Clarke v. Stalder

• Decision Date: 09 September 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96-30313,96-30313
• Citation: 121 F.3d 222
• Parties: Charles W. CLARKE, Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross Appellant, v. Richard L. STALDER, et al., Defendants, Richard L. Stalder, Defendant-Appellant-Cross-Appellee, Robert Tanner, Defendant-Appellee, Captain Charles Moulard, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 222

121 F.3d 222

Charles W. CLARKE, Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross Appellant, v. Richard L. STALDER, et al., Defendants Richard L. Stalder, Defendant-Appellant-Cross-Appellee Robert Tanner, Defendant-Appellee Captain Charles Moulard, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 96-30313.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 9, 1997.

Terry Edward Allbritton, Jane L. Johnson, New Orleans, LA, for Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Appellant.

Cary A. DesRoches, New Orleans, LA, Richard A. Fraser, III, Gelpi, Sullivan, Carroll & Gibbens, New Orleans, LA, for Defendant-Appellant-Cross-Appellee.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Before REYNALDO G. GARZA, EMILIO M. GARZA and DeMOSS, Circuit Judges.

REYNALDO G. GARZA, Circuit Judge:

This civil rights case presents us with cross appeals from a final judgment entered by a magistrate judge after a bench trial. For the reasons assigned, we affirm in part and vacate and remand in part.

I. Background

Charles Clarke is, and has been at all relevant times, an inmate in the Louisiana prison system. He is currently incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. The events which form the basis of this lawsuit began while he was imprisoned at the Work Training Facility at Pineville, commonly known as Camp Beauregard.

On August 16, 1992, Clarke was returning to his cell when he stopped to talk to another inmate who was sweeping the floor. This other inmate apparently did legal work for Clarke and Clarke wanted to discuss this with him. Captain Charles Moulard, a guard at the prison, ordered Clarke to stop interfering with the other inmate's sweeping. He gave Clarke the option of being sent to his cell or sweeping walkways the rest of the day; Clarke chose the latter option. Some time later, Moulard returned and accused Clarke of swinging his broom too high. He ordered Clarke to return with him to the prison's control center and informed him there that his sweeping technique would lead to his being punished. At this point, Clarke told Moulard that he would file an "ARP", an administrative complaint, against Moulard for ordering him to do extra work without a disciplinary board hearing on the matter. ¹ He also told Moulard he would initiate legal proceedings against him. Moulard issued a disciplinary report against Clarke, charging a violation of Rule 3 of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections' Disciplinary Rules and Procedures for Adult Prisoners ("Rules"). This rule provided ² as follows:

DEFIANCE (Schedule B): No prisoner shall commit or threaten physically or verbally to commit bodily harm upon an employee. No prisoner shall curse an employee or insult his family in the employee's presence. No prisoner shall threaten an employee in any manner, including threatening with legal redress during a confrontation situation (this does not mean telling an employee of planned legal redress outside a confrontation situation and certainly does not mean the actual composition or filing of a writ, suit, etc.; threatening to write to the Secretary, the Warden or other institutional officers is not a violation). No prisoner shall obstruct or resist an employee who is performing his proper duties. No prisoner shall try to intimidate an employee to make the employee do as the prisoner wants him to do.

Penalties for a violation of this rule include up to ten days of isolation, change to higher custody status (e.g., from minimum- to medium-security), a recommendation for transfer to another institution, or loss of good-time credits.

In his charge, Moulard described the incident as follows: "On the above date and time the above inmate was interfering with inmates assigned to extra duty. I Capt. Moulard called inmate Clark [sic] to C/C to talk to him. I told him I was going to write him up for interfering with the inmates. Inmate Clark became belligerent [sic] and told me he was going to file a lawsuit and an ARP [administrative complaint] on me and that he was going to see who was going to win." Clarke was given a copy of the report and pled not guilty before a disciplinary board. The board determined otherwise. The board's report states that Clarke was found guilty because Moulard's report was clear and precise, Clarke had little or no defense, Clarke's credibility was low, and because he "admit[ted] he threatened legal redress during confrontation with staff." Clarke was punished with the loss of ten days of good-time credits and was transferred to Washington Correction Institution (WCI), a higher-security prison. He appealed the board's determination to Richard Stalder, the Secretary of the Department of Corrections, who affirmed the action.

Following his transfer to WCI, Clarke filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in federal district court in New Orleans in 1993. He alleged that his prison conviction at Camp Beauregard violated his right to free speech and asked for damages and the return of his lost good-time credits. He also challenged the facial constitutionality of the "no-threats-of-legal-redress" portion of Rule 3 and asked for an injunction against its enforcement. During the pre-trial period, prison officials at WCI subjected Clarke to a drug test which came back positive. Clarke denied using drugs and asked to be retested at his expense. When this request was denied, he sought and received a court order allowing him to be retested. ³ After this incident and another incident involving a phone call with his attorney that was cut short by prison officials, Clarke alleges prison officials engaged in a pattern of harassment in retaliation for his having sought court protection. Accordingly, he amended his complaint to allege a cause of action under § 1983 for this retaliation.

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(c), the parties consented to the jurisdiction of a magistrate judge. The parties presented their case to the magistrate judge in the course of a two-day bench trial and then submitted post-trial memoranda. On March 19, 1996, the magistrate judge entered a final order and an accompanying opinion. She held that Rule 3 had been unconstitutionally applied to Clarke and ordered that his good-time credits be restored and that his prison record be purged of mention of the incident. She determined, however, that damages were inappropriate. ⁴ She also declined to order him transferred back to Camp Beauregard, instead deferring to the discretion of the State. She held the prohibition on threats of legal redress to be facially unconstitutional and enjoined its enforcement. With respect to Clarke's retaliation claim, she determined that the WCI guards were unaware of Clarke's lawsuit and thus did not act with retaliatory intent. Accordingly, she denied this claim. She finally determined the defendants were not liable to Clarke for damages under Louisiana law.

Both parties appeal. Clarke appeals the magistrate judge's refusal to award him any damages, even nominal damages, for the constitutional deprivation. He also appeals her holding that prison officials at WCI did not retaliate against him for exercising his right to access the courts. ⁵ Stalder appeals the magistrate judge's holding that any constitutional deprivation occurred and her holding that the "no-legal-redress" portion of Rule 3 is facially unconstitutional. ⁶

II. Application Challenge

We first address Clarke's claim that his punishment for speaking to Captain Moulard violated his right to free speech, as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Clarke was charged with violating Louisiana's defiance rule by threatening Captain Moulard with legal redress, by being "belligerent," and by threatening him with the words "we'll see who wins." He was found guilty by a prison disciplinary board and this finding was affirmed after an administrative appeal. He was punished with transfer to another prison and had accumulated good-time credits taken from him. Counsel for the State explained at oral argument that good-time credits count toward early release: when an inmate's time served plus accumulated good-time credits equal the amount of time he was sentenced to serve, the inmate is entitled to release. Thus, for Clarke, his conviction for the incident involving Captain Moulard in effect extended the term of his imprisonment by ten days. Clarke sought to recover these lost credits, as well as damages, by filing this § 1983 suit alleging that he had been punished for violating the "no threats of legal redress" portion of Rule 3 in violation of his First Amendment rights. The magistrate judge found in his favor on the merits and granted him most of the relief he requested. ⁷

This was error. In Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), the Supreme Court held that an inmate may not, by suing under § 1983, recover good-time credits lost in a prison disciplinary proceeding. It held that these credits may only be recovered via a writ of habeas corpus. Thus a prisoner must begin with available state remedies and then, if he has not been successful, may petition a federal court for the writ. The Court later held in Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), that an inmate may not sue for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for false arrest where a favorable ruling by a federal court would "necessarily imply" the invalidity of his conviction. The Court made clear that only after the inmate receives habeas relief may he seek damages under § 1983 for the government's unconstitutional act. The Court stated that the trial court should act as the gatekeeper, dismissing those prisoner suits incorrectly brought under § 1983. Id. at 487, 114 S.Ct. at 2372-73. Finally, the Court just revisited this area in Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641, 117 S.Ct. 1584, 137 L.Ed.2d 906 (1997), in which it held, inter alia, that the Heck rule applies to prisoners attacking disciplinary proceedings which result in changes to...