Smith v. Bounds
| Decision Date | 03 March 1988 |
| Docket Number | No. 86-7579,86-7579 |
| Citation | 841 F.2d 77 |
| Parties | Robert (Bobby) SMITH; Ronald D. Carnes; Bradford Mizell Lilley; Donald W. Morgan; Franklin D. Strader; John H. Russell; John Harrington; Alonzo Watts; Clifton Speight; William Ryder; Ronney McBride; Ray Forbes, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Vernon Lee BOUNDS, Commissioner, State Department of Corrections; Stanley Blackledge, Warden, Central State Prison; R.L. Turner, Superintendent of Odom Correctional Institution of the North Carolina Department of Corrections; James Holshouser, Governor, State of North Carolina; F.R. Moore, Sergeant, Central Prison; Franklin Mahan, Regional Superintendent; M.S. Lee, Captain, Washington County Unit 3560, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Andrew Albert Vanore, Jr., Chief Deputy Atty. Gen. (Lacy H. Thornburg, Atty. Gen., Sylvia Thibaut, Asst. Atty. Gen., North Carolina Dept. of Justice, Raleigh, N.C., on brief), for defendants-appellants.
Barry Nakell, Chapel Hill, N.C., University of North Carolina School of Law, for plaintiffs-appellees.
Before WINTER, Chief Judge, RUSSELL, WIDENER, HALL, PHILLIPS, MURNAGHAN, SPROUSE, ERVIN, CHAPMAN, WILKINSON and WILKINS, Circuit Judges, and BUTZNER, Senior Circuit Judge, sitting in banc.
We reheard this case in banc, and we affirm the judgment of the district court on the facts and for the reasons set forth in the panel opinion, Smith v. Bounds, 813 F.2d 1299 (4 Cir.1987), as supplemented by the additional comments which follow.
Defendants contend that they presented a case of excusable neglect under Rule 60(b), F.R.Civ.P., justifying relief from the May 14, 1985 order, decreeing that the state must provide assistance to prisoners by trained attorneys, and permission to reopen the case in order to show that North Carolina had a constitutionally acceptable prisoner library program. We note two significant factual findings by the district court in rejecting this contention. First, in denying defendants' initial motion for reconsideration, the district court concluded that defendants had not shown excusable neglect because
Similarly when the district court denied defendants' second renewed motion for reconsideration, * it dealt with defendants' argument that while Safron's dereliction in failing to respond to the December 21, 1984 order was not excusable neglect, their failure to respond was excusable because Safron's omission was an isolated incident which neither defendants nor Safron's supervisors could have anticipated. Again it found that "actions of counsel which precipitated the May 14, 1985 order and opinion were not isolated incidents." It noted that
Coupled with these factual findings is the district court's finding, described in the panel opinion and reiterated by the district court in its opinion denying the initial motion for reconsideration, that North Carolina was unable or unwilling to implement its library plan consistent with minimum constitutional requirements.
From the facts of record and for the reasons set forth in the panel opinion as well as our own examination of the record, we conclude that these findings of fact are not clearly erroneous. If, as the district court permissibly found, there was neglect on the part of all of the defendants, it follows that they could not establish "excusable neglect," they had no right to reconsideration under Rule 60(b), and the district court correctly denied their repeated motions for reconsideration.
AFFIRMED.
I respectfully dissent, for, in my opinion, the district court not only failed to comply with our mandate, it abused its discretion. The majority decision effectively ends litigation in this matter, at least at this stage, without allowing the Department of Corrections to be given the opportunity to present its evidence showing the constitutional compliance of its prison law libraries. The record contains such evidence that has been collected and tends to establish that the libraries have been in compliance for some time.
The history of the litigation in this case deals with two aspects, the plan and its implementation. The litigation involving the approval of the plan proposed by the State culminated in the Supreme Court decision in Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977), which upheld this court which had held that the proposed plan met constitutional standards 1 and that the State was under no constitutional obligation to offer inmates both research facilities and the services of attorneys. The plan thus encompassed a proposal which, when implemented, would provide the prisoners the constitutional right of access to the courts.
The plan, as approved, included:
(1) the establishment of a number of central and core law libraries at various prison facilities around the State (2) transportation and lodging to be provided to prisoners needing to travel to the libraries from other facilities;
(3) training of inmate assistants to aid their fellow prisoners;
(4) priority given to inmates working under deadlines; and
(5) providing of free copying services to indigent prisoners.
This court, in Harrington v. Holshouser (Harrington I), tabulated in 598 F.2d 614 (4th Cir.1979) (unpublished), added an additional requirement of adequate access to the libraries for inmates on disciplinary segregation.
The remainder of the litigation, with only slight exception, has concerned itself with the proper implementation of the approved plan. The State filed with the district court a certificate of compliance after instituting the prison law library system, the filing of which certificate was required by the plan. The prisoners objected, and the district court dismissed the action, finding the system constitutionally sufficient. From this order, the prisoners appealed in Harrington I, basing their objections on four grounds: (1) none of the law libraries were provided with law digests or indices; (2) the defendants did not provide the district court with information from which it could determine whether the placing of the libraries and the proposed transportation system could adequately serve prisoners on a statewide basis; (3) the certificate of compliance did not address the important facets of the plan dealing with the training and use of inmate assistants and offering free copies to indigents; and (4) the defendants adopted a regulation establishing certain restrictions on the use of the libraries by inmates in disciplinary segregation which was not included in the proposed plan. We held that the first claim had been argued and resolved in the adoption of the plan and thus was not subject to relitigation. As to the remaining three issues, the district court's order of dismissal was vacated and the case remanded for further fact finding. Additionally, the district court was instructed to address whether bed space was available for those prisoners who had to be transferred for library access.
Some four years later, on April 18, 1983, having reconsidered the case on account of the remand in Harrington I, the district court again dismissed the case upon its finding that the State had satisfactorily implemented the plan. Thus, the district court at this juncture had twice approved the State's implementation of the plan by dismissing the case based on the law library system's constitutional compliance. Another appeal by the prisoners was filed in this court on four issues somewhat similar to those considered in Harrington I: (1) the adequacy of the training provided to prisoner paralegals staffing the law libraries; (2) copying charges assessed against prisoners unable to pay; (3) the permissibility of limiting access to the libraries for prisoners on disciplinary segregation; and (4) the State's plan to provide access by means of short-term transfers. Harrington v. Holshouser, 741 F.2d 66, 67-68 (4th Cir.1984) (Harrington II ).
We affirmed the district court's denial of relief on the third and fourth issues, access for prisoners on disciplinary segregation and access by short-term transfers, and remanded for further fact finding on the first and second issues, paralegal training and copying charges against indigent inmates. We also added a requirement that the district court make fact findings on the extent of library use and number of requests for library use which were denied. This was the status of the case in the district court when the instant proceedings got under way, which culminated in the district court's orders of December 21, 1984, to which the State failed to respond, and the order of May 14, 1985 which imposed the attorney assistance plan on the State.
The district court, of course, had ample reason to be upset with Mr. Safron due to his representation of the Department of Corrections in this stage of the litigation, but this should be an insufficient reason to decline to carry out our mandate as precisely set forth in Harrington II. A lower court's declining to carry out a mandate of its superior court for the reason that one of the parties may be recalcitrant (even if that be the case here) is a reason which is insufficient in law and should not be permitted. Our instructions were simple, direct, and easily understood, and are...
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