Starr v. Corporal Knierman

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 11-1856
DARREN F. STARR,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
CORPORAL KNIERMAN, ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
[Hon. Paul J. Barbadoro, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Torruella and Howard, Circuit Judges.
Darren Starr on brief pro se.
April 10, 2012
Per Curiam. Darren Starr, a New Hampshire state prison
inmate, appeals a district court judgment dismissing his complaint,
which raised procedural due process claims relative to the
rejection of certain incoming personal mail, for failure to state
a plausible claim for relief. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a)-(b)
(providing for screening and dismissal of prisoner civil complaints
against government defendants if no claim for relief is stated);
Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 556 (2007) (complaint
must state a plausible claim).
We review de novo, treating the well-pleaded allegations
in the complaint as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in
Starr's favor. Toolin v. White, 89 Fed. Appx. 746, *746 (1st Cir.
2004) (unpublished per curiam) (§ 1915A dismissal) (citations
omitted). We affirm for the following reasons.
I. Background
Starr's complaint and attached documents show that mail
addressed to him was rejected and returned to its senders pursuant
to prison policy. Under that policy, Starr received notice when
one of his three pieces of mail was opened and rejected because it
contained an unauthorized item, but no opportunity to appeal the
rejection decision before the mail was returned to the sender. He
received no notice or opportunity to appeal relative to the other
two pieces of mail, which were rejected before being opened because
formal deficiencies revealed on the face of the envelopes rendered
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the mail unacceptable for further processing. Starr asserts that
the prison's policy of not giving him notice of and/or an
opportunity to appeal the rejection of his mail before it was
returned to the sender violated his Fourteenth Amendment procedural
due process rights.
Starr argues on appeal that his due process claims are
plausible. In effect, he treats as dispositive the "minimum"
procedural protections described in Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S.
396 (1974) overruled on other grounds by Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490
U.S. 401, 413-14 (1989). In that case, which involved the
censorship of inmate personal correspondence, the Court agreed that
(1) notice should be given to inmates if personal letters they
write or are intended to receive are rejected; (2) the person
writing the letter should be given a "reasonable opportunity to
protest" the rejection, and (3) complaints should be heard by a
person not involved in the decision to reject the letter. See id.
at 418-19.
II. Discussion
Martinez involved a state regulation that censored--
effectively barred the receipt or delivery of--inmate letters based
solely on their content, without providing either the sender or
inmate any procedural protections. In addition, the prison used
censorship criteria that were ambiguous and inherently subjective,
e.g., whether the letter in question contained politically
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"inflammatory" opinion. The policy at issue here is much
different. First, it bases the rejection of mail on simple and
clearcut criteria. See, e.g., PPD 5.26, Att. A (listing the
criteria such as whether mail has "stickers" on it or contains
"unused personal correspondence materials"). Second, as indicated
below, it gives specific procedural safeguards to either the sender
or the inmate or to both of them when mail is rejected. We
therefore evaluate Starr's claims not by rote reference to the
Martinez protections, but by balancing the factors in Mathews v.
Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976). See Wilkinson v. Austin, 545
U.S. 209, 224 (2005) (the Court has not established "rigid rules,"
but instead balances the Mathews factors in evaluating "the
sufficiency of particular procedures").
Under the prison's policy and regulations, senders
receive written notice explaining why their mail to inmates has
been rejected, which allows them to cure any prior deficiencies on
their part, and they may obtain independent review of the rejection
decision, which allows them to object to any errors by the
mailroom. See PPD 5.26.IV.L.1 (notice to originator of mail); N.H.
Code Admin. R. Cor 301.05(m)(2) (same); PPD 5.26.IV.L.3 (notice
must explain rejection); N.H. Code Admin.R. Cor 301.05(m)(3)
(originator has right to protest to the facility's "chief
administrator" and to appeal to the DOC Commissioner). Starr, who
could not have cured any deficiencies on the sender's part and who
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had no first-hand knowledge whether the mailroom had erred in
rejecting the mail, has not alleged that senders are not in fact
accorded these rights. In addition, under prison policy, Starr may
and did pursue grievances to his warden and the DOC commissioner,
in which he raised his own objections to the rejection of his mail
once he learned that his mail had been rejected. See PPD 1.16.
Starr's allegations do not show that these currently
existing procedures fail to adequately protect his Fourteenth
Amendment liberty interest in receiving mail, or that the
additional essentially duplicative notice and appeal procedures he
seeks would improve the prison's decisionmaking process, such that
imposing costs on the state to provide such procedures would be
warranted. See Mathews, 424 U.S. at 335 (courts must consider the
private interest, the need for additional procedures to protect
such interest, and the governmental interest). For this reason, we
agree with the district court that Starr's claims fail to state a
plausible claim for which relief could be granted.
We affirm the judgment dismissing the complaint.
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