Shaw v. Murphy

• Decision Date: 18 April 2001
• Docket Number: 991613
• Parties: ROBERT SHAW, et al., PETITIONERS v. KEVIN MURPHY, RESPONDENT SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

532 U.S. 223

121 S.Ct. 1475

149 L.Ed.2d 420

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press

ROBERT SHAW, et al., PETITIONERS v KEVIN MURPHY, RESPONDENT

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 99-1613

Argued January 16, 2001

Decided April 18, 2001

Syllabus

While respondent Murphy was incarcerated in state prison, he learned that a fellow inmate had been charged with assaulting a correctional officer. Murphy decided to assist the inmate with his defense and sent him a letter, which was intercepted in accordance with prison policy. Based on the letter's content, the prison sanctioned Murphy for violating prison rules prohibiting insolence and interfering with due process hearings. Murphy then sought declaratory and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. 1983 alleging that the disciplinary action violated, inter alia, his First Amendment rights, including the right to provide legal assistance to other inmates. In granting petitioners summary judgment, the District Court applied the decision in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89-that a prison regulation impinging on inmates' constitutional rights is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests-and found a valid, rational connection between the inmate correspondence policy and the objectives of prison order, security, and inmate rehabilitation. The Ninth Circuit reversed, finding that inmates have a First Amendment right to give legal assistance to other inmates and that this right affected the Turner analysis.

Held: 1. Inmates do not possess a special First Amendment right to provide legal assistance to fellow inmates that enhances the protections otherwise available under Turner. Prisoners' constitutional rights are more limited in scope than the constitutional rights held by individuals in society at large. For instance, some First Amendment rights are simply inconsistent with the corrections system's "legitimate penological objectives," Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822, and thus this Court has sustained restrictions on, e.g., inmate-to-inmate written correspondence, Turner, supra, at 93. Moreover, because courts are ill equipped to deal with the complex and intractable problems of prisons, Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 404-405, this Court has generally deferred to prison officials' judgment in upholding such regulations against constitutional challenge. Turner reflects this understanding, setting a unitary, deferential standard for reviewing prisoners' claims that does not permit an increase in the constitutional protection whenever a prisoner's communication includes legal advice. To increase the constitutional protection based upon a communication's content first requires an assessment of that content's value. But the Turner test simply does not accommodate valuations of content. On the contrary, it concerns only the relationship between the asserted penological interests and the prison regulation. Moreover, prison officials are to remain the primary arbiters of the problems that arise in prison management. 482 U.S., at 89. Seeking to avoid unnecessarily perpetuating federal courts' involvement in prison administration affairs, the Court rejects an alteration of the Turner analysis that would entail additional federal-court oversight. Even if this Court were to consider giving special protection to particular kinds of speech based on content, it would not do so for speech that includes legal advice. Augmenting First Amendment protection for such advice would undermine prison officials' ability to address the complex and intractable problems of prison administration. Id., at 84. The legal text could be an excuse for making clearly inappropriate comments, which may circulate among prisoners despite prison measures to screen individual inmates or officers from the remarks. Pp. 4-8.

2. To prevail on remand on the question whether the prison regulations, as applied to Murphy, are reasonably related to legitimate penological interests, he must overcome the presumption that the prison officials acted within their broad discretion. P. 8.

195 F.3d 1121, reversed and remanded.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Ginsburg, J., filed a concurring opinion.

Opinion of the Court

Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court.

Under our decision in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), restrictions on prisoners' communications to other inmates are constitutional if the restrictions are "reasonably related to legitimate penological interests." Id., at 89. In this case, we are asked to decide whether prisoners possess a First Amendment right to provide legal assistance that enhances the protections otherwise available under Turner. We hold that they do not.

I

While respondent Kevin Murphy was incarcerated at the Montana State Prison, he served as an "inmate law clerk," providing legal assistance to fellow prisoners. Upon learning that inmate Pat Tracy had been charged with assaulting Correctional Officer Glen Galle, Murphy decided to assist Tracy with his defense. Prison rules prohibited Murphy's assignment to the case,¹ but he nonetheless investigated the assault. After discovering that other inmates had complained about Officer Galle's conduct, Murphy sent Tracy a letter, which included the following:

"I do want to help you with your case against Galle. It wasn't your fault and I know he provoked whatever happened! Don't plead guilty because we can get at least 100 witnesses to testify that Galle is an over zealous guard who has a personal agenda to punish and harrass [sic] inmates. He has made homo-sexual [sic] advances towards certain inmates and that can be brought up into the record. There are petitions against him and I have tried to get the Unit Manager to do something about what he does in Close II, but all that happened is that I received two writeups from him myself as retaliation. So we must pursue this out of the prison system. I am filing a suit with everyone in Close I and II named against him. So you can use that too!

"Another poiont [sic] is that he grabbed you from behind. You tell your lawyer to get ahold of me on this. Don't take a plea bargain unless it's for no more time." App. 50.

In accordance with prison policy, prison officials intercepted the letter, and petitioner Robert Shaw, an officer in the maximum-security unit, reviewed it. Based on the accusations against Officer Galle, Shaw cited Murphy for violations of the prison's rules prohibiting insolence, interference with due process hearings, and conduct that disrupts or interferes with the security and orderly operation of the institution. After a hearing, Murphy was found guilty of violating the first two prohibitions. The hearings officer sanctioned him by imposing a suspended sentence of 10 days' detention and issuing demerits that could affect his custody level.

In response, Murphy brought this action, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief under Rev. Stat. 1979, 42 U.S.C. 1983. The case was styled as a class action, brought on behalf of himself, other inmate law clerks, and other prisoners. The complaint alleged that the disciplining of Murphy violated due process, the rights of inmates to access the courts, and, as relevant here, Murphy's First Amendment rights, including the right to provide legal assistance to other inmates.

After discovery, the District Court granted petitioners' motion for summary judgment on all of Murphy's claims. On the First Amendment claim, the court found that Murphy was not formally acting as an inmate law clerk when he wrote the letter, and that Murphy's claims should therefore "be analyzed without consideration of any privilege that law clerk status might provide." App. to Pet. for Cert. 24. The District Court then applied our decision in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), which held that a prison regulation impinging on inmates' constitutional rights is valid "if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests," id., at 89. Finding a "valid, rational connection between the prison inmate correspondence policy and the objectives of prison order, security, and inmate rehabilitation," the District Court rejected Murphy's First Amendment claim. App. to Pet. for Cert. 25.

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. It premised its analysis on the proposition that "inmates have a First Amendment right to assist other inmates with their legal claims." 195 F.3d 1121, 1124 (1999). Murphy enjoyed this right of association, the court concluded, because he was providing legal advice that potentially was relevant to Tracy's defense. The Court of Appeals then applied our decision in Turner, but it did so only against the backdrop of this First Amendment right, which, the court held, affected the balance of the prisoner's interests against the government's interests. Concluding that the balance tipped in favor of Murphy, the Court of Appeals upheld Murphy's First Amendment claim.

Other Courts of Appeals have rejected similar claims. See, e.g., Gibbs v. Hopkins, 10 F.3d 373, 378 (CA6 1993) (no constitutional right to assist other inmates with legal claims); Smith v. Maschner, 899 F.2d 940, 950 (CA10 1990) (same); Gassler v. Rayl, 862 F.2d 706, 707-708 (CA8 1988) (same). To resolve the conflict, we granted certiorari. 530 U.S. 1303 (2000).

II

In this case, we are not asked to decide whether prisoners have any First Amendment rights when they send legal correspondence to one another. In Turner, we held that restrictions on inmate-to-inmate communications pass...