Baraldini v. Thornburgh

• Decision Date: 08 September 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-5275,88-5275
• Parties: Silvia BARALDINI, et al. v. Richard L. THORNBURGH, Attorney General, et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 615

884 F.2d 615

280 U.S.App.D.C. 176

Silvia BARALDINI, et al. v. Richard L. THORNBURGH, Attorney General, et al.

No. 88-5275.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued March 17, 1989.

Decided Sept. 8, 1989.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Civil Action No. 88-0764).

John C. Cleary, Asst. U.S. Atty., with whom Jay B. Stephens, U.S. Atty., John D. Bates and R. Craig Lawrence, Asst. U.S. Attys., Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellants.

Adjoa A. Aiyetoro, with whom Alexa P. Freeman, Jan Susler, Michael Deutsch, Chicago, Ill., Mary K. O'Melveny, New York City, and Margaret L. Ratner were on the brief, for appellees.

Before EDWARDS and RUTH BADER GINSBURG, Circuit Judges, and KAUFMAN, Senior United States District Judge. ^*

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior United States District Judge KAUFMAN.

FRANK A. KAUFMAN, Senior District Judge:

This appeal raises the question whether the Federal Bureau of Prisons ("the Bureau") violated the First Amendment rights of plaintiffs-appellees, Silvia Baraldini and Susan Rosenberg, by placing them as inmates in the Bureau's highest security confinement institution for women. The District Court answered that question in the affirmative and granted injunctive relief to those two plaintiffs. Baraldini v. Meese, 691 F.Supp. 432 (D.D.C.1988). We disagree and reverse. ¹

I.

In October 1986, the Bureau opened the Female High Security Unit within the Federal Correctional Institution at Lexington, Kentucky ("the Unit"). Prior to that time, the Bureau did not have a high security place of confinement for women. On September 2, 1986, a high official of the Bureau wrote in an internal Bureau memorandum:

Candidates for placement in this unit are those females whose confinement raises a serious threat of external assault for the purpose of aiding the offender's escape. Other females who have serious histories of assaultive, escape-prone or disruptive activity may be considered on a space available basis.... Consideration for transfer from the unit should be given when the original factors for placement in the unit no longer apply and when placement in a less secure facility becomes appropriate.

Baraldini v. Meese, 691 F.Supp. at 435.

Prior to the entry of the injunction by the District Court in July 1988, seven women, including Baraldini, Brown and Rosenberg, had been assigned to the Unit. As of March 1, 1988, three weeks before this action was instituted, those three women plus two others, or a total of five, were so confined.

Silvia Baraldini received a forty-year prison sentence after her 1984 conviction for racketeering, conspiracy and armed robbery. ² Prior to her transfer to the Unit in January 1987, Baraldini was confined in the general population of non-maximum security institutions without any unusual security, behavioral or other similar problems. Her January 1987 transfer papers stated:

Ms. Baraldini is a member of the May 19th Communist Party which is sympathetic to other radical groups including the New African Freedom Front and the FALN. She participated in the successful 1978 escape of Jo Anne Chesamire [sic] from the New Jersey State Women's Prison. Members of her group have participated in numerous armed robberies where police officers were wounded or killed.

Id. at 436. In addition, Baraldini's transfer papers noted her association with the "Family"--"a revolutionary organization whose members advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government through violent means." Id. (page references omitted).

Susan Rosenberg was sentenced in 1985 to fifty-eight years for conspiracy to possess unregistered firearms, unlawful use of false identification documents and possession of unregistered destructive devices. One of the first to be assigned, Rosenberg was sent to the Unit in October 1986. Before that transfer, the record contains no suggestion that Rosenberg presented any particular security, behavioral or other similar problems after she was sentenced in 1985. It was noted in the Bureau document requesting her transfer that

Rosenberg has been associated with the FALN, Black Liberation Army, and other terrorist groups. She also was thought to have been involved in an 1981 Brinks Armed Car Robbery and has previously been linked to the Joanne Chesimard escape in 1979. She also has threatened in open court to take her armed revolution behind prison walls. For the above reasons, we are referring her to a maximum security institution.

Id. After Rosenberg was sentenced, the sentencing judge, in a letter to the Director of the Bureau, reviewed the in-court statements of Rosenberg and a co-defendant, and stated that "the defendants exhibited no remorse. To the contrary, they exhorted their followers who were present in court to carry on the 'armed revolution.' " Rosenberg v. Meese, 622 F.Supp. 1451, 1464 n. 22 (S.D.N.Y.1985) (quoting from a May 21, 1985 letter of the sentencing judge, Frederick B. Lacey, United States District Judge for the District of New Jersey, to the then Bureau Director, Norman A. Carlson). The sentencing judge added that "[c]areful consideration must be given to the security of any prison to which Rosenberg is sent." Id. ³

Sylvia Brown was sentenced in 1980 to a term of more than twenty years for interstate kidnapping, probation violations and prison escapes. While in federal confinement, she was twice transferred for disciplinary reasons and at one point escaped and was subsequently apprehended. Her escape was accomplished with "organized outside assistance, including payments of money, transportation arrangements, and sophisticated weapons." Baraldini v. Meese, 691 F.Supp. at 436. When Brown was transferred to the Unit in 1987, an internal Bureau document referred specifically to her escape.

II.

"Prison walls do not form a barrier separating prison inmates from the protections of the Constitution." Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 84, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 2259, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987). However, "courts are ill equipped to deal with the increasingly urgent problems of prison administration." Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 405, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1807, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974). In Turner, Justice O'Connor, for the majority, wrote:

Running a prison is an inordinately difficult undertaking that requires expertise, planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive branches of government. Prison administration is, moreover, a task that has been committed to the responsibility of those branches, and separation of powers concerns counsel a policy of judicial restraint. Where a state penal system is involved, federal courts have, as we indicated in Martinez, additional reason to accord deference to the appropriate prison authorities.

Turner, 482 U.S. at 84-85, 107 S.Ct. at 2259. In that context, Justice O'Connor "formulate[d] a standard of review for prisoners' constitutional claims that is responsive both to the 'policy of judicial restraint regarding prisoner complaints and [to] the need to protect constitutional rights.' " Id. at 85, 107 S.Ct. at 2259, quoting Martinez, 416 U.S. at 406, 94 S.Ct. at 1808. The standard specifically formulated by the Supreme Court in Turner is that "when a prison regulation impinges on inmates' constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. In our view, such a standard is necessary if 'prison administrators ..., and not the courts, [are] to make the difficult judgments concerning institutional operations.' " Turner, 482 U.S. at 89, 107 S.Ct. at 2261, quoting Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Union, 433 U.S. 119, 128, 97 S.Ct. 2532, 2539, 53 L.Ed.2d 629 (1977). ⁴ Justice O'Connor then added:

Subjecting the day-to-day judgments of prison officials to an inflexible strict scrutiny analysis would seriously hamper their ability to anticipate security problems and to adopt innovative solutions to the intractable problems of prison administration. The rule would also distort the decisionmaking process, for every administrative judgment would be subject to the possibility that some court somewhere would conclude that it had a less restrictive way of solving the problem at hand. Courts inevitably would become the primary arbiters of what constitutes the best solution to every administrative problem, thereby "unnecessarily perpetuat[ing] the involvement of the federal courts in affairs of prison administration."

Id., quoting Martinez, 416 U.S. at 407, 94 S.Ct. at 1808. Justice O'Connor then set forth, 482 U.S. at 89-91, 107 S.Ct. at 2261-63, four factors relevant to determination of the "reasonableness" of a prison practice. Judge Parker, in the District Court, accurately stated those factors as follows:

1) Whether there is a "valid, rational connection" between the prison regulation and the legitimate, neutral governmental interest.

2) If alternative means of exercising the constitutional right remain open to prison inmates.

3) The impact an accommodation of the asserted constitutional right would have on guards and other inmates, and on the allocation of prison resources.

4) The absence of ready alternatives.

Baraldini v. Meese, 691 F.Supp. at 443.

In O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 107 S.Ct. 2400, 96 L.Ed.2d 282 (1987), in a five-four decision, Chief Justice Rehnquist reaffirmed the Turner standard and added:

This approach ensures the ability of corrections officials "to anticipate security problems and to adopt innovative solutions to the intractable problems of prison administration," [Turner, 482 U.S. at 89, 107 S.Ct. at 2261], and avoids unnecessary intrusion of the judiciary into problems particularly ill-suited to "resolution by decree."

O'Lone, 482 U.S. at 349-50, 107 S.Ct. at 2204, quoting Martinez, 416 U.S. at 405, 94 S.Ct. at 1807. The Chief Justice also wrote:

We think the Court of Appeals...