth minimal facts as to who did what to whom, when, where and why.” Educadores Puertorriquenos en Accion v. Hernandez, 367 F.3d 61, 68 (1st Cir. 2004). With no facts plausibly describing the allegedly actionable (under the United States Constitution or federal law) conduct or omissions committed by the named Defendants that inflicted injury on Plaintiff, this portion of the amended complaint fails to meet the plausibility standard set by the Supreme Court in Twombly and Iqbal. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 666, 687 (“complaint alleging] that [officials named] adopted an unconstitutional policy that subjected respondent to harsh conditions of confinement” dismissed for failure “to plead sufficient facts to state a claim for purposeful and unlawful discrimination against [each of them]”). Mindful that Plaintiff has already been afforded an opportunity to cure these deficiencies by the amendment that the Court allowed after the issuance of the R+R, I recommend that the amended complaint should be summarily dismissed.
The applicable statute of limitations for constitutional claims brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983 is three years. Sevegny v. Rhode Island Dep't of Corr., C. A. No. 22-271WES, 2022 WL 2982464, at *3 (D.R.I. July 28, 2022), appeal docketed, No. 22-1722 (1st Cir. Sept. 22, 2022).
IV. Conclusion
Based on the foregoing analysis, I recommend that Plaintiff's amended complaint (ECF No. 6) be summarily DISMISSED for failure to state any legally viable claims arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States and (without prejudice) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction to consider Plaintiff's state law claims. Any objection to this report and recommendation must be specific and must be served and filed with the Clerk of the Court within fourteen (14) days of its receipt. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 72(b)(2); DRI LR Cv 72(d). Failure to file specific objections in a timely manner constitutes waiver of the right to review by the district judge and the right to appeal the Court's decision. See United States v. Lugo Guerrero, 524 F.3d 5, 14 (1st Cir. 2008); Park Motor Mart, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 616 F.2d 603, 605 (1st Cir. 1980).