Hewitt v. Helms

Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.

Respondent Aaron Helms was serving a term in the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, Pa. (SCIH), which was administered by petitioners. He sued in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, claiming that petitioners’ actions confining him to administrative segregation within the prison violated his rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The District Court granted petitioners’ motion for summary judgment, but the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed. 655 F. 2d 487 (1981). We granted certiorari, 455 U. S. 999 (1982), to consider what limits the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment places on the authority of prison administrators to remove inmates from the general prison population and confine them to a less desirable regimen for administrative reasons.

In the early evening of December 3, 1978, a prisoner in the state penitentiary at Huntingdon, assaulted two guards. The prisoner was subdued with the assistance of other [*463] guards, but one guard received a broken nose, and another a broken thumb. Later in the evening, the violence erupted into a riot during which a group of prisoners attempted to seize the institution’s “control center.” One group of inmates attacked a prison guard and a trainee, using table legs, the guard’s flashlight, barbells, and whatever else came to hand. On another floor, three inmates were subdued while trying to attack a sergeant of the prison guard with a flashlight, and it was necessary to forcibly subdue them and handcuff them to pipes. Inmates in one of the prison blocks tried to break a grille to enter the prison’s control center, but they were held back. One of the assaulted guards suffered cuts and bruises on the face and leg areas, and another reported a possible skull fracture, broken jaw, broken teeth, and an injured collarbone.