Dayton v. McGranery, 11443.
| Decision Date | 15 January 1953 |
| Docket Number | No. 11443.,11443. |
| Parties | DAYTON v. McGRANERY, Atty. Gen. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Dexter C. Dayton, pro se, submitted on the brief for appellant.
William E. Kirk, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., Charles M. Irelan, U. S. Atty., and Joseph M. Howard, Asst. U. S. Atty., Washington, D. C., submitted on the brief for appellee.
Before PRETTYMAN, BAZELON and WASHINGTON, Circuit Judges.
Appellant Dayton is a prisoner in the penitentiary at Leavenworth. He sues the Attorney General for an injunction. He alleges that he wrote and deposited for mailing with officials at the penitentiary letters addressed to a young lady who is the daughter of the superintendent of another penal institution, and that these officials failed and refused to mail the letters. He says that, while the regulations of the Bureau of Prisons purport to be fair and impartial, they are administered "with an evil eye and with an unequal hand", "with an unequal and oppressive mind". He says that no matter of his own safekeeping or protection of the public is or can be involved in his writing letters to the young lady, even though she be the daughter of a prison official.
In the second count of his complaint appellant says that he was permitted by an official of the penitentiary to read a letter purportedly written by the young lady to whom his own letters had been addressed, that he believes that this letter was in fact not written by the young lady but by a prison official (her father), and further that the statements in the letter were false and malicious. He further says that other letters, allegedly written by the father of the young lady and containing similar false and malicious allegations, have been filed in the institutional record of the complainant. He says the letters falsely and maliciously hold him out to be a person who "is living in a little dream world regarding that girl", stating that he does not know her, has caught only glimpses of her on rare occasions, and hence is subject to psychoneurotic delusions regarding her.
The prayers of the complaint are that the Attorney General and his agents be required to permit the complainant to communicate with the young lady by sending and receiving mail, and that they be required to remove from the prison and parole records of the complainant the letter allegedly written by the young lady and all the letters allegedly written by her father.
The District Court dismissed the action on the ground that the complaint failed to state a cause of action for which it could grant relief. We agree with that conclusion.
The Attorney General and other officers in the line of authority over penal institutions do not have the power arbitrarily to deny a prisoner communication with the outside world, but they do have wide powers of control over such communication. We think that the letters here involved, written by complainant, fall within that control, even though we recognize that to him the interruption of these efforts to communicate with the young lady may seem the ultimate essence of an arbitrary...
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