Glenn T. Turner v. Gary Boughton

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted December 13, 2022*
Decided December 15, 2022
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
No. 22-1596
GLENN T. TURNER,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
GARY BOUGHTON, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Western District of
Wisconsin.
No. 17-cv-203-jdp
James D. Peterson,
Chief Judge.
O R D E R
Glenn Turner, a Wisconsin prisoner, appeals the entry of summary judgment in
his suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He brings three broad categories of challenges. First, he
contends that the process and rationale for keeping him in administrative and
disciplinary segregation were unconstitutional. Second, he argues that the conditions in
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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No. 22-1596 Page 2
segregation were inhumane. Finally, he contests some procedural rulings. Seeing no
error in any of the court’s decisions, we affirm.
I. Administrative and Disciplinary Segregation
Background
Turner has been incarcerated at the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility since
2010, and he has spent most of that time in administrative or disciplinary segregation.
Turner contests the basis for both types of segregation, and we discuss administrative
segregation first. Prisoners in administrative segregation receive periodic reviews in
which prison officials determine whether the segregation remains appropriate. WIS .
A DMIN . C ODE DOC § 308.04(10). Before each renewal, the prison officials reviewed
Turner’s latest conduct reports. From 2010 to 2017, these included reports of gang
communications, inciting a disturbance, threats, assault, and creating a weapon. Turner
believes that these officials kept renewing his administrative segregation based on a
one-time finding (his prior status as a member of the Gangster Disciples) that, he says,
he could not contest or review and was no longer accurate.
Turner also contests two periods of disciplinary segregation, based on two
conduct reports. The first was issued in 2011, after the prison’s security coordinator
confiscated letters and legal documents from Turner’s cell. The letters seem to discuss
class-action lawsuits, but the coordinator identified phrases in them that he thought
were coded gang messages. When Turner did not answer questions about the letters, he
was placed in the prison’s most restrictive unit and issued the conduct report. Turner
was convicted of contacting a gang and sentenced to a year of disciplinary segregation.
The second disciplinary segregation stemmed from a similar incident in 2014.
Turner admits that he wrote a letter to a relative that, on its face, described how to
manage a nonprofit organization. He received a conduct report when the security
coordinator again thought that the letter contained coded gang messages. At his
hearing, the presiding officer also received a report from an officer alleging that Turner
confessed to being a Gangster Disciple. Turner never saw the report and he denied
confessing his gang membership. The presiding officer found Turner guilty of gang
contacts and sentenced him to 120 days of disciplinary segregation, a decision that
withstood appeals and grievances.
In 2017, Turner sued the prison officials involved in his administrative and
disciplinary segregation. The district court allowed him to proceed on claims that the

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No. 22-1596 Page 3
defendants who placed him in administrative segregation violated his right to due
process by keeping him confined based on his supposed status as a Gangster Disciple,
which he says he could not contest. It also allowed him to proceed against the
defendants who put him in disciplinary segregation. (Turner filed his complaint only a
few weeks before the then-applicable six-year statute of limitations had run on claims
relating to the 2011 conduct report.) He asserted that they violated his right to due
process (by using false evidence, denying him requested materials, and not considering
his evidence) and his First Amendment rights (by punishing him for protected speech).
During discovery, Turner sought the letters underlying the 2011 conduct report. They
had been destroyed, so the defendants produced materials describing them—the
conduct report and a contemporaneous analysis of the letters. Turner moved to sanction
the defendants for destroying the letters, but the district court denied the motion,
finding that Turner had produced no evidence suggesting that they destroyed the
letters to hide adverse information in his suit.
The district court entered summary judgment for the defendants. First, it ruled
that they did not violate Turner’s due process rights because, regardless of the validity
of the finding that he was once a Gangster Disciple, they had ample other reasons—the
many infractions between 2010 and 2017—to keep Turner in administrative segregation.
Second, the district court entered summary judgment for the defendants involved in the
disciplinary segregation. It ruled that Turner was not entitled to see all evidence against
him in an “informal, nonadversarial” process for disciplinary segregation, Westefer v.
Neal, 682 F.3d 679, 684 (7th Cir. 2012), that falsified evidence alone does not reflect a
denial of due process, Lagerstrom v. Kingston, 463 F.3d 621, 624–25 (7th Cir. 2006), and
that the record did not support his assertion that the defendants ignored his evidence.
Finally, the court ruled that no First Amendment violation occurred because the record
showed that the defendants had an undisputed, legitimate penological reason to issue
the reports—a sincere belief that the letters contained prohibited gang communications.
See Brown v. Phillips, 801 F.3d 849, 855 (7th Cir. 2015).
Analysis
On appeal, Turner first contends that the defendants violated his federal right to
due process because the administrative-segregation hearings did not comport with
Wisconsin law. (As the parties did, we assume without deciding that Turner’s time in
segregation deprived him of a liberty interest and that the prison staff could not deprive
him of that interest without due process.) But noncompliance with state law is not itself
a violation of the federal right to due process. See Vargas v. Cook Cnty. Sheriff's Merit Bd.,

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No. 22-1596 Page 4
952 F.3d 871, 875 (7th Cir. 2020). He also repeats that, to keep him in administrative
segregation, they impermissibly relied on his one-time status as a gang member. But he
does not deny that between 2010 and 2017 he repeatedly committed infractions—
assault, threats, having a weapon, and inciting a disturbance—that put others in danger.
He was not punished for mere status. Wisconsin law, which Turner does not contest,
permits nonpunitive segregation based on such misconduct. See WIS . A DMIN . C ODE
DOC § 308.04(2).
As to disciplinary segregation, Turner contends that he should have survived
summary judgment on his due process and First Amendment challenges to his move to
the prison’s restricted unit and the disciplinary segregation in 2011 and 2014. He first
argues that the record contains insufficient evidence that the 2011 and 2014 letters show
that he participated in prohibited gang communications. But Turner admitted that he
wrote and received the letters described in the conduct reports. Those admissions are
binding. See Williams v. Airborne Express, Inc., 521 F.3d 765, 766 (7th Cir. 2008). And the
record contains evidence that the defendants had adequate reason to believe that the
letters contained prohibited gang messages. Thus, the conduct reports and resulting
discipline served a legitimate penological purpose compatible with due process and the
First Amendment. See Brown, 801 F.3d at 855. Second, he contends that the 2011 hearing
was procedurally flawed because the presiding officer did not read the letters and thus
lacked “some evidence” to convict him. But Turner does not dispute that the officer
read the conduct report. The report described the letters and was sufficient by itself to
support the discipline. See McPherson v. McBride, 188 F.3d 784, 786 (7th Cir. 1999).
Turner replies that the district court wrongly permitted the defendants to submit
the conduct report and analysis of the letters, instead of the letters themselves. But those
documents were admissible because they showed the defendants’ suspicions and the
reasons for them. See FED. R. EVID. 401; Gunville v. Walker, 583 F.3d 979, 985 (7th Cir.
2009). Moreover, as the district court observed, Turner identifies no evidence that the
defendants destroyed the underlying letters for the purpose of hiding adverse
information in litigation. See Bracey v. Grondin, 712 F.3d 1012, 1019 (7th Cir. 2013).
Finally, Turner argues that the district court should have not severed a claim that
he sought to bring here—a challenge to the seizure of legal materials from his cell in
2011. But the district court reasonably determined that these claims were “discrete and
separate” from the claims in this suit. Gaffney v. Riverboat Servs. of Ind., Inc., 451 F.3d 424,
442 (7th Cir. 2006) (internal citations omitted).

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II. Conditions of Confinement
Background
In the second part of this suit, Turner depicts three features of confinement that,
he believes, violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
First, he describes the conditions in and around his cell. He asserts that his cell is
extremely loud and always illuminated, preventing him from sleeping more than four
hours per night and producing severe headaches that required hospital care. He also
faced restrictions on phone calls, personal possessions, exercise, and recreation. Second,
he contends that he received inadequate mental-health care. He relies on a mental-
health evaluation predating his arrival at the prison that diagnosed him with mental-
health conditions requiring medicine and ongoing care. Before his transfer to the prison,
though, a doctor (who is not a defendant) assessed that Turner no longer needed such
regular, ongoing care. Finally, he says that the defendants subjected him to a painful
handcuffing policy. Inmates, like Turner, who are classified as high-risk offenders, are
handcuffed under a special procedure: When Turner leaves his cell, he first gives his
shoes to an officer, who handcuffs his wrists behind his back and tethers him to a door.
Turner then puts his shoes back on while cuffed in this position. This procedure, he
says, yielded pain, numbness, and skin damage. Turner complained in writing to some
defendants and filed grievances; in denying his grievances, prison officials told him to
seek a medical accommodation. He requested a change to a “soft-cuff restriction,” and
the record shows that he received it in 2014.
The district court rejected all three claims. Insofar as Turner claimed that solitary
confinement itself (or the light, noise, and other issues) violated his Eighth Amendment
rights, it ruled that Turner did not present evidence that the defendants recklessly
disregarded his health, or that they had feasible alternatives. As for the psychological-
care claims, it concluded that, with one exception, Turner presented no evidence of
unanswered mental-health requests. (Evidence suggested that one defendant ignored
Turner’s request in 2016 for care, and the court moved that claim to another suit about
Turner’s mental-health care.) Finally, for the handcuffing policy, the court ruled that no
evidence suggested that the defendants recklessly ignored any known harm to Turner.
Analysis
On appeal, Turner first argues that his evidence of excessive noise and constant
light in his cell created a genuine fact dispute about whether those conditions created an
“excessive risk to [his] health and safety” that violated the Eighth Amendment. Isby v.

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Brown, 856 F.3d 508, 521 (7th Cir. 2017). But even if we assume that the noise and light
seriously endangered his health, Turner also needed to furnish evidence that the
defendants consciously disregarded that risk of harm. See Giles v. Godinez, 914 F.3d 1040,
1052 (7th Cir. 2019). The district court rightly concluded that Turner did not make this
showing—he did not “say what he has done to inform defendants of his problem.” On
appeal, Turner still does not do so, speculating instead that the risk of harm was
“obvious.” But Turner does not cite any evidence that any defendant had reason to
know that the light and noise affecting his cell was excessive, let alone that it kept him
awake or produced severe headaches. Without such evidence, the claim fails.
Next, Turner contends that the district court improperly discounted his evidence
suggesting that, before he arrived at the prison in 2010, he needed regular mental-health
care. But his evidence is immaterial. Turner does not question the judgment of the
doctor who, shortly before his arrival at the prison in 2010, assessed that he no longer
needed regular psychological care. No reasonable jury could infer that the defendants
were deliberately indifferent when they relied on that uncontested medical judgment.
See Whiting v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 839 F.3d 658, 662–63 (7th Cir. 2016).
Moreover, Turner’s medical history shows that, after 2010 and with the exception of the
one now-severed claim, Turner received psychological care whenever he asked for it.
Turner responds that the district court wrongly considered records not cited in the
defendants’ proposed findings of fact, and that some of it was false. But a district court
may consider any evidence in the record. See Stevo v. Frasor, 662 F.3d 880, 886–87
(7th Cir. 2011). And it was Turner’s burden at the summary judgment stage to counter
the defendants’ records and support his belief that those records were false. See Giles,
914 F.3d at 1052. He did not.
Finally, Turner contends that the district court should not have entered summary
judgment on his handcuffing claim because he presented evidence through his letters to
the defendants that the cuffs hurt him, and yet “the cuffing policy continued.” But the
record contradicts Turner’s contention that the policy “continued”—rather, it shows
that he requested and received a “soft-cuff restriction.” Thus no reasonable jury could
infer that, through the handcuffing procedure, the defendants consciously disregarded
the pain Turner reported to them. See id.
III. Remaining Rulings
Turner contests three other rulings that we briefly address. First, he argues that
the district court erred in denying his request to recruit counsel. But the court did not
abuse its discretion when it denied Turner’s request. Following the standard in Pruitt v.

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Mote, 503 F.3d 647, 655 (7th Cir. 2007) (en banc), the district court reasonably observed
that Turner was an experienced pro se litigator, had filed cogent legal documents, and
could handle the types of claims that he raised here. Second, Turner contests (and we
review de novo) the court’s ruling that, because Turner had incurred three strikes under
28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), he had to pay the case-filing fee upfront. Wallace v. Baldwin, 895 F.3d
481, 483 (7th Cir. 2018). The district court correctly identified three previous federal
suits in which Turner failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, or in
which Turner’s claim was legally frivolous. That satisfied the conditions of § 1915(g).
Finally, Turner contends that the district court unreasonably denied his motion to alter
or amend the judgment. But Turner’s motion identified no “manifest error of law or
fact” or “newly discovered evidence” that the district court overlooked. United States v.
Resnick, 594 F.3d 562, 568 (7th Cir. 2010).
We thus AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

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