McDonald v. Armontrout

• Citation: 908 F.2d 388
• Parties: Samuel L. McDONALD; Gerald M. Smith; Rayfield Newlon; Thomas Henry Battle; Alan J. Bannister, Class certified
• Decision Date: 15 January 1986
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit)

Page 388

908 F.2d 388

Samuel L. McDONALD; Gerald M. Smith; Rayfield Newlon Thomas Henry Battle; Alan J. Bannister, Class certified 1/15/86 to consist of all persons presently confined under sentence of death in the Potosi Correctional Center and all persons who in the future will be confined under sentence of death by the Mo. Dept. of Correction, Appellants, v. Bill ARMONTROUT; Lee Roy Black; Donald Wyrick; John Ashcroft, Appellees.

No. 89-2152.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted April 12, 1990.

Decided July 16, 1990.

Richard H. Sindel, Clayton, Mo., for appellants.

Deborah Neff, Jefferson City, Mo., for appellees.

Before JOHN R. GIBSON and BOWMAN, Circuit Judges, and HENLEY, Senior Circuit Judge.

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge.

This case concerns the constitutionality of certain modifications ordered by the District Court ¹ in a consent agreement between appellees Bill Armontrout, warden of the Missouri penitentiary, Lee Roy Black, Director of the Department of Corrections of the state of Missouri, Donald Wyrick, Director of the Division of Adult Institutions of the Missouri Department of Corrections, and John Ashcroft, Governor of the State of Missouri, and appellants, a class consisting of all inmates presently or in the future under sentence of death confined in a Missouri penitentiary. The original complaint alleged that death row inmates at the Missouri State Penitentiary were subjected to conditions and practices in violation of their constitutional rights under the First, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Without an admission by appellees or a finding by the court that the conditions on death row were unconstitutional, the appellees entered into a consent agreement with the appellant class under which various improvements were to be made in the conditions and practices on death row at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Immediately after the settlement, and several months before the court entered a consent decree approving the settlement, appellees began complying with the agreement.

Approximately two years later, appellees filed a motion with the court to move the capital punishment unit from the Missouri State Penitentiary to the Potosi Correctional Center, which had been in the process of being built when the parties reached their initial settlement. The consent decree specifically anticipated a transfer of the capital punishment unit from the Missouri State Penitentiary to the Potosi Correctional Center when that facility was completed, Consent Decree at 19, and the new facility was built to accommodate a capital punishment unit. Order to Implement Consent Decree at Potosi at 3. The appellant class did not respond to appellees' motion to transfer the capital punishment unit and the District Court approved the motion in an order issued on March 13, 1989. It was not until after appellees had submitted their plan to implement the consent decree at Potosi and request for modifications in the decree consistent with that plan that appellants objected. Two weeks later the District Court entered an order approving appellees' request for modifications consistent with the implementation plan. In this appeal appellants challenge that order, arguing that the District Court was without authority to order any of the modifications or, in the alternative, was without authority to order modifications beyond those relating to the physical plant in which the death-sentenced inmates are housed.

The district court retains authority over a consent decree, including the power to modify the decree in light of changed circumstances, and is subject to only a limited check by the reviewing court. Pasadena City Bd. of Educ. v. Spangler, 427 U.S. 424, 437, 96 S.Ct. 2697, 2705, 49 L.Ed.2d 599 (1976); United States v. United Shoe Mach., 391 U.S. 244, 251, 88 S.Ct. 1496, 1500, 20 L.Ed.2d 562 (1968), United States v. Swift & Co., 286 U.S. 106, 114, 52 S.Ct. 460, 462, 76 L.Ed. 999 (1932). We will reverse a district court's modification of a consent decree only upon a showing of an abuse of discretion. See System Fed'n No. 91 v. Wright, 364 U.S. 642, 650, 81 S.Ct. 368, 372, 5 L.Ed.2d 349 (1961). Moreover, the Supreme Court has indicated that a district court's resolution of a motion to modify is due greater deference when the changed circumstances justifying modification are of fact rather than law. Wright, 364 U.S. at 648, 81 S.Ct. at 371 ("[D]iscretion is never without limits and these limits are often far clearer to the reviewing court when the new circumstances involve a change in law rather than facts."). Here the changed circumstances were of fact: the capital punishment unit was to be moved to a new institution. Our standard of review is deferential; and we find no abuse of discretion in the modifications ordered by the District Court.

Appellants do not and could not object to the movement of the capital punishment unit to Potosi. The possibility of such a transfer is expressly contemplated in the decree, as was the need for court-ordered modifications consequent upon such a transfer. The decree provides:

New Facilities

If defendants at some future date determine that it is necessary to expand death row housing beyond its present location ... or move death row to a new location, defendants shall file with the Court and serve upon counsel for the plaintiff class a plan for implementation of all rights and privileges conferred by this decree at the new or additional location(s). Defendants may begin housing death-sentenced inmates in such new or additional location(s) upon approval of the plan by the Court.

Consent Decree at 19. Because the changed circumstances, as well as the possibility of modifications, were fully foreshadowed in the original decree, it could be said that the changes ordered by the District Court were not modifications at all, but were part of the court's enforcement of the original terms of the decree pursuant to its continuing supervision.

But even had the decree made no mention of a possible future movement of the capital punishment unit to a new facility and, further, had neglected to assert the District Court's continuing authority over the decree, the court still would have had power to order modifications. "If the reservation [of power to modify the decree] had been omitted, power there still would be by force of principles inherent in the jurisdiction of the chancery. A continuing decree of injunction directed to events to come is subject always to adaptation as events may shape the need." Swift & Co., 286 U.S. at 114, 52 S.Ct. at 462 (citations omitted), quoted in Wright, 364 U.S. at 647, 81 S.Ct. at 371 (holding that there is no diminution of the court's power if the decree is the result of consent rather than litigation); see also Wright, 364 U.S. at 646, 81 S.Ct. at 371 ("[T]he power of the District Court to modify this decree is not drawn in question. That proposition indeed could not well be disputed."). Modification is appropriate "if the circumstances, whether of law or fact, obtaining at the time of its issuance have changed, or new ones have arisen." Local No. 93, Int'l Assn. of Firefighters v. City of Cleveland, 478 U.S. 501, 527, 106 S.Ct. 3063, 3078, 92 L.Ed.2d 405 (1986) (quoting Wright, 364 U.S. at 646-47, 81 S.Ct. at 370-71). In the case at hand, the circumstance of the opening of a brand new correctional institution with facilities for a capital punishment unit, and to which appellees wished to transfer death-sentenced inmates, constitutes a changed circumstance sufficient to justify modifications in the decree with or without the specific provisions in the decree allowing for a transfer and for concomitant modifications.

Appellants argue that the changed circumstance must be both "unforeseen" and the cause of "grievous wrong." This claim, however, is taken from the discussion of a quite separate matter in Swift & Co., 286 U.S. 106, 52 S.Ct. 460, 76 L.Ed. 999. In that case, the Supreme Court considered court-ordered alterations in a consent decree that constituted less a modification than a complete nullification of a significant portion of the consent decree. The original agreement in Swift settled an antitrust suit filed by the government against the five preeminent meat-packing companies accused of monopolizing the meat-packing industry as well as forming incipient monopolies in several other food-related industries. Under the decree the defendants were prohibited from engaging in restraints...