Key Points

  • A district court does not abuse its discretion by granting pre-discovery summary judgment when the requested evidence could only confirm facts the court already accepts but that do not establish a constitutional violation.
  • Five months in restrictive housing with periodic review and an avenue to general population does not impose atypical and significant hardship sufficient to create a protected liberty interest under Sandin v. Conner.
  • Being shackled to an indoor telephone for several hours while denied bathroom access and water does not satisfy the Eighth Amendment's objective-severity requirement where the prisoner could move, sit, eat, and was monitored, and where resulting injuries were not serious.
  • Hope v. Pelzer's holding that hitching-post restraint violated clearly established law does not extend to indoor telephone shackling with substantial mobility.
  • Evidence in defendants' exclusive control is not essential to opposing summary judgment if the facts it would prove do not add up to a viable claim.

The Fourth Circuit on Monday affirmed summary judgment for Virginia jail officials sued by a prisoner who spent five months in restrictive housing and was twice shackled to a telephone for hours, holding that the district court properly ruled before discovery because the evidence the prisoner sought could not change the outcome.

In a 2-1 published decision, Judge Rushing wrote for the court that Omari Keisaun Mason failed to establish either a protected liberty interest in avoiding restrictive confinement or an Eighth Amendment violation from conditions that included urinating on himself after being chained to a wall phone for more than six hours. Judge Richardson joined the majority. Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin dissented in part, arguing that Mason presented sufficient evidence of a constitutional violation and that the right at issue was clearly established.

The decision provides an unusual window into the procedural mechanics of pre-discovery summary judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d), holding that a motion to compel additional evidence fails when that evidence would only confirm facts the court already accepts but that do not add up to a constitutional claim.

Mason, an inmate at Riverside Regional Jail in Virginia, was placed in the Restrictive Housing Unit following a July 2021 contraband charge. He remained there for five months, incurring twelve additional infractions including two assaults. In January 2022, while housed in a high-security unit requiring restraints outside cells, Mason was shackled to a wall-mounted telephone twice—once for approximately six and a half hours and again for between two and five hours. During the first incident, Mason urinated on himself after roughly four and a half hours without a bathroom break. During the second, he fainted from dehydration and hit his head.

The district court granted summary judgment before discovery on Mason's RHU-placement claims and later granted a renewed motion on the shackling claims after ordering defendants to produce surveillance video. Defendants produced footage of the January 7 incident but said no video existed of the January 12 incident.

On appeal, Mason argued the district court erred by deciding the case without allowing him to subpoena the missing video and two jail employees. The Fourth Circuit disagreed, applying the framework from Shaw v. Foreman, a 2023 decision that reversed a pre-discovery summary judgment where video was core to the plaintiff's theory. The court distinguished Shaw because Mason's requested evidence could only verify facts the district court already credited—Mason had indicated the witnesses would merely "confirm" information in his sworn statement.

The critical move came in the court's substantive analysis: even accepting Mason's version of events as true, the facts did not establish a constitutional violation, which meant evidence proving those facts could not be essential to his opposition.

On Mason's due process claim, the court applied Sandin v. Conner's three-factor test for determining whether restrictive confinement creates a protected liberty interest. While the magnitude of restrictions weighed in Mason's favor, the court found his confinement was neither indefinite nor especially long—the Restrictive Housing Review Committee reevaluated his placement thirteen times, and Mason's behavior determined whether restrictions would ease. The five-month period was shorter than the six months in Beverati v. Smith, which the Fourth Circuit held did not implicate a liberty interest.

On the Eighth Amendment claims, Judge Rushing wrote that Mason failed to satisfy the objective prong requiring extreme deprivations. The court rejected Mason's reliance on Hope v. Pelzer, the Supreme Court's 2002 decision holding that chaining a prisoner to an outdoor hitching post for seven hours in the Alabama sun violated the Eighth Amendment. "Contrary to Mason's argument, the Supreme Court did not hold in Hope that securing an inmate to a stationary object absent an emergency situation is per se an Eighth Amendment violation," Judge Rushing wrote.

The court catalogued the differences: Mason was indoors, clothed, connected by a chain allowing substantial movement, able to sit and eat, and monitored periodically. As to urinating on himself, the court wrote: "While being left to urinate on oneself a single time is humiliating, it is not a serious physical or emotional injury."

For the January 12 incident, where Mason fainted and hit his head, the court found the facts still insufficient. Mason received medical attention, showed no signs of distress afterward, and did not claim serious effects.

Even if the conditions were unconstitutional, the court continued, defendants would be entitled to qualified immunity because "it was not clearly established in January 2022 that shackling a prisoner to a stationary object indoors for several hours without providing him with bathroom access or water was unconstitutional."

Judge Benjamin dissented as to the telephone-shackling claims, arguing Mason's evidence satisfied both Eighth Amendment prongs and that Hope clearly established the right. "Defendants offer no penological justification for chaining Mason to a telephone for over six hours on his one-hour recreational break and then again for over four hours on another one-hour recreational break," she wrote, characterizing the treatment as "an unjustified and cruel infliction of pain."

The dissent emphasized the totality of circumstances: Mason was denied water and bathroom access while restrained for hours past his scheduled recreation period, fainted from dehydration, struck his head, and was left with scars on his wrists. Judge Benjamin also disputed the majority's reading of the video, noting it was low-resolution and actually showed Mason turning toward the wall as he alleged.

Mason was represented by students and faculty from the New York University School of Law Federal Appellate Clinic. JD Mireles argued for Mason, and Brian Peter Ettari of Harman Claytor Corrigan & Wellman argued for the jail officials.

The case is Mason v. Talley, No. 23-7201, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.