Shrader v. White

• Citation: 761 F.2d 975
• Decision Date: 09 May 1985
• Docket Number: No. 83-6484,83-6484
• Parties: Everette SHRADER, Kent Edwin Evans, Merlon Joseph, Dennis Adams, and on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Appellants, and Albert Boisseau, Russell Vinnedge, Plaintiffs, v. Franklin WHITE, Acting Director; Robert M. Landin, Acting Director; Terry C. Richtmeyer, Regional Administrator; Elwood Booker, Superintendent; Rufus Fleming, Assistant Superintendent; Edward Wright, Institutional Security Chief, Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

Page 975

761 F.2d 975

Everette SHRADER, Kent Edwin Evans, Merlon Joseph, Dennis

Adams, and on behalf of themselves and all others

similarly situated, Appellants, and Albert Boisseau, Russell Vinnedge, Plaintiffs, v. Franklin WHITE, Acting Director; Robert M. Landin, Acting

Director; Terry C. Richtmeyer, Regional Administrator;

Elwood Booker, Superintendent; Rufus Fleming, Assistant

Superintendent; Edward Wright, Institutional Security

Chief, Appellees.

No. 83-6484.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued June 6, 1984.

Decided May 9, 1985.

Edward Rosenthal, Mary E. McClymont, Washington, D.C., and Marvin Miller (Adjoa A. Aiyetoro, Steven Ney, National Prison Project of American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Inc. and Michael C. Schwartz, on brief), for appellants.

Guy W. Horsley, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va. (Gerald L. Baliles, Atty. Gen. of Virginia, Peter H. Rudy, Asst. Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellees.

Before SPROUSE and CHAPMAN, Circuit Judges and HALLANAN, United States District Judge for the Southern District of West Virginia, sitting by designation.

CHAPMAN, Circuit Judge:

The plaintiffs-appellants, inmates at Virginia State Penitentiary (VSP), brought this 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 ¹ class action for declaratory and injunctive relief alleging that various conditions of their confinement violated the eighth amendment's proscription against cruel and unusual punishment. The parties consented to trial before a United States magistrate, who concluded that the conditions at VSP do not violate the eighth amendment and dismissed the inmates' complaint. On appeal the inmates assert that the magistrate applied an incorrect legal standard with respect to obtaining injunctive and/or declaratory relief from the threat of violence and sexual assault from other inmates at VSP. The inmates also assert that the magistrate made clearly erroneous findings of fact regarding inmate safety, the physical plant, fire hazards, and food service at VSP. Finding that the magistrate applied the correct legal standard and that his findings of fact were not clearly erroneous, with one exception, we affirm.

I

Plaintiffs initially assert that the magistrate applied an erroneous legal standard for injunctive and/or declaratory relief from the threat of violence and sexual assault from other inmates at VSP. Plaintiffs argue that the magistrate's standard ignores this court's holdings in Woodhous v. Virginia, 487 F.2d 889, 890 (4th Cir.1973), and Withers v. Levine, 615 F.2d 158 (4th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 849, 101 S.Ct. 136, 66 L.Ed.2d 59 (1980). The defendants assert that the standard used by the magistrate is a proper application of Woodhous and Withers in light of Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 101 S.Ct. 2392, 69 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981). We agree.

Specifically, the inmates assert that the magistrate erred in requiring that inmates suffer "significant mental pain" and that the danger be unnecessarily and wantonly inflicted and "totally without penological justification" to establish prison violence of constitutional proportions. As will be shown, however, the magistrate correctly applied the eighth amendment standard established in this Circuit and the Supreme Court. In Woodhous v. Virginia, 487 F.2d at 890, we set forth a standard of liability regarding unconstitutional levels of prison violence:

While occasional, isolated attacks by one prisoner on another may not constitute cruel and unusual punishment ... confinement in a prison where violence and terror reign is actionable. A prisoner has a right, secured by the eighth and fourteenth amendments, to be reasonably protected from constant threat of violence and sexual assault by his fellow inmates, and he need not wait until he is actually assaulted to obtain relief.

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In determining whether to grant relief, the court should ascertain: (1) whether there is a pervasive risk of harm to inmates from other prisoners, and, if so, (2) whether the officials are exercising reasonable care to prevent prisoners from intentionally harming others or from creating an unreasonable risk of harm. (citations omitted).

Later, in Withers v. Levine, 615 F.2d at 161, we elaborated on our holding in Woodhous as follows:

A pervasive risk of harm may not ordinarily be shown by pointing to a single incident or isolated incidents, but it may be established by much less than proof of a reign of violence and terror in the particular institution. The defendants seized upon that explanatory phrase from Woodhous to contend that something approaching anarchy must be proven before a cause of action under Woodhous may be made out, but conditions need not deteriorate to that extent before the constitutional right to protection arises. It is enough that violence and sexual assaults occur ... with sufficient frequency that the younger prisoners, particularly those slightly built, are put in reasonable fear for their safety and to reasonably apprise prison officials of the existence of the problem and the need for protective measures. ...

It is not necessary to show that all prisoners suffer a pervasive risk of harm. It is enough that an identifiable group of prisoners do, if the complainant is a member of that group.

In considering "for the first time the limitation that the Eighth Amendment ... imposes upon the conditions in which a State may confine those convicted of crimes," Rhodes, 452 U.S. at 344-45, 101 S.Ct. at 2397-98, the United States Supreme Court acknowledged that the eighth amendment's protections reach "beyond the barbarous physical punishments at issue in the Court's earliest cases." Id. at 345, 101 S.Ct. at 2398. The Court announced:

Today the Eighth Amendment prohibits punishments which, although not physically barbarous, "involve the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," Gregg v. Georgia, [428 U.S. 153, 173, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2925, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) ], or are grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime, Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 594 [97 S.Ct. 2861, 2867, 53 L.Ed.2d 982] (1977) (plurality opinion); Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 [30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793] (1910). Among "unnecessary and wanton" inflictions of pain are those that are "totally without penological justification." Gregg v. Georgia, supra, at 183 ; Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 103 [97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251] (1976).

452 U.S. at 346, 101 S.Ct. at 2399 (footnote omitted).

The Court went on to discuss how courts should decide whether conditions violate the eighth amendment:

No static "test" can exist by which courts determine whether conditions of confinement are cruel and unusual, for the Eighth Amendment "must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 [78 S.Ct. 590, 598, 2 L.Ed.2d 630] (1958) (plurality opinion). The Court has held, however, that "Eighth Amendment judgments should neither be nor appear to be merely the subjective views" of judges. Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263, 275 [100 S.Ct. 1133, 1139, 63 L.Ed.2d 382] (1980).

452 U.S. at 346, 101 S.Ct. at 2399.

The plaintiffs challenge the following portion of the magistrate's discussion of the law regarding "mental pain":

One key to understanding when the risk of violence reaches constitutional dimensions is its effect on the inmate population.... In this context, it is not necessary that an inmate establish that he has been the subject of an actual attack, but he must establish that he lives in reasonable fear of assaults from other inmates ... and that the fear results in significant mental pain .... To establish fear of constitutional dimensions, an inmate must show more than simple anxiety. He must demonstrate anxiety on a level such as would interfere to some degree with his everyday functions.... An inmate does not need to establish that he is totally incapacitated by any means. But, before pain of a constitutional magnitude can be said to exist, there must be evidence of serious mental and emotional deterioration attributable to the fear of constant danger from assaults.

Certainly it is not improper to consider the effect of conditions on the prison population in determining if the conditions are of constitutional magnitude. Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. at 364, 101 S.Ct. at 2408 (Brennen, J., concurring). We did as much in Sweet v. South Carolina Dept. of Corrections, 529 F.2d 854, 865-866 (4th Cir.1975), when we remanded the case for a determination of whether an indefinite limitation on exercise is harmful to a prisoner's health, and in Johnson v. Levine, 588 F.2d 1378, 1380 (4th Cir.1978), where we affirmed the district judge's findings of unconstitutional overcrowding, noting that the overcrowding had probably contributed to, inter alia, "psychological injury to some prisoners." In addition, the magistrate correctly noted that to obtain relief an inmate need not be the victim of an actual attack, but rather must suffer from the reasonable fear of inmate assaults. Withers, supra; Woodhous, supra. Since under Rhodes conditions at the prison which, "although not physically barbarous, involve the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" are prohibited under the eighth amendment, Rhodes, 452 U.S. at 346, 101 S.Ct. at 2399 (quoting Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 173, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2925, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) ), the magistrate's requirement that fear of attack result in significant mental pain to be of constitutional dimensions is proper. ²

The plaintiffs also challenge the magistrate's statement that the fear amounting to mental pain must be inflicted recklessly or wantonly and be "totally without penological justification." That portion of the magistrate's order is as follows:

Nevertheless, assuming that an inmate establishes that his fear of assaults has produced significant mental distress and psychological impairment to produce "pain," it does not automatically...