174
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
rest on the Government's use of the postal service to dispatch, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Milan, Michigan, notice of an impending forfeiture. Ante, at 169. Were this case about the adequacy of the transmission of information from the FBI to the FCI, swift summary judgment for the Government, I agree, would be in order. But the case we confront is not about notice to the prison, the warden, or the prison mailroom personnel. It is about the adequacy of notice to an individual held in the Government's custody, a prisoner whose location the Government at all times knows and tightly controls.
What process did the Government provide for getting the FBI's forfeiture notice from the FCI's mailroom to prisoner Dusenbery's cell? On that key transmission the record is bare. It contains no statement by FCI Milan's warden concerning any set of safeguards routinely employed. The Government presented only the affidavit and telephone deposition of James Curtis Lawson, an "Inmate Systems Officer" assigned to FCI Milan's mailroom. App. 36-37, 46-53. On the mailroom to prisoner transmission, Lawson said simply this: "The [Housing] Unit Team member or a correctional staff member will [after signing the mailroom logbook] distribute the mail to the inmates during the institution's mail call." App. 37. Lawson did not know whether notice was in fact delivered to Dusenbery. Nor would he have such knowledge or information regarding any other prisoner. As Lawson clarified on deposition, he was not acquainted with particular practices or systems governing mail once it left the mailroom, because that was not "pertinent to [his] department." App. 52. According to Lawson, "[t]hat would be case workers' responsibility," ibid.; but no caseworker filled in the evidentiary gap.
Was the prison to prisoner mode of transmission described by Officer Lawson "substantially less likely to bring home notice" than a feasible substitute that would place no "im-
Page: Index Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007