Background
Jason Eaton, a pretrial detainee at Northern State Correctional Facility in Vermont, reported on May 25, 2024, that his cellmate had threatened him and requested placement in protective custody. After waiting several hours in the dayroom without speaking to a shift supervisor, Eaton was ordered to lock in to his cell for the facility’s nightly headcount. He refused, remaining in the dayroom and citing his unaddressed protective-custody request. The Department of Corrections issued him a Major B14-18 disciplinary violation for interfering with an officer’s duties and disrupting the official institutional headcount. Following a hearing, he was found guilty and sentenced to seven days of administrative segregation, with credit for time served.
Eaton appealed to the facility superintendent, arguing the conviction should be dismissed in the interest of justice because the Department had failed to take his safety concerns seriously before disciplining him for refusing to share a cell with his alleged threatener. The superintendent denied the appeal. Eaton then filed a Rule 75 civil-division complaint seeking judicial review, with counsel from the Prisoners’ Rights Office. Both sides moved for summary judgment. The superior court granted the Department’s motion, finding the disciplinary determination was supported by the evidence and that, even assuming affirmative defenses like necessity and self-defense could apply in a disciplinary proceeding, the record showed only Eaton’s own statements about an earlier threat—insufficient to establish the immediate, imminent danger those defenses require.
Eaton appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court, this time self-represented, raising claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, insufficiency of the evidence, and arguments based on the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and a Department protective-custody directive.
The Court’s Holding
The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed the superior court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the Department. The court held that the disciplinary determination was supported by “some evidence” in the record—the applicable highly deferential standard on judicial review of prison discipline—because Eaton refused a direct order to lock in during the nightly headcount, and the resources diverted to address his refusal interfered with the taking of that headcount. Credibility and weight of evidence were matters for the hearing officer, not for the reviewing court.
The court rejected Eaton’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim because he failed to satisfy the prejudice prong of the two-part test. His attorney’s decision to file a cross-motion for summary judgment had no bearing on the outcome because the Department also moved for summary judgment and prevailed. As to the additional arguments Eaton claimed his attorney should have raised—violations of Directive 410.05 and the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments—those arguments were not preserved in Eaton’s administrative appeal to the superintendent and therefore could not have changed the outcome of the Rule 75 proceeding.
The court also declined to reach Eaton’s constitutional arguments, self-defense and necessity defenses, and statutory claims raised for the first time on appeal. Because none of those issues were presented to the superintendent with the specificity required for administrative exhaustion under Pratt v. Pallito, 2017 VT 22, they were not preserved for judicial review under Rule 75.
Key Takeaways
- Judicial review of Vermont prison disciplinary determinations is governed by the highly deferential “some evidence” standard, which does not require weighing evidence or assessing witness credibility—only that any evidence in the record could support the hearing officer’s conclusion.
- To preserve issues for Rule 75 judicial review of a disciplinary conviction, an inmate must raise those specific arguments—including constitutional claims and affirmative defenses—in the administrative appeal to the facility superintendent; failure to do so bars later judicial consideration.
- An ineffective-assistance claim in a Rule 75 proceeding fails on prejudice where unraised arguments were themselves unpreserved at the administrative level and therefore could not have altered the outcome regardless of counsel’s performance.
- This decision is a non-precedential three-justice panel entry order and may not be cited as precedent before any Vermont tribunal.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the strict administrative exhaustion requirement that governs Vermont inmate disciplinary appeals. By holding that constitutional arguments and specific policy-based defenses must be raised before the facility superintendent—not introduced for the first time in superior court or on appeal—the court signals that inmates and their counsel must front-load their full legal theories at the earliest stage of the disciplinary review process or risk permanent waiver. The Prisoners’ Rights Office, which the Department’s own directive instructs inmates to contact for assistance with superintendent appeals, therefore plays a critical role at that initial administrative stage.
The case also illustrates the high bar for ineffective-assistance claims in civil collateral proceedings: even accepting that the right to effective counsel exists in a Rule 75 action, a petitioner must show a reasonable probability of a different result but for counsel’s errors—a showing that cannot be made where the underlying arguments were independently defaulted at the administrative level.