Sweet v. South Carolina Dept. of Corrections

• Decision Date: 01 December 1975
• Docket Number: No. 74--1118,74--1118
• Citation: 529 F.2d 854
• Parties: James E. SWEET, Appellant, v. SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Director William D. Leeke, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 854

529 F.2d 854

James E. SWEET, Appellant, v. SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Director William

D. Leeke, Appellee.

No. 74--1118.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued April 8, 1975.

Decided Dec. 1, 1975.

Richard L. C. Sullivan, Columbia, S.C. (court-assigned counsel), for appellant.

Emmet H. Clair, Asst. Atty. Gen. of S.C. (Daniel R. McLeod, Atty. Gen., and Stephen T. Savitz, Asst. Atty. Gen. of S.C., on brief) for appellee.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and WINTER, CRAVEN, BUTZNER RUSSELL, FIELD and WIDENER, Circuit Judges, sitting en banc.

DONALD RUSSELL, Circuit Judge:

This action sought both injunctive and monetary relief under the provisions of § 1983, 42 U.S.C., by a State prisoner, who has been for almost five years in segregated confinement in what is known as Cell Block 2 at the South Carolina Central Correctional Institution. The defendants, sued both officially and individually, are the Director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections and the Warden of the Central Correctional Institution. After a trial without a jury, the District Court dismissed the action. The plaintiff has appealed. We affirm in part and remand in part.

The plaintiff is serving a sentence imposed in 1967, following a plea of guilty to the crime of statutory rape. He had earlier served a sentence for a similar crime, i.e., assault of a 'high and aggravated nature--attempt to ravish.' As a repeat sex offender, he was incarcerated in the Central Correctional Institution for service of his sentence, since it was the policy of the Department of Corrections not to place sex offenders in 'any minimal security institutions.' After commitment, the plaintiff, according to to testimony of the prison authorities, was a 'constant problem.' He had been placed on several occasions in administrative segregation in Cell Block 3, prior to being confined in Cell Block 2. The reasons for such segregation do not appear in the record. The difference between the conditions of confinement in the two Cell Blocks, as described by the plaintiff, is that the inmates in Cell Block 3 'gets (sic) to go in the general population' while those in Cell Block 2 may not. The plaintiff's transfer to Cell Block 2 occurred in April, 1968, and followed a prison riot at the Central Correctional Institution. The record is somewhat obscure on the plaintiff's connection with that riot. He testified at the trial in District Court that at that time he was in Cell Block 3 but, during the day, he had been detailed to cut grass in the prison compound yard. While the plaintiff was proceeding down a walkway between two fences for the purpose of putting up his lawnmower, he was apparently accosted by, or noticed some inmates with knives. Whether the plaintiff was threatened by these inmates or whether he merely reported his observation to the prison guards is unclear. In any event, according to the plaintiff, prison guards observed the incident and 'they came in there, you know, and they got those guys * * *.' The punishment of 'those guys' apparently inflamed the other inmates and a riot began, during which threats were freely made against the plaintiff. The reason for the threats, as stated by the plaintiff, was '(B)ecause (the other inmates) thought that (Sweet) told on them down there.' Earlier, in State Court proceedings, he gave a somewhat different story. He indicated that he may have been an informer in connection with the riot and that, as a result of actions taken against those involved in the riot, he was subjected to threats of serious bodily harm. At the trial in the District Court, as we have already noted, he gave no such account. Perhaps the reason for the difference in the two accounts was that, in the State Court proceedings, he was testifying in a closed, private hearing and in the trial in the District Court, on the other hand, he was publicly testifying. In the former case, he did not fear that his admission would be known publicly but in the latter case, such admission, if made, would be known publicly. Whatever may be the true version, however, it is clear that the plaintiff became the object of threats generally from his fellow inmates. Because of these threats the plaintiff requested that he be placed in segregated confinement in Cell Block 2. Nor does the plaintiff by this action seek release from segregated confinement in Cell Block 2. He freely concedes the propriety of his segregation from the general prison population; in fact, he expressly declares in his brief in this Court that he 'does not suggest that he has been wronged by being administratively segregated.' ¹ He has never asked and does not by his petition in this proceeding ask to be released from Cell Block 2. He testified unequivocally that he did 'not want to get out of Cell Block 2' and that '(I)t wouldn't be safe' for him to do so. ² He justified his demand to be placed in segregated confinement by testimony indicating that his presence in the general population would place him in danger of serious bodily harm, if not death. This testimony makes it understandable why the plaintiff does not ask for release from Cell Block 2 but rather expresses the firm desire to remain there. And, since the prison authorities have the responsibility for taking all reasonable steps to protect the plaintiff from assaults, ³ it is equall understandable why they are agreeable to retaining the plaintiff in segregated confinement, separate from other members of the prison population.

To restate it, then, the issue presented by the plaintiff is not the constitutional validity of segregated confinement. As we have already observed, he is not objecting to being placed in segregated confinement in Cell Block 2; his complaint as he phrases it in his brief, was in being 'subjected in administrative segregation to the same treatment as that of those punitively segregated.' And, in order to secure this different treatment, he sought certain additional privileges, or, to use his own words, to obtain 'a little more privileges in CB--2.' ⁴ And he specifically identified both in his testimony and in his brief in this Court, the additional privileges he sought and only sought by his action. He testified that what he sued to secure was 'the opportunity to have more food and more exercise time, and at least three showers a week anyhow.' At another point in his testimony, he said that his complaint against the prison authorities was their failure to offer him 'an opportunity to work and get more food and take more showers.' In his amended complaint, however, he had been more expansive in the cataloging of his complaints. He claimed there that he was improperly denied the right to engage in religious exercises, to be provided with necessary medical attention, to have access to reading or writing material, to be allowed legal consultation, to have other inmates to converse with, to have his complaints 'about prison conditions and prison officials' properly investigated, to be given extra food, and finally, to be allowed sufficient time for exercise and showers. While we might properly restrict our consideration to the privileges which the plaintiff testified he sought, we shall discuss, as the District Court did too, his broader demands as stated in his amended complaint.

In assessing the right of the plaintiff to these additional privileges, it must be kept firmly in mind that "(l)awful incarceration brings about the necessary withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights, a retraction justified by the considerations underlying our penal system," Pell v. Procunier (1974) 417 U.S. 817, 822, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 2804, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (quoting from Price v. Johnston (1948) 334 U.S. 266, 285, 68 S.Ct. 1049, 92 L.Ed. 1356), and that '(F)ederal courts sit not to supervise prisons but to enforce the constitutional rights of all 'persons,' including prisoners.' Cruz v. Beto (1972) 405 U.S. 319, 321, 92 S.Ct. 1079, 1081, 31 L.Ed.2d 263. The problems of prison management have been properly described as 'complex and intractable, * * * not readily susceptible of resolution by decree,' a fact which finds expression in 'a broad hands-off attitude toward problems of prison administration' as adopted '(t)raditionally,' by 'federal courts.' Procunier v. Martinez (1974) 416 U.S. 396, 404, 405, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1807, 40 L.Ed.2d 224. After all, 'courts possess no expertise in the conduct and management of correctional institutions.' Finney v. Arkansas Board of Correction (8th Cir. 1974) 505 F.2d 194, 200. Because of this want of judicial expertise, 'prison officials must be accorded latitude in the administration of prison affairs,' Cruz v. Beto, supra, 405 U.S. at 321, 92 S.Ct. at 1081; Frazier v. Ciccone (8th Cir. 1974) 506 F.2d 1022, 1024, and their judgments are entitled to 'great weight,' Ross v. Blackledge (4th Cir. 1973) 477 F.2d 616, 618; Gardner v. Joyce (5th Cir. 1973) 482 F.2d 283, 285, cert. denied 414 U.S. 1096, 94 S.Ct. 731, 38 L.Ed.2d 555 (1973); Burke v. Levi (E.D.Va.1975) 391 F.Supp. 186, 189. Particularly, '(W)here state penal institutions are involved, federal courts have a further reason for deference to the appropriate prison authorities.' Procunier v. Martinez, supra, 416 U.S. at 405, 94 S.Ct. at 1807. Courts are accordingly limited in their exercise of power in this area to deprivations which represent constitutional abuses and they cannot prohibit a given condition or treatment in prison management unless it reaches the level of an unconstitutional deprivation. It has been well said that '(C)ourts encounter numerous cases in which the acts or conditions under attack are clearly undesirable and are condemned by penologists, but the courts are powerless to act because the practices are not so abusive as to violate a constitutional right.' Note, Decency and Fairness: An Emerging Judicial Role in Prison Reform, 72 Va.L.Rev. 841, 843 (1971).

This does not mean that ...