Telesford v. Annucci

16-1127-pr
Telesford v. Annucci
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
SUMMARY ORDER
RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO A
SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED
BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1.
WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY
MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE
NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A
COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.
At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held
at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the City of New
York, on the 22nd day of May, two thousand seventeen.
PRESENT: REENA RAGGI,
SUSAN L. CARNEY,
Circuit Judges,
LEWIS A. KAPLAN,
District Judge.*
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MARCUS TELESFORD,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 16-1127-pr
ANTHONY ANNUCCI, Acting Commissioner,
CHRISTOPHER MILLER, Superintendent, Great
Meadow Correctional Facility, STEPHEN BRANDON,
Superintendent, Great Meadow Correctional Facility, MR.
EASTMAN, Deputy Superintendent of Security, Great
Meadow Correctional Facility, CAPTAIN GOODMAN,
Great Meadow Correctional Facility, SERGEANT
BASCUE, Great Meadow Correctional Facility,
Defendants-Appellees.
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*
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of
New York, sitting by designation.
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FOR APPELLANT: MARCUS TELESFORD, pro se, Malone, New
York.
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern
District of New York (Mae A. D’Agostino, Judge).
UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED,
AND DECREED that the March 29, 2016 judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
Plaintiff Marcus Telesford is presently incarcerated by New York State following
his conviction for second-degree robbery and sentencing as a persistent violent felony
offender.1 He here appeals pro se from the sua sponte dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. § 1983complaint against various state prison officials for failure to state a claim upon which
relief may be granted. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e)(2), 1915A. Telesford alleges that,
while he was incarcerated in a special housing unit (“SHU”), defendants used security
cameras to record him in the nude as he entered and exited prison showers, thereby
violating his rights under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. We assume
the parties’ familiarity with the facts and record of prior proceedings, which we reference
only as necessary to explain our decision to affirm.
We review de novo a district court’s sua sponte dismissal of claims, accepting the
facts alleged in the complaint as true and drawing all inferences in the plaintiff’s favor.
See Abbas v. Dixon, 480 F.3d 636, 639 (2d Cir. 2007). To survive dismissal, a
complaint must plead “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,”
Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007), and we will not accept as true
1
See People v. Telesford, 2 A.D.3d 757, 758, 770 N.Y.S.2d 118, 118 (2d Dep’t 2003)
(affirming conviction and 18-years-to-life sentence).
2
allegations stating only “legal conclusions,” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009).
Nevertheless, we afford a pro se litigant “special solicitude” and interpret his complaint
“to raise the strongest claims that it suggests.” Hill v. Curcione, 657 F.3d 116, 122 (2d
Cir. 2011) (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). We will reverse the
dismissal if “a liberal reading of the complaint gives any indication that a valid claim
might be stated.” Larkin v. Savage, 318 F.3d 138, 139 (2d Cir. 2003).
1. Fourth and Eighth Amendment Claims
Insofar as Telesford claims that the alleged recordings violated the Fourth
Amendment, our review is informed by the Supreme Court’s recognition that “[a] right of
privacy in traditional Fourth Amendment terms is fundamentally incompatible with the
close and continual surveillance of inmates and their cells required to ensure institutional
security and internal order.” Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 527–28 (1984).
Nevertheless, as we recently reiterated, inmates “retain a limited right to bodily privacy.”
Harris v. Miller, 818 F.3d 49, 57 (2d Cir. 2016). To state a cognizable privacy claim, an
inmate must allege that (1) he “exhibited an actual, subjective expectation of bodily
privacy,” and (2) prison officials lacked “sufficient justification to intrude on the inmate’s
[F]ourth [A]mendment rights.” Id. (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted).
Telesford’s claim fails because his complaint effectively acknowledges that he had no
expectation of privacy in the use of prison showers. See Johnson v. Phelan, 69 F.3d
144, 147 (7th Cir. 1995) (“Cells and showers are designed so that guards can see in, to
prevent violence and other offenses. Prisoners dress, undress, and bathe under watchful
eyes. Guards roaming the corridors are bound to see naked prisoners.”). He states that
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corrections officers in nearby “bubble stations” personally observe prisoners enter and
exit the showers and monitor live video feeds from the complained-of cameras. He
raises no objection to either of these surveillance methods. He complains only about the
alleged recording of the video feeds. 2 Notably, he does not allege any improper
subsequent viewing of the recordings. Because Telesford had no expectation of privacy
and prison officials had a sufficient security justification for visually monitoring prison
showers, and because no abusive use of the recording is alleged, Telesford cannot state a
Fourth Amendment claim based on the alleged recording of what was permissibly seen.
While the Eighth Amendment protects prisoners from “calculated harassment
unrelated to prison needs,” Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. at 530, Telesford’s assertions that
the challenged surveillance amounted to such are wholly conclusory and unsupported by
the factual allegations in the complaint, see Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678.
Accordingly, we affirm the dismissal of both Telesford’s Fourth and Eighth
Amendment claims.
2. Equal Protection Claim
Telesford’s equal protection claim alleges that the challenged video surveillance in
the SHU F-Block at Great Meadow Correctional Facility was not conducted in the SHU
B-Block at the same facility, from which he was recently transferred. We construe this
claim to rely on a “class-of-one” theory, Appellant’s Br. 21, which requires, inter alia,
2
The prison’s responses to Telesford’s internal grievances, which are annexed to and
acknowledged in his complaint, see DiFolco v. MSNBC Cable L.L.C., 622 F.3d 104, 111
(2d Cir. 2010) (stating such documents may be considered on motion to dismiss),
consistently denied the presence of cameras in areas where inmates showered or were
nude. For present purposes, however, we assume Telesford’s allegations to be true.
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that Telesford plead “an extremely high degree of similarity” to proposed comparators
such that “no rational person could regard [his] circumstances . . . to differ from those of
a comparator to a degree that would justify the differential treatment on the basis of a
legitimate government policy.” Ruston v. Town Bd. for Town of Skaneateles, 610 F.3d
55, 59–60 (2d Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Even liberally construing Telesford’s complaint, we cannot conclude that he
pleads the requisite high degree of similarity between F-Block and B-Block generally, or
specifically as pertains to him. While both blocks are SHUs, the most restrictive
confinement in the New York State prison system, that by itself does not admit an
inference that all SHUs, much less the inmates housed therein, are highly similar.3 In
any event, where the government has a legitimate penological concern—avoiding
concealment of contraband by restrictively confined prisoners—it does not violate equal
protection to address that problem in part rather than as a whole. See
Jankowski-Burczyk v. I.N.S., 291 F.3d 172, 179 (2d Cir. 2002) (“It is no requirement of
equal protection that all evils of the same genus be eradicated or none at all.” (internal
quotation marks omitted)). In this regard, we note that Telesford does not assert that he
is treated differently than other F-Block prisoners, which seems a more apt comparison
3
For example, some SHU cells are double-occupancy with their own remotely operated
shower facilities. See State of N.Y. Dep’t of Corr. Servs., Prison Safety in New York 17
(2006), http://www.doccs.ny.gov/PressRel/06commissionerrpt/06prisonsafetyrpt.pdf.
Further, Telesford does not allege why he was housed in an SHU or transferred from
B-Block to F-Block, but court filings suggest that, even in the SHU, Telesford previously
sought to conceal items on his person. See Complaint at 3, Telesford v. Tamer, No.
14-cv-1209 (N.D.N.Y. Oct. 3, 2014) (acknowledging concealment of pen in body cavity
while housed in Clinton Correctional Facility SHU).
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group. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of Telesford’s equal
protection claim.
3. Conclusion
We have considered Telesford’s other arguments and conclude that they are
without merit. Accordingly, the March 29, 2016 judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
FOR THE COURT:
CATHERINE O’HAGAN WOLFE, Clerk of Court
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