Angel Rivera v. Steve Langford

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
ANGEL RIVERA,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v.
STEVE LANGFORD,
Respondent-Appellee.
No. 19-55445
D.C. No.
2:18-cv-05596-JLS-GJS
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Josephine L. Staton, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted November 6, 2019
Pasadena, California
Before: FARRIS, McKEOWN, and PARKER,** Circuit Judges.
Angel Rivera appeals the district court’s denial of his habeas petition, filed
to restore good time credit lost after a disciplinary hearing. The parties are familiar
with the facts, so we do not repeat them here. We have jurisdiction under 28
U.S.C. § 1291, and affirm the district court.
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
** The Honorable Barrington D. Parker, Jr., United States Circuit Judge
for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sitting by designation.
FILED
NOV 21 2019
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

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We review de novo a district court’s denial of a habeas petition, review for
clear error underlying factual findings, Zavala v. Ives, 785 F.3d 367, 370 (9th Cir.
2015), and defer to the findings of the disciplinary hearing officer if “some
evidence” supports the determination, Superintendent, Mass. Corr. Inst., Walpole
v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 455 (1985).
Due process in a prison disciplinary hearing which may result in the loss of
good time credits requires that a prisoner have the opportunity to call witnesses if
doing so does not imperil “institutional safety or correctional goals.” See Wolff v.
McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 566 (1974). Rivera asserts he was not permitted to do
so, but does not dispute that his signature appears on hearing forms indicating he
did not wish to call witnesses on his behalf. These forms, viewed with the
“presumption of regularity,” see Angov v. Lynch, 788 F.3d 893, 905 (9th Cir.
2015), foreclose this argument.
A prison disciplinary decision need only be “supported by some evidence in
the record.” Hill, 472 U.S. at 454. Rivera’s contention that the disciplinary
decision relied on “a curated selection” of evidence, implicitly admits the existence
of evidence supporting the decision. The record contains evidence that Rivera was
in the mop closet immediately before the phone was discovered, that he was
standing on a mop bucket so as to be able to reach the smoke detector where the
phone was found, that he attempted to barricade himself in the closet and conceal

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his activities, and that he admitted to being in the closet to wire a cellphone charger
next to the area where the phone was found. Consequently, “the government
[introduced] ‘some evidence tying the defendant to the particular contraband.’”
United States v. Duenas, 691 F.3d 1070, 1084 (9th Cir. 2012) (citation omitted).
AFFIRMED.

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