Kevin A. Williams v. Sharon Hansen

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 15‐2236
KEVIN A. WILLIAMS,
Plaintiff‐Appellant,
v.
SHARON H ANSEN, et al.,
Defendants‐Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Central District of Illinois.
No. 13 C 1187 — Michael M. Mihm, Judge.
____________________
SUBMITTED A UGUST 18, 2016 — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 20, 2016
____________________
Before P OSNER , EASTERBROOK , and SYKES , Circuit Judges.
P OSNER , Circuit Judge. The plaintiff, Kevin Williams, who
is serving a 65‐year prison sentence for murder and for con‐
cealing the murder and is incarcerated at Pontiac Correc‐
tional Center, an Illinois maximum‐security state prison, or‐
dered a death certificate from the county clerk’s office—the
death certificate of the woman, Traci Todd, whom he’d
murdered. Members of the prison’s staff confiscated the cer‐
tificate (which had arrived at the prison accompanied by an

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2 No. 15‐2236
unsigned note that read: “There is a place in hell waiting for
you [i.e., Williams] as you must know you will reap what
you have sowed!” (the accompanying note was also confis‐
cated, although there is no indication that Williams wants it).
The reason given for confiscating the certificate was that
“Williams could not have the death certificate because it
posed a threat to the safety and security of the institution
and would negatively impact Inmate Williams’ rehabilita‐
tion.”
The confiscation precipitated this suit by Williams under
42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the staff members involved in the
confiscation, as well as against the prison warden at the time
and the director of the state prison system. Williams con‐
tends that by confiscating the certificate without even giving
him a chance to read it, the defendants had infringed the
First Amendment. The judge dismissed some of the defend‐
ants at the outset of the case; their dismissal was justified be‐
cause they hadn’t been involved in the decision to confiscate
the certificate. Summary judgment for defendant Hansen
was justified on the same ground. The judge granted sum‐
mary judgment for the other defendants on a different
ground: that their confiscating the certificate had decreased
the risk that inmates would retaliate against “boasting in‐
mates” like Williams, and also had protected Todd’s family
because the death certificate might include information iden‐
tifying members of the family.
Although “prisoners have protected First Amendment
interests in both sending and receiving mail,” Rowe v. Shake,
196 F.3d 778, 782 (7th Cir. 1999), a prison can confiscate an
inmate’s mail if confiscation “is reasonably related to legiti‐
mate penological interests.” Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89

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No. 15‐2236 3
(1987). But the prison must present “some evidence to show
that the restriction is justified.” King v. Federal Bureau of Pris‐
ons, 415 F.3d 634, 639 (7th Cir. 2005); see also Brown v. Phil‐
lips, 801 F.3d 849, 854 (7th Cir. 2015). The defendants’ brief
argues that the “place in hell” note that accompanied the cer‐
tificate threatened violence against Williams; yes, but vio‐
lence in hell, not in the prison; no prison official suggested
that the note portended violence in the prison. Again with‐
out any supporting statement by a prison official, the de‐
fendants argue that Williams could use the death certificate
as a “trophy,” which would increase tension within the pris‐
on and decrease his chances for rehabilitation. A prison does
have a legitimate safety concern about “boasting inmates”
carrying around trophies of their victims. But Williams as‐
serted in his deposition and affidavit that he had ordered the
death certificate for use in state post‐conviction proceedings
rather than to save as a trophy of his crime, and the defend‐
ants have presented no contrary evidence to support their
assumption that Williams wanted a trophy. And the prison
could have avoided this controversy in the first place by
holding on to the death certificate except for the short time
needed to include it (or indeed just a xerox copy of it) in Wil‐
liams’s court filing.
The remaining defendants argue however that even if
Williams has stated a claim for relief, they are insulated from
liability because the right that he asserts was not clearly es‐
tablished when they violated it. Ashcroft v. Al‐Kidd, 563 U.S.
731, 735 (2011). Wrong. The right of a prison inmate to read
the mail he receives, provided that his reading it would not
infringe the prison’s legitimate interests, is, as noted above,
clearly established.

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4 No. 15‐2236
The judgment of the district court is affirmed with regard
to the dismissal of the defendants not involved in the confis‐
cation of the death certificate, but is otherwise reversed and
the case remanded for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.

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