Puente v. Vervon

• Decision Date: 14 February 2001
• Docket Number: DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS,PLAINTIFFS-APPELLEES,DEFENDANT-INTERVENOR-APPELLANT,PLAINTIFFS-INTERVENORS-APPELLEES,No. 99-35930,99-35930
• Citation: 255 F.3d 1118
• Parties: (9th Cir. 2001) NOEL PUENTE GOMEZ; LEE MAZUR HAYS; BOB JONES; ALFREDO ROMAN; PATRICK HALL; MARQ BARTLETT; GREGORY JOSEPH NELSON,, v. RICHARD A. VERNON, DIRECTOR, IDAHO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; DAVE PASKETT, WARDEN, IDAHO STATE CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION; JAMES C. SPALDING, DIRECTOR, IDOC; JOE KLAUSER, WARDEN, ISCI;, ALAN LEE BRANDT,, v. EUGENE STARR; RICHARD CARL; BOBBY ROWELL; ALFREDO ESPARZA,
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 1118

255 F.3d 1118 (9th Cir. 2001)

NOEL PUENTE GOMEZ; LEE MAZUR HAYS; BOB JONES; ALFREDO ROMAN; PATRICK HALL; MARQ BARTLETT; GREGORY JOSEPH NELSON, PLAINTIFFS-APPELLEES, v. RICHARD A. VERNON, DIRECTOR, IDAHO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; DAVE PASKETT, WARDEN, IDAHO STATE CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION; JAMES C. SPALDING, DIRECTOR, IDOC; JOE KLAUSER, WARDEN, ISCI; DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS, ALAN LEE BRANDT, DEFENDANT-INTERVENOR-APPELLANT, v. EUGENE STARR; RICHARD CARL; BOBBY ROWELL; ALFREDO ESPARZA, PLAINTIFFS-INTERVENORS-APPELLEES.

No. 99-35930

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Argued and Submitted February 14, 2001--Seattle, Washington

Filed July 10, 2001

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

Timothy D. Wilson, Office of Attorney General, State of Idaho, Boise, Idaho for the defendants-appellants.

Stephen L. Pevar (argued), American Civil Liberties Union, Denver, Colorado; Margaret Winter, Donna H. Lee, and Eric Balaban, National Prison Project of the Aclu Foundation Inc., Washington, D.C.; Howard Belodoff, Boise, Idaho, for the plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Idaho Larry M. Boyle, Magistrate, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-91-00299-LMB

Before: M. Margaret McKeown, Kim McLane Wardlaw, and Ronald M. Gould, Circuit Judges.

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge

OPINION

This case exemplifies antagonism toward prisoner litigation at the cost of constitutional rights and legal ethics. While all may be fair in war, ¹ such is not the case in the judicial arena -the courtroom is not a battlefield. After a nineteen-day trial, the district court, Magistrate Judge Boyle presiding, found that the Idaho Department of Corrections, two of its penal institutions, and several officials (collectively the "Department") retaliated against inmates who filed lawsuits or availed themselves of grievance procedures. The conclusion that the Department violated the inmates' constitutional rights is not challenged on appeal. Rather, we are called upon to address whether, for purposes of jurisdiction, the parties consented to appear before the magistrate judge; whether the grant of injunctive relief was an appropriate remedy for the retaliation; and whether a court may impose sanctions under its inherent power and 28 U.S.C. §§ 1927 when counsel ² for the state improperly acquired and used privileged and confidential litigation materials belonging to inmate litigants. We answer these questions in the affirmative, and we affirm.

BACKGROUND

Factual Background. ³

The Department, like many prison systems, employs inmates as law clerks in its prison libraries to help other inmates file legal papers, such as habeas corpus petitions or civil rights claims, and to prepare grievances or other administrative complaints. Inmates enjoy access to the law libraries, and the assistance of the inmate law clerks, as a guarantee of their due process right to access to the courts. See Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 828 (1977) (holding that " 'the fundamental constitutional right of access to the courts requires prison authorities to assist inmates in the preparation and filing of meaningful legal papers by providing prisoners with adequate law libraries or adequate assistance from persons trained in the law").

In the Idaho prison system, however, access to the assistance of law clerks and the libraries was not necessarily a risk-free proposition. For example, inmate preparation of legal documents and prosecution of legal activities became a basis for retaliation against inmate clerks. In 1985, Lee Hays worked as an inmate law clerk at the Idaho Correctional Institute-Orofino (ICI-O). In that role, he assisted fellow male inmates in filing habeas corpus petitions and civil rights claims against the prison and various prison personnel. This attracted the attention of the prison staff, who, in the presence of the warden, instructed Hays to stop. After Hays filed more suits, the warden arranged for him to be transferred to the Idaho State Correctional Institution (ISCI) in Boise. Although Hays was supposedly transferred for a rule infraction -interacting with female inmates -that reason was pretextual. He trained female law clerks as part of his law clerk duties and did so only on instructions and under supervision of a corrections lieutenant.

Similar consequences befell other inmates who took legal action. In 1987, inmate Patrick Hall filed multiple civil rights claims against the Department on behalf of other inmates. Hall subsequently lost his job in the ISCI law library, purportedly because he only offered legal help in exchange for a share of any damages award -a charge that was unsubstantiated. In 1993, an ISCI Disciplinary Hearing Officer threatened to confine and discipline another inmate, Wayne Olds, if in line with his standard duties as a law clerk, he helped an inmate prepare for a disciplinary hearing. Olds was later transferred from ISCI to ICI-O in retaliation for the number of "concern forms" and grievances he filed, together with his persistence in prosecuting a federal civil rights case. Two years later, inmates Thomas Sanger and Carl Shively were fired from their janitorial jobs in retaliation for signing affidavits used in litigation against the Department. And Idaho Maximum Security Institution (IMSI) officials intimidated inmate Michael McDonald for filing a grievance against an officer, forcing him to withdraw his grievance and to plead guilty to a disciplinary infraction. This series of retaliatory acts all stemmed from the inmates' constitutionally protected efforts to access the courts and the grievance process.

The operation and condition of the inmate law libraries and related complaints also became an issue in the Idaho prison system. Inmate Alfredo Roman, who worked as a law clerk in the IMSI library, kept a logbook documenting what he perceived as operational problems. One such problem was a corrections officer's habit of reading the inmates' legal documents. Roman took his concerns and his logbook to the law library supervisor, Corrections Officer Michelle Nelson. Ms. Nelson responded by removing Roman from his library job and placing him under investigation for keeping his log-book (which she considered "non-legal materials") in the law library. He eventually received two disciplinary citations.

Similarly, in 1997, inmate Bob Jones, a law clerk at the ISCI law library, confronted Nelson with his concerns about management of the law library. As a result, Nelson repeatedly attempted to have Jones transferred, first to ICI-O, and then to a prison facility in Louisiana. Finally, Jones resigned his job at the law library to avoid a transfer.

Deputy Warden George Miller took over supervision of the ISCI law library in November 1998. Although he was aware that the library needed at least six inmate law clerks to facilitate minimal access to the court system, he reduced the staff to four and at times allowed it to drop to two. Miller knew that the number of law clerks working in the library fell below what was minimally adequate. The district court found that the reduction in law clerks "was substantially motivated by a desire to prevent inmates' access to the court system."

No officer or employee of the Department was ever investigated or disciplined for retaliatory action, despite the wardens' knowledge of the complaints.

Plaintiff-appellees, inmates in the Idaho corrections system, brought this suit for damages and injunctive relief as a class action on behalf of themselves and other inmates. They worked on the case themselves, and were represented by outside counsel, with whom they corresponded in writing. As it turned out, the confidentiality of that correspondence was somewhat illusory. The inmates kept their written materials, including notes, research, and correspondence with their attorney, in two three-ring binders marked "Gomez" -the name of this lawsuit. In order to protect those materials and to maintain their confidentiality, the inmates stored the binders in a restricted-access section of the ISCI law library. If an inmate who worked on the case needed to read or use the file, a request would be made to the librarian, who would retrieve the file and check it out to that individual. The district court found that "the inmates could not have done anything more to secure the confidentiality of these documents because there are no areas in the prison that are accessible only to inmates."

The clearly-marked file, at some point, attracted the attention of a prison employee, who in February 1997 made a copy of a letter from the inmates' counsel to nine inmates. The employee, who found the letter lying face-up on the law library desk of an inmate law librarian, gave the copy to the Department's lead counsel in this case, a Deputy Attorney General for the State of Idaho. The letter contained a summary of the strengths of the inmates' claims. Department's lead counsel kept the letter, and did not notify opposing counsel, the court, or her superiors that it was in her possession. It remained in her desk "in-box" for the next eight months.

That was only the beginning of the trail of documents from the prison library to Department's lead counsel's office. Four months later, another ISCI employee who worked in the law library noticed, as he checked the Gomez binders out to an inmate, that the binders contained documents related to this litigation. He understood the significance of the case because he had previously worked on this very lawsuit as a paralegal for the Department, and recognized documents in the binder he had worked on in that capacity. The official contacted the Department's lead counsel and told her that some documents indicated that the inmates' outside counsel may have misled the magistrate judge during an earlier hearing with regard to whether inmates had suffered physical injury in retaliation for litigation. The Department's lead counsel told the...