Ahrens v. Thomas

• Decision Date: 24 June 1977
• Docket Number: No. 74 CV 34-SJ.,74 CV 34-SJ.
• Citation: 434 F. Supp. 873
• Parties: Fred AHRENS et al., Plaintiffs, v. Sheriff Thomas J. THOMAS et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri

434 F. Supp. 873

Fred AHRENS et al., Plaintiffs, v. Sheriff Thomas J. THOMAS et al., Defendants.

No. 74 CV 34-SJ.

United States District Court, W. D. Missouri, W. D.

June 3, 1977.

Order Staying Execution of Judgment June 8, 1977.

Extension of Stay June 16, 1977.

On Motion for Stay Pending Appeal June 24, 1977.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Hortense Kleitman Snower, Kansas City, Mo., Thomas P. O'Donnell, Larrimer & O'Donnell, Columbia, Mo., Harry F. Swanger, National Juvenile Law Center, St. Louis, Mo., amicus curiae.

Owens Lee Hull, Jr., Pros. Atty., Donald R. Tharp, Asst. Pros. Atty., Platte City, Mo., for defendants.

Ronald L. Roseman, Andrew J. Steinberg, William J. Dittmeier, The Legal Aid and Defenders Society of Greater Kansas City, Kansas City, Mo., for plaintiffs.

MEMORANDUM OPINION, FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW, AND ORDERS GRANTING PLAINTIFFS RELIEF

JOHN W. OLIVER, Chief Judge.

I.

Final determination of this § 1983 case involving the Platte County Jail was postponed on two separate occasions for different but related reasons. As we shall later state in some detail, circumstances beyond the control of the parties and this Court relating to the complications which have apparently developed in connection with the establishment of a medium security correctional institution by the State of Missouri in Clay County, Missouri, require that the final determination of this case can no longer be delayed. Accordingly, a final judgment and decree in favor of the plaintiffs will be entered closing the Platte County Jail until and unless substantial changes are made in the physical structure and operation of that ancient facility.

For purposes of explanation, it should be stated initially that experience in § 1983 cases involving the conditions of confinement in correctional institutions has demonstrated that the excessively long delays in the final determination of a particular case, occasioned by appeals from district court decisions, have sometimes been avoided by proper timing of procedures leading to an agreed final determination in the district court and the entry of a consent judgment and decree under which conditions in violation of federal constitutional standards would be corrected.

Goldsby v. Carnes (W.D.Mo.1973) 365 F.Supp. 395, involving the Jackson County Jail, in which a first supplemental consent judgment and decree was recently entered on March 24, 1977, as reported in 429 F.Supp. 370, and Glenn v. Wilkinson (W.D. Mo.1970) 309 F.Supp. 411, involving the conditions of confinement of prisoners on death row in the Missouri Penitentiary, are examples of cases in which proper timing of final determination avoided the necessity of further litigation.

The Court of Appeals' decision in Finney v. Arkansas Board of Correction (8th Cir. 1974) 505 F.2d 194, on the other hand, recounts the history of the long-continuing litigation involving the Arkansas prison system. After three separate district court opinions and an earlier court of appeals opinion (the earlier opinions are reported at 300 F.Supp. 825 (1969); 309 F.Supp. 362 (1970), aff'd 442 F.2d 304 (8th Cir. 1971); and 363 F.Supp. 194 (1973)), the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found it necessary once again to remand the case to the district court for the latter court to retain jurisdiction and to grant further relief under the circumstances. Finney v. Arkansas Board of Correction, 505 F.2d at 200. Our effort to find the proper timing to reach final determination in this case was consistent with this Court's experience in Goldsby and Glenn, supra, and was thus undertaken in the hope that the almost endless litigation illustrated by the Arkansas prisons system cases would be thus avoided.

We first delayed final determination of this case after the parties had filed their respective post-trial suggested findings of fact and conclusions of law in July, 1976. Everyone concerned knew at that time that the voters of Platte County, Missouri would be afforded still another opportunity to approve a bond issue for the construction of a completely new Platte County Jail.

Although at least six different bond proposals for a new jail had been defeated at the Platte County polls over the past ten years, we believed that appropriate considerations of general comity required that we delay the final determination of this case until after the bond election was held. While an initial plan would have put the jail bond proposal on the August primary election ballot, the Platte County officials eventually decided that the jail bond proposal should not be submitted until the November, 1976 general election.

The passage of the bond proposal at the November, 1976 general election presented an entirely new factual situation, particularly in regard to what remedy might be appropriate under the new circumstances. For it was clear that after the passage of the bond issue, no one anticipated that any of the existing facilities would be permanently used for the housing of inmates for any purpose. The attention of the Court and counsel was therefore directed to a consideration of determining how inmates were to be handled until a new jail was constructed and to appropriately review the construction plans and specifications for the new facility in order to make certain that the new jail would be constructed and maintained in accordance with constitutional standards.

The second reason for delay in final determination became apparent during the course of carrying out the procedures required by the passage of the bond issue. It then became a matter of public knowledge that an earlier aborted attempt by the State of Missouri to build and maintain a medium security correctional institution in the Greater Kansas City area was being revived by the newly elected Governor of Missouri. The available reports of progress, which indicated that the revived effort would be successful, occasioned the second delay in our final determination of this case.

The pending litigation, earlier litigation in connection with State penal institutions and other county jails in Missouri which has pended in this Court, and the testimony of Dr. George Mallory Camp, who at the time of trial was the Deputy Director of the State of Missouri's Division of Social Services, with primary responsibility for direction of the State of Missouri's Department of Corrections, have required this Court to become more than ordinarily familiar with the long-neglected problems of both State correctional institutions and various county jails in this State. Dr. Camp testified that:

I think that the Platte County Jail situation has to be looked at not only in and of itself, but it has to be looked at as a part of the problems of jails in Missouri as a whole.... The Missouri General Assembly for the last four years, I believe, has had before it one form or another a bill known as the Minimum Jail Standards Bill. I think that if the legislation as originally drafted or as partially amended when it had some teeth and guts in it had been passed by the General Assembly and signed into law, we might not be sitting here today. . . . The Legislative Branch of the government has abdicated its responsibility to act and has in essence . . . forced the Court to enter into an area or areas where in the past the public has relied upon the Executive and Legislative Branches of government . . . to adequately interpret the law and abide by the Constitution. It seems to me that in the case of the Platte County Jail, had there been minimum standards, had there been statewide inspection of jails, had the State as a whole, the State government, worked more closely with county government to assist them . . . in providing the resources to correct those deficiencies, I don't think we would be here today. (Tr. 358.)

We considered the following testimony of Dr. Camp of particular significance in regard to our conclusion that we should delay final determination of this case until it became certain that the State of Missouri, at long last, was finally going to construct and maintain a medium security correctional institution in the Greater Kansas City metropolitan area:

We have planned, we have thought, we have talked, but we have not acted... Perhaps what we need are overnight lockups in each of the counties to assist the court in the initial arraignment of the defendant and then we need a series of State-operated jails, such as the State of Connecticut has, where each county would transport its pretrial detainees as well as those individuals serving misdemeanor sentences, and that the State operate these and either funded completely by the State or where each county pays its share in terms of the number of individuals that it boards there, some sort of workable arrangement.... I think the problem is much broader than just the Platte County Jail. It is something that needs to be addressed within the entire State. Tr. 359-60

This Court, for the reasons stated, has long been familiar with repeated proposals and recommendations for the establishment of regional detention facilities for the various counties located in this part of the State of Missouri. Consultants for the Northwest Missouri Law Enforcement Assistance Council, for example, recommended to that body in 1971 that a major regional detention facility be established in Jackson County and that new satellite jails for Clay and Platte Counties be constructed only for the purpose of housing pretrial inmates for periods of seven days or less. Those consultants estimated that the costs of the recommended satellite jail facilities would be $476,300 for Clay County and $492,000 for Platte County. See Feasibility Study for Northwest Missouri Regional Center, prepared as a joint venture by SUA, a division of Dillingham Corporation, and Prindle and Patrick, Architects and Planners (1971). The recommendations of that feasibility study, and others like it,...