Coleman v. Peyton, 10473.
| Decision Date | 24 June 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 10473.,10473. |
| Citation | 362 F.2d 905 |
| Parties | J. Ferber COLEMAN, Appellant, v. C. C. PEYTON, Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, SOBELOFF, Circuit Judge, and HEMPHILL, District Judge.
J. Ferber Coleman, an articulate and resourceful prisoner, seeks injunctive relief restraining his keepers from interfering with his correspondence, from visiting punishment upon him without just cause, from discriminatory work assignments, from racial discrimination, and from imposing retribution upon him for his institution of these proceedings.
The District Court denied relief, and we affirm.
Initially, the District Court dismissed the petition, without a hearing, for insufficiency. While recognizing that most of the claims were stated in vague and general terms, we thought he should be given an opportunity to amend his petition by particularizing his claims. For that purpose we vacated the order of dismissal with the suggestion that he be tendered the asistance of appointed counsel.1
In accordance with our suggestion, the District Judge appointed a competent lawyer to represent Coleman. Coleman quickly found fault with the lawyer and discharged him. The District Court secured another lawyer, a member of one of Richmond's most prominent law firms and then the President of the Richmond Bar Association. Coleman found him unsatisfactory, too, and discharged him. With the assistance of relatives, Coleman than obtained a third lawyer, who appeared with him at a scheduled hearing, but then Coleman denounced his retained attorney and sought his discharge. The Court refused permission to that lawyer to absent himself and the hearing proceeded to a conclusion.
On appeal the principal issues arise out of an attack upon the District Court's findings of fact and out of its refusal to accept the summary dismissal of the third lawyer. Their disposition in this court has been complicated by Coleman's discharge of yet another lawyer.
We appointed an able lawyer, a member of another of Richmond's most prominent law firms, to present the appeal. He sent to Coleman a rough draft of a brief he had prepared. It said all that reasonably could be said upon the issues which the record fairly may be construed to present, but it was wholly unacceptable to Coleman. He rejected it because it did not present "the major issue." Coleman's claim that the record conclusively shows an active conspiracy between penal officials and the Richmond Bar Association to deprive him of his rights,2 because he thought it did not sufficiently present his claim that he is the victim of cruel and unusual punishment and of continuing reprisals, and because of other claimed deficiencies. He undertook the discharge of his appellate counsel.
We have examined the entire record, the brief prepared for filing and rejected by Coleman,3 an answering brief of the Commonwealth and all of Coleman's motions and communications.
In 1954, Coleman was convicted of murder of his stepfather, and a sentence of life imprisonment was imposed upon him.
For almost ten years, he appears to have adjusted himself well to life in prison. By his own assertion, his abilities were recognized; he was trusted; his work was commended, and he was placed in charge of the largest workroom in the penitentiary. In 1963, however, a requested job transfer was denied. The denial, he charged, was a racial discrimination, though his prison history until then seemingly belies his assumption. Thereafter his situation deteriorated. From time to time he was placed in punitive confinement or maximum security detention on such charges as incitement of riots. Generally, he denies the charges or claims deliberate provocation, but the record contains adequate support for the District Court's conclusion that Coleman brought upon himself the difficulties in which he has been involved since 1963. Certainly the findings that he has not been the victim of racial discrimination or of cruel or unusual punishment are not clearly erroneous.
Nor can we say that the record discloses any pattern of unwarranted interference with Coleman's right to send and receive mail within the principles we discussed in McCloskey v. State of Maryland, 4 Cir., 337 F.2d 72. In the record and in the return to an order to show cause which we entered as a result of equivocal circumstances occurring while the appeal was in this court, the Warden disavows any purpose to hinder or delay prisoners in their access to the courts....
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