CASE REGARDING GANG VALIDATION IN PRISON

The California Court of Appeal of the Fifth Circuit held in In re Cabrera recently that possession of photocopies of drawings signed by prison gang members or associates is not sufficient to establish association with those artists.

Under the Due Process Clause, administrative findings underlying a gang validation resulting in placement in a security housing unit (SHU) must be supported by “some evidence.” This “some evidence” test requires the court to determine whether there is any evidence in the record that could support the conclusion reached by the prison officials. The California Supreme Court asserts that there must be a “rational nexus between the evidence presented and the finding of fact made,” meaning that a decision to place an inmate in a SHU cannot be based on merely a hunch or intuition.

Furthermore, validation of an inmate as an associate of a prison gang requires at least one source item to be a direct link to a current or former member or associate. Although there is no bright-line rule defining what evidence would satisfy the “some evidence” test, case law has provided some guidance in determining the type of evidence that would be considered sufficient and insufficient to establish a direct link to a gang member.

In In re Furnace, the inmate was found in possession of a piece of paper that had the full name, CDCR number, and the housing location of another validated gang member. He was also in possession of a flyer, newspaper articles, compact disc, and book related to support for the Black Guerilla Family prison gang. In that case, the court held that possessing contact information of a validated gang member in addition to other research materials related to that gang’s membership was sufficient under the “some evidence” test to establish a direct link between the inmate and a gang member. However in In re Villa, a recent case decided by the California Court of Appeal, a confidential memorandum based on an interview of a confidential informant was not sufficient to satisfy the “some evidence” test. In that case, the memorandum disclosed testimony from the informant that Villa held a fairly high position with the Mexican Mafia. The reasoning behind that court’s holding was that the evidence only provided for a link to the Mexican Mafia in general, not to a specific person.

Elvin Cabrera is an inmate at California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi (CCI), serving a sentence of 62 years to life in prison for convictions unrelated to gang affiliations. He had also enrolled in a hobby craft program for three years and collected a large quantity of drawings from various artists. Although he was in his cell at the time of an incident involving other inmates from the same yard he was housed in, prison officials conducted operation “Swift Response” which led to the discovery of the two photocopies of drawings signed by Mexican Mafia prison gang members in Cabrera’s possession.

Each drawing contained symbols related to the Mexican Mafia and were signed by a printed first name of the artist. There was no evidence of any contact information about the artist in possession by Cabrera or that he knew how to contact either of them. Thus, the Court found that absent evidence that Cabrera even knew who the gang member artists were or that one was an associate and the other a member, the photocopies were not sufficient under the “some evidence” test to establish a direct link for validation.