Superintendent, Mass. Correctional Institution at Walpole v. Hill

[*447] Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court.

Massachusetts inmates who comply with prison rules can accumulate good time credits that reduce the term of imprisonment. Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 127, § 129 (West 1974). Such credits may be lost “if a prisoner violates any rule of his place of confinement.” Ibid. The question presented is whether revocation of an inmate’s good time credits violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if the decision of the prison disciplinary board is not supported by evidence in the record. We conclude that where good time credits constitute a protected liberty interest, a decision to revoke such credits must be supported by some evidence. Because the record in this case contains sufficient evidence to support the decision of the disciplinary board, we reverse.

I — I Respondents Gerald Hill and Joseph Crawford are inmates at a state prison in Walpole, Mass. In May 1982, they each received prison disciplinary reports charging them with assaulting another inmate. At separate hearings for each inmate, a prison disciplinary board heard testimony from a prison guard, Sergeant Maguire, and received his written disciplinary report. According to the testimony and report, Maguire heard an inmate twice say loudly, “What’s going on?” The voice came from a walkway that Maguire could partially observe through a window. Maguire immediately opened the door to the walkway and found an inmate named Stephens bleeding from the mouth and suffering from a swollen eye. Dirt was strewn about the walkway, and Maguire viewed this to be further evidence of a scuffle. He saw three inmates, including respondents, jogging away together down the walkway. There were no other inmates [*448] in the area, which was enclosed by a chain link fence. Maguire concluded that one or more of the three inmates had assaulted Stephens and that they had acted as a group. Ma-guire also testified at Hill’s hearing that a prison “medic” had told him that Stephens had been beaten. Hill and Crawford each declared their innocence before the disciplinary board, and Stephens gave written statements that the other inmates had not caused his injuries.