South Carolina Lawyers Weekly
Where an inmate claimed that prison officials violated the Eighth Amendment by failing to decontaminate him in a timely manner after his exposure to pepper spray, but there was only a short delay in decontamination with no aggravating factors such as a serious medical reaction, the objective prong of a deliberate indifference claim was not satisfied.
Background
James Gary Moskos sued several prison officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that they had used excessive force against him, had acted with deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs and to unconstitutional conditions of his confinement and had violated his due process rights. Moskos also brought a state-law assault and battery claim.
The district court granted judgment as a matter of law to the defendants on the deliberate indifference and due process claims, while a jury found for the defendants on the remaining claims.
Due process
Moskos alleges that the defendants violated his substantive and procedural due process rights by conducting a sham investigation, following which he was convicted of several disciplinary infractions and lost good-time credits. But § 1983 does not provide a cause of action in the circumstances present here.
The Supreme Court has long held that “habeas corpus is the appropriate remedy for state prisoners attacking the validity of the fact or length of their confinement” and that this “specific determination must override the general terms of § 1983.” In Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641 (1997), the Supreme Court made clear that this rule applies not merely to substantive challenges to convictions, but also to those challenges to internal prison procedures that would be “such as necessarily to imply the invalidity of the judgment.”
Here, as in Balisok, Moskos brings a due process challenge to the disciplinary investigation conducted against him, which resulted in the loss of good-time credits. Here, as in Balisok, Moskos has not invalidated his disciplinary convictions. And here, for virtually identical reasons as in Balisok, Moskos’s due process challenge would “necessarily imply the invalidity of the punishment imposed.” Because his claims would necessarily imply the invalidity of the judgment, they must be dismissed under Balisok.
Evidentiary ruling
Since Moskos’s due process claim fails as a matter of law, his contention that the district court erred by preventing his counsel from examining James McRae on the subject of Moskos’s grievance is also rejected. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that McRae’s testimony could have been relevant, any error would be harmless since the disciplinary investigation pertains only to Moskos’s due process claim, and that claim fails as a matter of law.
Moskos, however, argues that the excluded testimony would also have been relevant to his excessive force and assault and battery claims because his claims are “all inextricably tied together” and because testimony on the grievance might indicate that the officers falsified their account of the assault. This supposed connection is doubtful. At the very least, the trial court can scarcely be said to have abused its discretion in rejecting a purely speculative and wide-roaming foray into the grievance process.
Deliberate indifference
Moskos first contends that the defendants violated the Eighth Amendment by failing to decontaminate him in a timely manner after his exposure to pepper spray. In circumstances such as these, involving a short delay in decontamination, without any aggravating factors such as a serious medical reaction, however, courts have consistently found that the objective prong of a deliberate indifference claim is not satisfied.
Moskos also contends that the defendants violated the Eighth Amendment through deliberate indifference to the inhumane conditions that he alleged when confined to the segregation unit following his return from the hospital. But this claim also faces a threshold difficulty, for Moskos failed to establish that the subjective prong of the Eighth Amendment was satisfied.
Affirmed.
Moskos v. Hardee (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-006-22, 16 pp.) (J. Harvie Wilkinson III, J.) Case No. 19-7611. Jan. 20, 2022. From E.D.N.C. at Raleigh (Terrence W. Boyle, J.) Jason Michael Burton for Appellant. Sripriya Narasimhan for Appellees. 4th Cir.
