USCA11 Case: 22-10771 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 05/24/2023 Page: 1 of 9
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-10771
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
COLEMAN WARNOCK,
Petitioner-Appellant,
versus
WARDEN, FCI RAY BROOK,
Respondent-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Georgia
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22-10771 Opinion of the Court 2
D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-03002-AT
____________________
Before JORDAN, BRANCH, and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Coleman Warnock, a federal prisoner proceeding pro se,
appeals from the district court’s denial of his
28 U.S.C. § 2241
petition, which challenged a prison disciplinary proceeding that
resulted in his loss of good-time credit. Because, however, the
record in this case does not provide us with an opportunity to
meaningfully review the issues on appeal, we vacate and remand
for the district court to develop the record more fully.
I.
The relevant background is this. Warnock is serving a 180-
month sentence for conspiracy to possess with intent to
manufacture and distribute phencyclidine in violation of
21 U.S.C.
§§ 846, 841(a)(1), and 841(c)(2). On December 12, 2020, Officer M.
Pierce accused Warnock of possessing a cellphone in violation of
prison rules and initiated disciplinary proceedings. Warnock’s
hearing notice listed his charges as: “possessing a hazardous
tool/refusing to obey an order,” corresponding to prison code
violation numbers 108 and 307, respectively. An incident report
described the conduct giving rise to Warnock’s charges, including
what the officer saw Warnock do and how Warnock responded to
his orders. At the hearing, the Discipline Hearing Officer (“DHO”)
found insufficient evidence that Warnock had possessed a
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cellphone on December 12 in violation of code number 108.
Instead, the DHO found that Warnock had committed the
prohibited acts of “Destroying and/or disposing of any item during
a search, code 115” and “Refusing to obey an order of any staff
member, code 307.” The DHO sanctioned him with, among other
things, the loss of 54 days of good-time credit.
Warnock brought the instant suit under § 2241 to challenge
the DHO’s decision. Relevant here, Warnock argued that: (1) he
tried to exhaust his administrative remedies after the hearing, but
prison officials conspired to prevent him from meeting the
necessary deadlines to do so; (2) he did not receive adequate notice
of the hearing and the charges against him because, as he told
officials at the time, he was not given the incident report 24 hours
before the hearing; (3) he was improperly denied the services of a
staff representative at the hearing, which he needed to help him
present potentially exculpatory security camera footage; and (4) no
evidence at the hearing indicated that he had destroyed an item
during a search or disobeyed an order, especially since the DHO
found insufficient evidence that he had wrongfully possessed a
cellphone, it made no sense to punish him for destroying a phone
he never had, and he was not charged with destroying an item
during a search.
A magistrate judge issued a Report and Recommendation
(“R&R”) determining that Warnock had failed to exhaust his
administrative remedies and that his claims also failed on the
merits. After Warnock lodged objections to the R&R, the district
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court issued an order disposing of the case. The court first found
that Warnock had made a “colorable argument” that he made a
diligent effort to exhaust his administrative remedies but still failed
to do so, through no fault of his own. Nevertheless, the court went
on to hold that Warnock’s DHO hearing was constitutionally
adequate. It found that Warnock was given sufficient notice of the
hearing, even if he did not receive a copy of the incident report,
when he received a hearing notice and a notice of inmate rights
before the hearing. The district court also found that, assuming
Warnock had requested a staff representative for the hearing, he
was not entitled to one because he was not illiterate and the issues
were not particularly complex; however, the district court did not
address whether he was entitled to a representative to help with
the video surveillance footage. Finally, it found that Officer
Pierce’s report that he saw Warnock with a cellphone, which the
DHO deemed more credible than Warnock’s statements,
established “some evidence” of the code violations for which he
was sanctioned.
This timely appeal follows.
II.
Challenges to the execution of a sentence, rather than the
validity of the sentence itself, are properly brought under § 2241.
Antonelli v. Warden,
542 F.3d 1348, 1352 (11th Cir. 2008). This
includes relief from sanctions received as a result of prison
disciplinary proceedings. See Santiago-Lugo v. Warden,
785 F.3d
467, 469, 475–76 (11th Cir. 2015). When reviewing the denial of a
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22-10771 Opinion of the Court 5
§ 2241 habeas petition, we review de novo questions of law and for
clear error factual findings. Andrews v. Warden,
958 F.3d 1072,
1076 (11th Cir. 2020). We review de novo whether relief is
available under § 2241. Dohrmann v. United States,
442 F.3d 1279,
1280 (11th Cir. 2006).
This Court has long held that the district court should give
a sufficient explanation of its rulings so as to allow us an
opportunity to engage in meaningful appellate review. See Danley
v. Allen,
480 F.3d 1090, 1091 (11th Cir. 2007); see also Clay v.
Equifax, Inc.,
762 F.2d 952, 957–58 (11th Cir. 1985) (collecting cases
“urg[ing] the district court to state the reason for its decision and
the underlying predicate”). In doing so, we’ve stressed that it is the
“responsibility of the district court in the first instance” to review
the record and the applicable caselaw. Danley,
480 F.3d at 1092.
Moreover, we’ve vacated for additional reasoning when the district
court did not make necessary factual findings or explain its legal
conclusions. See, e.g., id.; In re Ford Motor Co.,
345 F.3d 1315,
1317 (11th Cir. 2003).
III.
The Due Process Clause demands that an individual receive
due process of law before being deprived of a protected liberty
interest. Whitehorn v. Harrelson,
758 F.2d 1416, 1420 (11th Cir.
1985). In the prison context, the Supreme Court has held that
inmates have a liberty interest in good-time credit, and due process
requires that a prisoner receive these protections before his good-
time credit is revoked: (1) 24 hours’ written notice before a
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disciplinary hearing; (2) the opportunity, consistent with
institutional safety goals, to call witnesses and present evidence in
his defense; (3) help from a fellow inmate or the prison staff, if the
inmate is illiterate or if the issue is sufficiently complex; and (4) a
written statement by the factfinders as to the evidence relied on
and reasons for the disciplinary action. Wolff v. McDonnell,
418
U.S. 539, 564–66, 570 (1974). In elaborating on the function of the
notice requirement, the Supreme Court has explained that it is to
“give the charged party a chance to marshal the facts in his defense
and to clarify what the charges are, in fact.”
Id. at 564. On this
basis, the Court in Wolff struck the oral notice procedures that had
been used by the Nebraska prison system, in part, because in some
instances, the inmate “first receive[d] notice of the actual charges
at the time of the hearing.”
Id.
Applying Wolff, we’ve held that the Due Process Clause
entitles inmates to notice not only of the disciplinary charges
themselves and the dates of the alleged offenses, but also to notice
of the facts necessary to defend against the charges. See Dean-
Mitchell v. Reese,
837 F.3d 1107, 1112, 1113 n.5 (11th Cir. 2016). In
Dean-Mitchell, we rejected a warden’s arguments that an inmate
had sufficient information about the charges against him based on
a hearing notice -- which identified “only the alleged violations
(‘Refusing an order of a staff member/Threating another with
bodily harm’) and the date of the offenses,” and lacked any “factual
information regarding the incident” -- where it was disputed
whether he received the incident report.
Id.
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Since Wolff, the Supreme Court has held that the Due
Process Clause requires that the record of a disciplinary hearing
need only contain “some evidence” supporting the hearing
decision, since the “fundamental fairness guaranteed by the Due
Process Clause does not require courts to set aside decisions of
prison administrators that have some basis in fact.” Superintendent
v. Hill,
472 U.S. 445, 447, 456 (1985). Determining whether there
is “some evidence” in the record to support a disciplinary charge
does not “require examination of the entire record, independent
assessment of the credibility of witnesses, or weighing of the
evidence,” but merely assessment of whether there is “any
evidence in the record that could support the conclusion reached
by the disciplinary board.” O’Bryant v. Finch,
637 F.3d 1207, 1213
(11th Cir. 2011) (quoting Hill,
472 U.S. at 454–56).
Here, Warnock has raised several due process claims arising
out of his prison disciplinary proceedings, but on the record before
us, we are unable to conduct meaningful appellate review of these
issues. See Clay,
762 F.2d at 957–58; Danley,
480 F.3d at 1092. As
we see it, Warnock’s claims all seem to stem from an issue that has
not yet been developed in the record -- that is, how he was
sanctioned at his disciplinary hearing for a code violation that he
was not charged with.
According to the hearing notice found in the record, initially
Warnock was charged with “possessing a hazardous tool/refusing
to obey an order,” pertaining to prison code violation numbers 108
and 307, respectively. However, at the hearing, the DHO made a
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written finding, without elaborating, that the officer’s statement in
the incident report that Warnock had possessed a cellphone on
December 12 “did not adequately support the code 108, Possession
of a Hazardous Tool.” Consequently, the DHO dismissed “[t]he
code 108.” The DHO found instead that Warnock had “committed
the prohibited act[s] of Destroying and/or disposing of any item
during a search, code 115, and Refusing to obey an order of any
staff member, code 307.” The DHO then noted that Warnock was
sanctioned with 40 days’ loss of good-time credit based on code
violation 115 and 14 days’ loss of good-time credit based on code
violation 307.
From this limited information, we glean that the DHO
found that Warnock had destroyed something during the incident
in question, but we do not know what, nor whether that matters.
It also appears that Warnock faced a new charge (code violation
115) at some point during the proceedings, but we do not know
when it was added, when he received notice of it, or how the
change may have shaped his defense at the hearing. Further, the
DHO’s notations suggest that the different charges carried different
sanctions, but, again, we do not know how the sanctions for his
original charges varied from the sanctions he actually received.
In short, the record does not appear to contain important
information that would shed light on critical aspects of Warnock’s
proceedings. Without more, we cannot determine how
Warnock’s due process rights were affected, if at all. We, therefore,
remand for the district court to develop the record more fully on
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this issue and any other issues that might inform its due process
analysis. See Danley,
480 F.3d at 1092; In re Ford Motor Co.,
345
F.3d at 1317. We note, moreover, that the district court did not
resolve whether Warnock satisfied the exhaustion requirement
before bringing suit, and leave it to the district court to determine
on remand whether it should do so, in addition to or instead of
considering the merits. See Santiago-Lugo,
785 F.3d at 475
(recognizing that while a prisoner must exhaust his administrative
remedies before seeking relief under § 2241, the district court may
skip the issue if it is easier to deny a petition on the merits). 1
VACATED AND REMANDED.
1 On remand, however, the district court need not address Warnock’s claim
that the BOP’s intentional interference with his administrative proceedings
constituted an independent violation of his constitutional rights. For one
thing, this claim is not cognizable under § 2241; it should be brought under §
1983. See Antonelli,
542 F.3d at 1352 (holding that a § 2241 petition challenges
the execution of a sentence). Moreover, we are unaware of any precedent
holding that due process entitles a prisoner to an administrative appeal process
to challenge disciplinary sanctions. See Bingham v. Thomas,
654 F.3d 1171,
1177 (11th Cir. 2011) (rejecting an inmate’s due process claim based on the
BOP’s failure to enforce regulations creating prison grievance procedures,
since “an inmate has no constitutionally-protected liberty interest in access” to
those procedures); Doe v. Moore,
410 F.3d 1337, 1350 (11th Cir. 2005) (“State-
created procedural rights that do not guarantee a particular substantive
outcome are not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, even where such
procedural rights are mandatory.”) (quotations omitted).
