Alexander S. v. Boyd
| Decision Date | 17 February 1995 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 3:90-3062-17. |
| Citation | 876 F. Supp. 773 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina |
| Parties | ALEXANDER S., Alfred S., Benny B., Christopher M., Lafayette M., and Ricky S., By and Through their Guardian ad Litem, Lesly A. BOWERS, individually and as representatives of a class of juveniles, Plaintiffs, v. Flora Brooks BOYD, individually and in her official capacity as Director of the Department of Juvenile Justice; Richard E. McLawhorn, individually and in his official capacity as former Commissioner of the Department of Juvenile Justice for the State of South Carolina; John F. Henry, Frank Mauldin, Kathleen P. Jennings, Joseph W. Hudgens, Karole Jensen and J.P. Neal, individually and in their official capacities as former Board Members for the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice, Defendants. |
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED
W. Gaston Fairey, Rochelle Lyn Romosca, Fairey, Parise & Mills, P.A., Robert O. Meriwether, Alice V. Harris, William S. Brown, M. Clifton Scott, Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough, Nancy C. McCormick, Holly C. Walker, South Carolina Protection and Advocacy System for the Handicapped, Inc., Columbia, SC, for plaintiffs.
Edward M. Woodward, Frances G. Smith, Woodward, Levintis, Unger, Daves, Herndon & Cothran, Vinton D. Lide, Lide, Montgomery & Potts, Larry L. Vanderbilt, S.C. Dept. of Juvenile Justice, Columbia, SC, for defendants.
Richard A. Harpootlian, A. Randolph Hough, Sol. Office, Fifth Judicial Circuit, Columbia, SC, amicus curiae.
FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND ORDER
This is an action initiated by juveniles incarcerated at the four correctional institutions maintained and operated by the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). The Plaintiffs initiated this action on December 28, 1990 seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as damages, from the Defendants, the DJJ commissioner and board members. The Plaintiffs challenge numerous conditions of confinement of juveniles housed in the facilities operated by DJJ. They allege that the Defendants, all acting under color of state law, have deprived them of rights secured by the United States Constitution and various federal statutes.
In their answer, the Defendants admit that DJJ is forced to house more juveniles than the facilities were designed to hold, but deny that the overcrowding rises to the level of a constitutional violation. During the trial of this case, however, counsel for the Defendants admitted that current levels of population exceed minimum constitutional standards and consented to an order requiring a release of juveniles to alleviate overcrowding. In regard to the other allegations of the complaint, the Defendants either deny them or admit them with the qualification that good-faith efforts have been made to secure the necessary funding to improve these conditions. The Defendants further deny that any of the additional violations constitute deprivations of rights secured by the Constitution or various statutory provisions.
On January 16, 1991, the court appointed a guardian ad litem1 to represent the purported class. On March 7, 1991, the court certified the class as consisting of all persons presently and in the future housed within the DJJ correctional facilities. On that same date, the court approved the litigation team assembled to represent the Plaintiffs in this action. The court also allowed Richard A. Harpootlian, Solicitor for the Fifth Judicial Circuit of South Carolina, to participate in this action as amicus curiae.2
Acting upon the request of both parties, the court entered an order on September 23, 1991 severing the question of overcrowding for a separate trial and indicating that the court would make a "preliminary determination" as to a suitable population ceiling for all DJJ facilities in dispute. That order provided that the parties would thereafter be directed to negotiate the remaining issues in the case "in light of the court's opinion on population which, if unchanged, would likely be embodied in any final relief this court might fashion in this case." The court heard testimony on the population question on December 4 and 5, 1991. The court then determined, in an order dated March 31, 1992, that its decision to sever and try separately the population question was in error.3 The court reached this conclusion for two reasons: (1) the court decided that the question of overcrowding could not be considered independently of the other issues relating to conditions of confinement that are presented in this case; and (2) both parties and their expert witnesses based their population ceiling analysis on standards promulgated by the American Correctional Association (ACA). The ACA standards have been rejected as inappropriate models upon which to make constitutional population determinations.4 For those two reasons, the court declined to establish firm, or even tentative, population ceilings.
After the March 31, 1992 order was entered, the parties requested that the court stay its scheduling order to allow the parties an opportunity to discuss an amicable settlement of the case.5 These efforts proved to be unsuccessful, and the case was therefore restored to the active docket and scheduled for trial in June 1994.
In the course of preparing for the trial of this case, the court has conducted twenty-two hearings and status conferences and issued fifty-four pretrial orders. In addition, the court has visited all of the DJJ facilities on three separate occasions, totaling more than twenty hours of visits. On two of the visits, the court partook of a meal in the DJJ dining facilities. In an effort to acquaint itself with comparable facilities in other jurisdictions, the court visited the Lorenzo Bean Youth Correctional Center near Atlanta, Georgia operated by the Georgia Department of Children and Youth Services. Also, the court visited the Columbia, South Carolina facility of the Alston Wilkes Society.
In 1992, the court appointed five expert witnesses pursuant to Fed.R.Evid. 706: a juvenile correctional expert, an educator, a medical doctor, a clinical psychologist, and an architect. In addition, the court received a copy of the final report of the South Carolina Juvenile Justice Task Force, a blue-ribbon commission composed primarily of prosecutors, police officers, and family court judges, and headed by South Carolina Associate Supreme Court Justice Jean Toal. The Task Force Report identifies many of the problems the State of South Carolina faces with juvenile crime and contains recommendations for improving the state's juvenile justice system.6
The non-jury trial of this case began on June 13, 1994 and ended on August 29, 1994. During the course of the trial, the court heard from sixty-six witnesses (including seventeen expert witnesses) and reviewed one hundred and twenty-six exhibits consisting of several thousand pages.
As will be seen from the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law which follow, the court has determined that the Plaintiffs have proved that certain conditions of confinement at DJJ facilities violate their constitutional and statutory rights.7 Rather than imposing a court-ordered remedial scheme, however, the court has determined that the appropriate course of action is to identify the nature and extent of the violations and then to allow the Defendants a reasonable period of time within which to submit a remedial plan to the court for its review.8
Before delving into the myriad factual and legal issues presented in this case, the court is compelled to make a few general observations. This case lies at the intersection of two of society's most pressing concerns: children and the increasing crime rate. The court must be mindful, as an initial proposition, that its role in this litigation is not to attempt to construct a paragon or "model" training school program for DJJ. The court's role as to the constitutional claims is limited to establishing minimally acceptable constitutional standards. Although the court announced its views in this regard at the outset of the trial, most of the seventeen expert witnesses who testified at trial nevertheless urged upon the court a version of a remedial plan far beyond what the court has determined to be constitutionally required.9 The court is constrained to conclude that many of these proposals are model programs which the state of South Carolina, through its duly elected representatives, might voluntarily choose to establish, but not programs that are required as a matter of constitutional law.10 Thus, the court will grant to the Plaintiffs some, but not nearly all, of the relief they seek in this case.
Secondly, despite the court's admonition in its March 31, 1992 order and at several later stages of this litigation, both parties continue to argue that the court should adopt the ACA standards as the constitutional minima. The court must reject the parties' invitation to adopt these standards. Although ACA standards might represent desirable goals, it is well established that they do not represent the standards minimally acceptable under the Constitution.
As noted above, the Defendants have, from the outset of this litigation, admitted that their facilities are overcrowded. The Plaintiffs and the Defendants, both focusing upon the ACA standards the court has rejected, have determined between themselves that the rated capacity for the three long-term institutions operated by DJJ is 299 juveniles. Testimony at trial indicated to the court that these institutions routinely hold more than twice that number of juveniles. Thus, most of the testimony at the December 1991 trial and the June 1994 trial centered upon the goal of reducing the juvenile correctional population to a figure approaching the ACA-rated...
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