It is true that Singer procured an impressive trove of
affidavit testimony, including some from role-playing
game experts, but none of his affiants’ testimony
addressed the inquiry at issue here. The question is not
whether D&D has led to gang behavior in the past; the
prison officials concede that it has not. The question is
whether the prison officials are rational in their belief
that, if left unchecked, D&D could lead to gang behavior
among inmates and undermine prison security in the
future. Singer’s affiants demonstrate significant personal
knowledge about D&D’s rules and gameplay, and offer
their own assessments that D&D does not lead to gang
behavior, but they lack the qualifications necessary to
determine whether the relationship between the D&D
ban and the maintenance of prison security is “so
remote as to render the policy arbitrary or irrational.”
Turner, 482 U.S. at 89-90. In other words, none of them
is sufficiently versed in prison security concerns to raise
a genuine issue of material fact about their relationship
to D&D. (Of course, many of Singer’s affiants are
present or former inmates, but their experiential “expertise”
in prison security is from the wrong side of the bars
and fails to match Muraski’s perspective.) The expertise
critical here is that relating to prisons, their security, and
the prevention of prison gang activity. Singer’s affiants
conspicuously lack such expertise.
Once the prison officials provided the court with a
plausible explanation for the D&D policy, that the game’s
structure (especially its control by the Dungeon Master)
mimicked that of gangs, cf. United States v. Johnson, 584
F.3d 731, 734 (7th Cir. 2009) (citing testimony that a
“Prince” in the Black P-Stone Nation gang “established and
enforced rules”); United States v. White, 582 F.3d 787, 794
(7th Cir. 2009) (“The Black Disciples embraced a rigid
hierarchical leadership structure. A ‘king’ served as the
leader of the Black Disciples and was responsible for
developing gang policy and directing the gang’s drugtrafficking
operations.”), and could consequently
promote gang development and undermine prison security,
the burden shifted to Singer to present evidence to
call that explanation into question, see Jackson, 509 F.3d at
391. Even with the assistance of all justifiable inferences
in his favor, see Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255, Singer cannot
carry that burden. His affiants’ testimony does little,
if anything, to lighten his load. Indeed, his affiants seem
to be talking past Muraski. They fail to respond directly—
or even obliquely—to Muraski’s concern about
D&D players looking to Dungeon Masters, rather than
to the prison’s own carefully constructed hierarchy of
authority, for guidance and dispute resolution. Instead,
Singer’s affiants simply assert that D&D has not to their
knowledge incited prison violence or motivated devotees
to form a stereotypical street or prison gang.
Singer also claims that his evidence raises doubt as
to whether the D&D ban furthers the government’s
legitimate goal of rehabilitating inmates by limiting their
opportunities to engage in escapist behaviors. Again, he
proffers purportedly compelling testimony, this time
supporting the notion that D&D has a positive rehabilitative
effect on prisoners. Singer’s affiants are more knowledgeable
on this issue. For instance, he offers testimony
from Paul Cardwell, chair and archivist of the Committee
for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games, an “international
network of researchers into all aspects of
role-playing games.” Comm. for the Advancement of Role-
Playing Games,
CAR-PGa: Welcome! (last visited
Jan. 20, 2010). Cardwell testified that there are numerous
scholarly works establishing that role-playing games
can have positive rehabilitative effects on prisoners.
Singer’s evidence again misses the mark, however. While
Cardwell and his other affiants, including a literacy tutor
and a role-playing game analyst, testified to a positive
relationship between D&D and rehabilitation, none
disputed or even acknowledged the prison officials’
assertions that there are valid reasons to fear a relationship
running in the opposite direction. The prison
officials pointed to a few published circuit court cases to
give traction to their views. We view these cases as persuasive
evidence that for some individuals, games like D&D
can impede rehabilitation, lead to escapist tendencies, or
result in more dire consequences. See Meyer v. Branker, 506
F.3d 358, 370 (4th Cir. 2007) (noting that defendant Meyer
“was obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons,” and that
“this obsession caused ‘[him] to retreat into a fantasy
world of Ninja warriors’ ”); Thompson v. Dixon, 987 F.2d
1038, 1039 (4th Cir. 1993) (affirming the conviction of one
of two men who brought a D&D adventure to life by
entering the home of an elderly couple and assassinating
them); cf. Sellers v. Ward, 135 F.3d 1333, 1335 (10th Cir.
1998) (defense counsel argued that Sellers’s addiction
to D&D dictated his actions and disconnected him from
any consciousness of wrongdoing or responsibility for
three murders); Watters v. TSR, Inc., 904 F.2d 378, 380 (6th
Cir. 1990) (describing a teenager who committed suicide
as “a ‘devoted’ Dungeons and Dragons player who
became absorbed by the game to the point of losing
touch with reality”).
