U.S. v. Stotts

• Decision Date: 05 February 1991
• Docket Number: 90-6859,Nos. 90-7012,s. 90-7012
• Citation: 925 F.2d 83
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Michael Jeffrey STOTTS, III, Plaintiff-Appellee, Edwin Meese; Norman A. Carlson; Gary R. McCune; Sam Samples; Lara Tuggle; Ronnie Alston, All sued in their individual and official capacities; J. Michael Quinlan, In his official capacity as Director of the Bureau of Prisons, Defendants, and North Carolina Civil Liberties Union Legal Foundation, Amicus Curiae. UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Michael Jeffrey STOTTS, III, Plaintiff-Appellee, Edwin Meese; Norman A. Carlson; Gary R. McCune; Sam Samples; Lara Tuggle; Ronnie Alston, All sued in their individual and official capacities; J. Michael Quinlan, In his official capacity as Director of the Bureau of Prisons, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 83

925 F.2d 83

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Michael Jeffrey STOTTS, III, Plaintiff-Appellee, Edwin Meese; Norman A. Carlson; Gary R. McCune; Sam

Samples; Lara Tuggle; Ronnie Alston, All sued in their

individual and official capacities; J. Michael Quinlan, In

his official capacity as Director of the Bureau of Prisons, Defendants,

and

North Carolina Civil Liberties Union Legal Foundation,

Amicus Curiae.

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Michael Jeffrey STOTTS, III, Plaintiff-Appellee, Edwin Meese; Norman A. Carlson; Gary R. McCune; Sam

Samples; Lara Tuggle; Ronnie Alston, All sued in their

individual and official capacities; J. Michael Quinlan, In

his official capacity as Director of the Bureau of Prisons,

Defendants.

Nos. 90-7012, 90-6859.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 31, 1990.

Decided Feb. 5, 1991.

Eileen G. Coffey, Asst. U.S. Atty., argued (Margaret Person Currin, U.S. Atty., R.A. Renfer, Jr., Asst. U.S. Atty., on brief), Raleigh, N.C., for appellant.

Marvin Ray Sparrow, North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc., Raleigh, N.C., for plaintiff-appellee.

Jonathan A. Blumberg, Melissa H. Hill, Tharrington, Smith & Hargrove, Raleigh, N.C., for amicus curiae.

Before ERVIN, Chief Judge, WILKINSON, Circuit Judge, and HOUCK, United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina, sitting by designation.

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

This case involves a constitutional challenge to regulations promulgated by the United States Bureau of Prisons concerning the handling of incoming prisoner mail. The regulations at issue specify how incoming mail must be marked to qualify for confidential treatment as special or legal correspondence. The federal magistrate judge held that the regulations unconstitutionally obstructed prisoner Stotts' right of access to the courts and his freedom of expression. Because we believe that the Bureau of Prisons' regulations are "reasonably related to legitimate penological interests," Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 2261, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987), we now reverse.

I.

Michael Stotts, a prisoner in custody of the United States Bureau of Prisons, filed a complaint on July 29, 1986 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, alleging that prison officials at the Federal Correctional Institute at Butner, North Carolina were violating his constitutional rights. The sole claim that survived for trial was his request for injunctive relief against the Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) policies regarding incoming legal or special mail. Stotts charged that prison officials were violating rights guaranteed by the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments by opening and reading his confidential legal mail.

Federal regulations divide incoming prison mail into two categories: general and special. General mail is subject to being opened by prison officials, checked for contraband, read for plans to perform illegal acts, and then reclosed and delivered to the prisoner. 28 C.F.R. Sec. 540.14 (1990). ¹ Special mail refers to certain written communications from attorneys, courts, congressmen and other public officials. It enjoys more protection than general mail in that it cannot be read by prison officials and can be opened to check for contraband only in the presence of the prisoner to whom it is addressed. Id. Sec. 540.18.

Correspondence qualifies as special mail only "if the sender is adequately identified on the envelope, and the front of the envelope is marked 'Special Mail--Open Only in the presence of the inmate.' " Id. Sec. 540.18(a). Mail from an attorney has to be marked not only with the "Special Mail" phrase, but also with the attorney's name and the fact the sender is an attorney. Id. Sec. 540.19(b). Officials at Butner, where Stotts was held, require that all special mail be delivered within twenty-four hours of its receipt. The date and time of receipt of special mail at the institution are entered in a log and the mail is then given to the inmate's unit manager, who signs a receipt. Each unit manager also maintains a separate log to record his receipt of the mail and the time of delivery to the inmate. Inmates sign receipts upon final delivery of the mail. See id. Sec. 540.19(a).

In 1988, the BOP issued an Operations Memorandum regarding handling of special mail. Although the regulations themselves remained unchanged, the BOP adopted three new procedures in implementing them: (1) mail from a judge's chambers or a congressional member was to be treated as special mail, even if not marked as such; (2) inmates were to be provided instruction sheets with which to inform their attorneys of how to comply with the special mail regulations; (3) mail from qualified senders besides judges and congressmen was to be treated as special mail if the sender was adequately identified on the envelope and if the correspondence was marked either with the complete "Special Mail" phrase or with similar language indicating that it qualified for special treatment and was to be opened only in the presence of the prisoner. The last provision was designed to discourage prison officials from declaring that only envelopes bearing "magic words" would qualify as special mail. Evidence showed that officials at Butner had been using such an approach in 1986 when Stotts filed his suit.

A trial was held before a federal magistrate judge in February 1989 pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 636(c). Stotts argued that the regulations as applied both in 1986 and under the 1988 procedures were unconstitutional. He pointed to the North Carolina prison system's special mail policy as "a ready, reasonable, feasible alternative" to the federal approach. The magistrate judge found that in North Carolina state prisons, any letter that appears from its return address to be from an attorney, law firm, or court is accorded special mail status. Holding that the regulations were not reasonably related to any legitimate penological interest, the magistrate judge declared them unconstitutional as applied to Stotts in 1986 and 1988. He then enjoined defendants from reading or opening outside of Stotts' presence any incoming mail addressed to Stotts and "bearing an apparently genuine return address of an attorney, a law firm, any court official or any government official, whether or not there are any particular markings on the envelope."

The BOP now appeals.

II.

Under Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 2261, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987), a prison regulation "is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests." The BOP maintains that its mail system is rationally related both to security and administrative interests. We agree that both the requirement that the legal sender be specifically identified and the requirement that confidential mail be marked as such serve legitimate state ends.

A.

We recognize at the outset that prison inmates retain a number of constitutional rights, including the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 89 S.Ct. 747, 21 L.Ed.2d 718 (1969), the right of access to the courts, Younger v. Gilmore, 404 U.S. 15, 92 S.Ct. 250, 30 L.Ed.2d 142 (1971), the protection of due process, Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974), and freedom of expression. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987). The contours of these rights are, however, imprecise. In Wolff v. McDonnell, the Court rejected a state prisoner's claim that prison officials could not open mail from his attorney to check for contraband, noting that the constitutional status of the rights the inmate claimed under the First, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments was "far from clear." 418 U.S. at 575, 94 S.Ct. at 2984. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment right of due process via access to the courts "has not been extended ... to apply further than protecting the ability of an inmate to prepare a petition or complaint." Id. at 576, 94 S.Ct. at 2984; Royse v. Superior Court of Washington, 779 F.2d 573, 575 (9th Cir.1986). Notwithstanding the vague parameters of the rights which Stotts asserts, we shall assume for purposes of this appeal that they are implicated by the regulations which he challenges.

Recognition of some measure of constitutional protection, however, "in no way implies that these rights are not subject to restrictions imposed by the nature of the regime to which [prisoners] have been lawfully committed." Wolff, 418 U.S. at 556, 94 S.Ct. at 2975. Maintaining safety and internal security are "core functions of prison administration," Turner, 482 U.S. at 92, 107 S.Ct. at 2263, that can justify "withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights...." Price v. Johnston, 334 U.S. 266, 285, 68 S.Ct. 1049, 1060, 92 L.Ed. 1356 (1948). Other legitimate penological objectives that warrant limits on the exercise of inmate rights include rehabilitation of prisoners and deterrence of crime, O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 348, 107 S.Ct. 2400, 2404, 96 L.Ed.2d 282 (1987), as well as the savings of scarce prison resources. Id. at 352-53, 107 S.Ct. at 2406-07; see Turner, 482 U.S. at 90, 107 S.Ct. at 2262.

It is important, in balancing these interests, that courts respect the determinations of prison officials. Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 109 S.Ct. 1874, 1878-81, 104 L.Ed.2d 459 (1989). Under Turner, we focus simply on whether the regulations are reasonable. This is a deferential standard that is "necessary if 'prison administrators ..., and not the courts, [are] to make the difficult judgments concerning institutional operations.' " 482 U.S. at 89, 107 S.Ct. at 2261 (quoting Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union, Inc., 433 U.S. 119, 128, 97 S.Ct. 2532, 2539, 53 L.Ed.2d 629 (1977)). Under a standard of heightened judicial scrutiny, "every administrative judgment would be subject to the possibility that some co...