EDWARD G. WRIGHT v. STEVEN SILVA & Others. ( 2023 )

NOTICE: Summary decisions issued by the Appeals Court pursuant to M.A.C. Rule
23.0, as appearing in 97 Mass. App. Ct. 1017 (2020) (formerly known as rule 1:28,
as amended by 73 Mass. App. Ct. 1001 [2009]), are primarily directed to the parties
and, therefore, may not fully address the facts of the case or the panel's
decisional rationale. Moreover, such decisions are not circulated to the entire
court and, therefore, represent only the views of the panel that decided the case.
A summary decision pursuant to rule 23.0 or rule 1:28 issued after February 25,
2008, may be cited for its persuasive value but, because of the limitations noted
above, not as binding precedent. See Chace v. Curran, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 258, 260
n.4 (2008).
COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
APPEALS COURT
21-P-1098
EDWARD G. WRIGHT
vs.
STEVEN SILVA1 & others.2
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 23.0
The plaintiff, Edward G. Wright, appeals from the grant of
summary judgment for the defendants, employees of the Department
of Correction (DOC) and DOC itself. The plaintiff is an inmate
in the lawful custody of DOC who was previously housed at the
Souza Baranowski Correctional Center (SBCC). The plaintiff
authored a manuscript that SBCC correction officers confiscated
from the incoming mail and designated as contraband. The
plaintiff filed this action alleging that the confiscation
violated his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to
1 Individually and in his capacity as superintendent of the Souza
Baranowski Correctional Center.
2 Christopher Phelps, individually and in his capacity as the
director of operations and acting superintendent of the Souza
Baranowski Correctional Center; Thomas Lynch; and the Department
of Correction.
the United States Constitution and seeking relief under 42
U.S.C. § 1983. The motion judge concluded that the defendants
misapplied DOC's regulations but that no actionable
constitutional violation occurred. On appeal, the plaintiff
claims summary judgment was improper for a range of reasons. We
affirm.
Discussion. We review the allowance of summary judgment de
novo, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the
nonmoving party, here the plaintiff. See Bulwer v. Mount Auburn
Hosp., 473 Mass. 672, 680 (2016). Summary judgment is
appropriate when there are no genuine issues of material fact
and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
See Mass. R. Civ. P. 56 (c), as amended, 436 Mass. 1404 (2002).
In January 2019, the plaintiff's wife mailed the almost two
hundred-page manuscript to the plaintiff at SBCC. Correction
officers had previously given the manuscript directly to the
plaintiff when it arrived by mail. The mailroom officer and
acting superintendent confiscated it on this occasion,
determining the document was a contraband "publication" under
DOC's inmate mail regulation, 103 Code Mass Regs. § 481.00
(2017).3 The SBCC officers allowed the plaintiff to receive the
3 The plaintiff appealed internally and filed a grievance
relative to the contraband classification. When those were
denied, the plaintiff notified SBCC of this lawsuit and the
superintendent agreed to preserve the manuscript.
2
document in batches of five pages per day. After the plaintiff
commenced this action, the parties filed cross motions for
summary judgment. The motion judge concluded that the seizure
of the manuscript was "a regulatory misstep," but was not,
"without more, a constitutional tort actionable under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983."4 The judge ordered the defendants to provide the full
manuscript to the plaintiff.
The plaintiff claims on appeal that the motion judge erred
in determining that no actionable violation of a constitutional
right occurred. To maintain a § 1983 claim, the plaintiff would
be required to prove that the defendants deprived him of a
Federal constitutional or statutory right while acting under
color of State law. See Gutierrez v. Massachusetts Bay Transp.
Auth., 437 Mass. 396, 401 (2002). At the summary judgment
stage, DOC could prevail either by providing "evidence negating
an essential element of the plaintiff's case [or] by
demonstrating that proof of that element is unlikely to be
forthcoming at trial." Flesner v. Technical Communications
Corp., 410 Mass. 805, 809 (1991). It was undisputed that the
defendants acted under color of State law, but the motion judge
determined that the evidence did not demonstrate a deprivation
4 The plaintiff also sought injunctive relief and a declaratory
judgment that his manuscript was not a publication subject to
confiscation under the inmate mail policy.
3
of a Federal constitutional or statutory right, an essential
element of a § 1983 claim. We agree.
"[A] prison inmate retains those First Amendment rights
that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with
the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections
system." Champagne v. Commissioner of Correction, 395 Mass.
382, 386 (1985), quoting Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822
(1974). "[E]ven when an institutional restriction infringes a
specific constitutional guarantee, such as the First Amendment,
the practice must be evaluated in the light of the central
objective of prison administration, safeguarding institutional
security." Champagne, supra at 387, quoting Bell v. Wolfish,
441 U.S. 520, 547 (1979). "[C]ourts permit prison
administrators considerable discretion in the adoption and
implementation of prison policies." Royce v. Commissioner of
Correction, 390 Mass. 425, 427 (1983), citing Bell, supra. In
light of this standard, a policy of confiscating inmate mail
does not offend the First or Fourteenth Amendments if it is
"reasonably related to legitimate penological interests"
(citation omitted). Commonwealth v. Jessup, 471 Mass. 121, 130-
131 (2015).
In 2019, DOC's inmate mail regulation defined a publication
as "[a]ny book, booklet, pamphlet, magazine, periodical,
newsletter, newspaper, or similar document, including stationary
4
and greeting cards, published by any individual, organization,
company, or corporation which is distributed or made available
through any means or media for a commercial purpose." 103 Code
Mass. Regs. § 481.05 (2017) (definitions). The regulation
allowed inmates to receive extracts from publications of up to
five pages per day. See id. Here, the acting superintendent
explained that officers confiscated the manuscript because it
appeared to be a publication subject to the regulation. As the
motion judge noted, the manuscript had some features of a
published work. However, it was a word-processed document with
a title page identifying the plaintiff as its author, and the
judge saw no evidence that the document had been distributed for
a commercial purpose. The judge therefore properly concluded
that DOC erroneously applied the regulation to the manuscript.
Compare Gaskins v. Silva, 101 Mass. App. Ct. 555, 558 (2022)
(DOC's treatment of all printed materials as publications
inconsistent with regulation's plain language).
The erroneous decision, however, did not amount to a
constitutional violation. See Richardson v. Sheriff of
Middlesex County, 407 Mass. 455, 460 (1990) ("mere failure to
conform to State minimum standards does not per se establish a
constitutional violation" [citation omitted]); Miga v. Holyoke,
398 Mass. 343, 349-350 (1986) ("Mere negligent or inadvertent
failure" does not qualify as constitutional violation). On this
5
basis, the motion judge properly discerned that confiscating the
manuscript "visited only an incidental (rather than intended)
effect on the [p]laintiff's First Amendment freedoms," and
"[t]hat incidental effect cannot be equated with instances,
cognizable under Section 1983, in which [S]tate actors
purposefully interfere with an inmate's free speech rights."
The plaintiff's claim that the individual defendants acted
purposefully by ignoring the inmate mail regulation is also
unpersuasive. This claim relies on allegations that the
defendants' actions went against their training and undermined
the purpose of the regulation.5 The summary judgment record did
not support these allegations: it indicated that the defendants
mistakenly applied, rather than intentionally misapplied, the
regulation. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242,
249-250 (1986) (merely "colorable" evidence not sufficient to
satisfy burden at summary judgment); Ng Bros. Constr., Inc. v.
Cranney, 436 Mass. 638, 644 (2002) (plaintiff has burden "to
5 The plaintiff's claim that the judge ignored content-based
censorship is also without merit. In response to the
plaintiff's interrogatory, the acting superintendent indicated
that "DOC had concerns regarding the content of the material
because of violent references." In denying the plaintiff's
appeal, however, the acting superintendent relied solely on the
perceived violation of the inmate mail policy. The defendants
have consistently provided the same reason. We therefore agree
with the motion judge that as a matter of law the single
reference to the manuscript's content did not rise to the level
of a constitutional violation.
6
present in the summary judgment record . . . sufficient facts to
warrant a finding in its favor").6
Judgment affirmed.
By the Court (Meade,
Wolohojian & Walsh, JJ.7),
Clerk
Entered: May 8, 2023.
6 The plaintiff also challenges the denial of his motion to
strike one of the defendants' affidavits, wherein the plaintiff
alleged that the affiant knowingly made false statements by
inaccurately summarizing DOC's regulations. The motion judge
concluded that the plaintiff mischaracterized the summaries as
interpretations of the regulations. We agree, therefore we find
no abuse of discretion. See N.E. Physical Therapy Plus, Inc. v.
Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 466 Mass. 358, 363 (2013). To the extent
that we have not addressed the plaintiff's other contentions,
they "have not been overlooked. We find nothing in them that
requires discussion" given the forgoing conclusions.
Commonwealth v. Domanski, 332 Mass. 66, 78 (1954).
7 The panelists are listed in order of seniority.
7