Cruz v. Beto

• Decision Date: 05 October 1979
• Docket Number: No. 77-1641,77-1641
• Citation: 603 F.2d 1178
• Parties: Fred Arispe CRUZ et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, Cross-Appellants, v. Dr. George BETO and W. J. Estelle, Jr., Director, Texas Department of Corrections, Defendants-Appellants, Cross-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1178

603 F.2d 1178

Fred Arispe CRUZ et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, Cross-Appellants, v. Dr. George BETO and W. J. Estelle, Jr., Director, Texas

Department of Corrections, Defendants-Appellants,

Cross-Appellees.

No. 77-1641.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Oct. 5, 1979.

John Pierce Griffin, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nancy M. Simonson, Austin, Tex., for plaintiffs-appellees, cross appellants.

William Bennett Turner, Ann V. Brick, San Francisco, Cal., for defendants-appellants, cross appellees.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Before WISDOM, CLARK and GEE, Circuit Judges.

CHARLES CLARK, Circuit Judge:

The plaintiffs, 12 prisoners of the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) and their attorney Frances T. Jalet Cruz, instituted this civil rights action against George J. Beto, former Director of the TDC, ¹ pursuant to 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983. The district court found that defendant had unlawfully interfered with plaintiffs' attorney-client relationship, entered an injunction against further violations, and, upon a finding of bad faith overcoming Beto's qualified immunity, awarded money damages and attorney's fees against defendant. Beto claims that the imposition of an erroneous burden of proof wrongfully deprived him of the full benefit of his immunity and appeals the award of attorney's fees. All parties challenge the amount of damages awarded. We affirm.

This case arises from the response of defendant Beto, in his capacity as Director of TDC, to the professional activities of the plaintiff attorney Frances Cruz as the legal representative of many TDC inmates, including her co-plaintiffs. Cruz, an attorney with extensive legal background and experience in poverty law and related areas, provided TDC prisoners with legal advice and representation in suits seeking post-conviction relief as well as suits challenging the constitutionality of various prison practices and conditions.

Late in 1971, although Cruz had never violated any TDC visiting or correspondence regulations, defendant Beto summarily denied her further admission to the institutions under his supervision and terminated correspondence between her and any TDC inmate. His letter informing her of this sanction claimed that her activities aroused the animosity of the TDC inmate population and spurred the filing of federal civil rights lawsuits by inmates thereby interfering with the tranquility of TDC. Prior to this extreme action, however, no complaint had ever been made that Cruz had committed any illegal or improper act or that she had participated in any unethical behavior.

Three weeks after barring Cruz's access to her clients, Beto was persuaded to retract his order, but only to the extent that communication was restored between Cruz and 27 named inmates, including the prisoner-plaintiffs, listed as her clients prior to the ban. The modified order was intended as a phase-out program permitting Cruz to work on pending matters while preventing her from filing any new litigation. She was not permitted to visit or correspond with prisoners other than the 27 listed. Letters of other inmates seeking her legal assistance were returned undelivered.

Those of the listed 27 prisoners who wished to remain clients of Cruz were immediately transferred to a separate wing of the Wynne Unit of the TDC, and became known as the Eight Hoe Squad. They were worked as a separate unit and were not permitted to eat, socialize or communicate with the general inmate population. Their living conditions were unusually and discriminatorily harsh the numbers of inmates per room were doubled, access to commissary privileges was reduced, disciplinary actions and searches became more frequent. Severe restrictions on their participation in recreational, educational and rehabilitative programs limited their opportunities to earn merit points toward parole in the Point Incentive Program (PIP), and there was evidence to suggest that PIP points were discriminatorily withheld, preventing those in the Eight Hoe Squad from maintaining a high rating or remaining eligible for privileges and "good time" credit towards parole. Certain of the inmate-plaintiffs had complaints of specific individual deprivations such as elimination from continuing participation in academic degree programs or forced manual labor more strenuous than that permissible under their medical classification. Release from the Eight Hoe Squad was conditioned upon relinquishment of Cruz's representation.

The district court found that no other attorney had ever before been barred from or so restricted in working with TDC prisoners. It further found that

Because they were deprived of or penalized for accepting Mrs. Cruz's pro bono legal assistance and being generally poorly educated, they were unable to obtain adequate legal assistance. Yet they were in need of such assistance on various legal problems affecting both their convictions and sentences and their claims of violations of federal constitutional rights as prisoners.

The Eight Hoe Squad prisoners were regularly pressured to abandon legal representation by Cruz. Three of the prisoners agreed to terminate their attorney-client relationship with her and were immediately returned to the general prison community with a corresponding improvement in their status as prisoners. For example, one became a dental assistant and another a building tender. The segregation of the Eight Hoe Squad continued until two months after Beto was replaced as Director of TDC, for a total of 356 days. Twelve of the Eight Hoe Squad inmates are co-plaintiffs in this action.

The district court concluded that the prisoners' first and fourteenth amendment rights had been violated by the unreasonable limitations on their right of access to the courts, their right to receive effective legal assistance from the attorney of their choice, and their right to equal protection of the laws and to due process of law by subjecting them to discriminatory treatment and deprivation of normal prison privileges as a consequence of their remaining clients of plaintiff Cruz. Furthermore, it found that the arbitrary barring of attorney Cruz from communicating with her clients contravened her first and fourteenth amendment rights to practice her profession.

Beto does not deny taking or ordering his staff to take these actions but asserts they were justified by reports which led him to believe that Cruz's activities were inflaming unsettled prison conditions at the TDC in 1971 and were the catalyst for a plan of group action, purportedly designed by the prisoner-plaintiffs, to endanger other inmates or overturn the prison administration. However, the district court found that neither Cruz nor her clients did anything to provoke the actions taken against them. To the contrary, it concluded:

The evidence conclusively points to the fact that the prisoner-plaintiffs were segregated not because they were violence-prone but because they wished to have Mrs. Cruz represent them.

In its order awarding money damages against Beto for these violations, the court found that the Director of TDC did not enjoy an absolute immunity from liability but was entitled only to a qualified immunity by virtue of his position as a state prison official. To be eligible for this qualified immunity, the court stated:

defendants must demonstrate that they have acted within the scope of a discretionary function and that they have acted reasonably and in good faith . . . That is, they must demonstrate that on an objective basis, their actions were reasonable under the circumstances; and that on a subjective basis, they acted in good faith under the circumstances.

On the basis of the facts before it, the court then concluded:

The evidence in this case conclusively demonstrates that defendant Beto's actions were not reasonable under the circumstances and were not taken in good faith.

Thus Beto was held liable in damages to Cruz for $1,000 and to the prisoner-plaintiffs for an aggregate of $9,291.00.

There is no doubt that Beto's actions against plaintiffs were taken in his official capacity as a prison official. Although at the time of this trial the qualified immunity defense had not yet been established in such cases, it is now settled that Beto's exposure to liability for damages under section 1983 is limited by the qualified immunity set forth in Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U.S. 555, 98 S.Ct. 855, 55 L.Ed.2d 24 (1978). The Supreme Court in Procunier accorded to prison officials the same qualified immunity defense previously accorded a state governor, a university president, and national guard members in Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974), and school board members in Wood v. Strickland, 420 U.S. 308, 95 S.Ct. 992, 43 L.Ed.2d 214 (1975). See also O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 95 S.Ct. 2486, 45 L.Ed.2d 396 (1975) (superintendent of a state hospital); Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 87 S.Ct. 1213, 18 L.Ed.2d 288 (1967) (policemen).

In Scheuer state officials who were sued under section 1983 for their involvement in shootings at Kent State University sought an absolute executive immunity from liability for damages. The Supreme Court recognized that common law tradition supported a degree of protection for government officials performing their duties. It noted that historically official immunity rested on "two mutually dependent rationales." First, "the injustice, particularly in the absence of bad faith, of subjecting to liability an officer who is required, by the legal obligations of his position, to exercise discretion;" and second, "the danger that the threat of such liability would deter his willingness to execute his office with the decisiveness and the judgment required by the public good." 416 U.S. at 240, 94 S.Ct. at 1688. The Court emphasized that immunity encouraged unhindered, prompt decision-making by those who govern and...