Rhodes v. Anderson CA1/5

Filed 12/1/21 Rhodes v. Anderson CA1/5

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for pur- poses of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION FIVE

KAVIN MAURICE RHODES, Petitioner and Appellant, A162176 v. JOSEPH ANDERSON et al., (Del Norte County Super. Ct. No. Defendants and Respondents. CVPT20171242)

Petitioner Kavin Maurice Rhodes, a state prison inmate, appeals from an order denying his petition for writ of mandate against respondents Joseph Anderson, C.E. Ducart, Scott Kernan, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), by which he sought replacement or compensation for property that was confiscated or damaged during his transfer between prisons.1 The superior court

The superior court’s order is incorrectly captioned as an 1

“ORDER DENYING PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS FOR ABUSIVE PETITIONS.” The content of the order, which applies the legal standards relevant to mandate petitions and directly addresses the arguments raised in Rhodes’s petition for writ of mandate and the defenses to that petition, make it clear that the title of the order is a clerical error.

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concluded that Rhodes had an adequate remedy at law and that he did not prove respondents acted improperly. We affirm. I. BACKGROUND Rhodes is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. In 2016, he was transferred from Kern Valley State Prison to Pelican Bay State Prison after he was found to have committed a disciplinary offense. In anticipation of his transfer, prison authorities inventoried Rhodes’s belongings. The property listed on the inventory included a Swintec typewriter, a Sony CD player, Sony headphones, CDs, an A/C Delco battery charger, an RCA television, an RCA signal booster, an antenna, Nike tennis shoes, one sweatshirt, a Casio wristwatch, a U-Tab7 tablet, photo albums, a West Bend fan, a West Bend hot pot, an electric shaver, and legal books. The prison authorities’ records reflect that the CD player, battery charger, television, tennis shoes and one sweatshirt were returned to Rhodes. The typewriter had been broken during transit, but Rhodes refused to sign the form acknowledging he had been offered a replacement. The remainder of the property that appeared on the inventory, with the exception of the legal materials, was confiscated because it was altered, broken, or not allowed to be in the possession of inmates with Rhodes’s security categorization. The legal materials were too voluminous for Rhodes to keep in his cell, so they were stored by the prison and Rhodes has access to them upon request.