Francis v. Lyman

• Decision Date: 09 November 1954
• Docket Number: No. 4842.,4842.
• Citation: 216 F.2d 583
• Parties: James FRANCIS v. Arthur T. LYMAN et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

216 F.2d 583 (1954)

James FRANCIS v. Arthur T. LYMAN et al.

No. 4842.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

November 9, 1954.

Isadore H. Y. Muchnick, Boston, Mass., for appellant.

Joseph H. Elcock, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., of Massachusetts, with whom George Fingold, Atty. Gen., was on the brief, for Arthur T. Lyman et al., appellees.

Joseph M. Hargedon, Boston, Mass., John C. Reardon and Edward L. Lanigan, Lawrence, Mass., on the brief, for James A. Donovan, appellee.

Before MAGRUDER, Chief Judge, and WOODBURY and HARTIGAN, Circuit Judges.

MAGRUDER, Chief Judge.

In an action for $500,000 damages under the Civil Rights Act, 8 U.S.C. (1946 ed.) § 43,¹ brought against an assorted group of public officials of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the district court entered judgment on February 26, 1954, dismissing the complaint as to each of the remaining defendants for failure of the plaintiff to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The plaintiff thereupon took this appeal.

Prior to March 19, 1940, appellant James Francis, then 17 years of age, was a voluntary inmate of the Walter E. Fernald State School for the feeble-minded. On March 19, 1940, following the procedure outlined in Ch. 123, Mass. G.L. (Ter.Ed.) §§ 113-116, Hon. Frederic A. Crafts, in his capacity as Special Justice of the Second District Court of Eastern Middlesex, Massachusetts, a state court of general jurisdiction, issued an order for the removal of Francis as a defective delinquent to the custody of the Department for Defective Male Delinquents. The order in question, after reciting that the provisions of Mass.G.L., Ch: 123, § 115, respecting the filing of a certificate by two physicians, had been complied with, and that it further appeared "to said Court after a full hearing in the premises that said defendant is now mentally defective and not a proper subject for a school for the feeble-minded", commanded the superintendent of the Bridgewater State Farm (being then the defendant James E. Warren) to receive the said Francis "and him there safely keep in your custody according to the rules of said Department or until he be otherwise discharged in due course of law." Francis was confined at the Bridgewater State Farm pursuant to said order of commitment for several years, after which he was by administrative action transferred to the Massachusetts Reformatory at Concord, where he remained incarcerated until he was released in 1951 as the result of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus addressed to the Superior Court for the County of Suffolk. It was the theory of the habeas corpus application, which the Superior Court accepted, that the order of commitment was void under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, for failure of Judge Crafts to afford to Francis, the defendant in the proceeding, or to his natural guardian in his behalf, adequate notice and opportunity to be heard. The statute, as it read at this time, Ch. 123, § 116, merely required that the judge "shall make inquiry into the facts", not that such inquiry should be restricted to evidence produced at a hearing upon due notice to the defendant and opportunity to be heard; however, the statute did not forbid such a hearing if the court should choose to have one.

The complaint in the present case, under the Civil Rights Act, named Judge Crafts as one of the defendants. At an earlier stage of the proceeding the district court entered a separate "final judgment", under Rule 54(b), Fed.Rules Civ.Proc. 28 U.S.C., dismissing the complaint as to Judge Crafts. D.C., 108 F. Supp. 884. On appeal we affirmed that judgment, on the ground that the Civil Rights Act should not be interpreted as overturning the time-honored immunity of judges from civil liability for their official acts, in the absence of an express declaration of legislative intention to that effect. Francis v. Crafts, 1 Cir., 1953, 203 F.2d 809. Certiorari was applied for and denied. 1953, 346 U.S. 835, 74 S.Ct. 43.

Now we have, in the present appeal, the cases of the other state officials named as defendants in the complaint. As to most of these officials, it is crystal-clear that the district court did right in dismissing the complaint; these more obvious cases will be mentioned first.

Defendants Arthur T. Lyman, J. Paul Doyle, Elliott E. McDowell, and

Maxwell B. Grossman, are alleged to have held the office of Commissioner of Correction in succession during the period from March 19, 1940, up to the date when Francis was released on habeas corpus. It is alleged that each of these defendants, acting in the capacity of Commissioner of Correction, and vested with full power and obligation to administer and oversee the actions of the superintendents of the various penal institutions, including the State Farm at Bridgewater and the Massachusetts Reformatory at Concord, "failed to release the plaintiff", and thus abetted and condoned the actions of the heads of these institutions in unlawfully restraining Francis of his personal liberty.

None of these defendants, former Commissioners of Correction, caused the confinement of Francis in denial of his right to due process of law. It is true they failed to order his release; but this was nonfeasance in a situation where the Commissioner had neither the legal duty nor the legal authority to act. The proper procedure for inquiring into the lawfulness of Francis' confinement was by application to a court for a writ of habeas corpus. See Petition of O'Leary, 1950, 325 Mass. 179, 89 N.E.2d 769. That was the procedure whereby the release of Francis was ultimately obtained, by order of the Superior Court. Under Massachusetts law, Mass.G.L.(Ter.Ed.) Ch. 125, the Commissioner of Correction had general supervision of the several state institutions, including power of appointment and removal of the various superintendents thereof, and including supervision of the control of prisoners regularly committed to their charge under court orders of commitment fair and regular on their face. The Commissioner of Correction had no function, like that of the Superior Court on a writ of habeas corpus, to go behind said judicial order of commitment to inquire into the validity of the procedure leading up to its issuance, and to order the superintendent of the confining institution to release the prisoner if the Commissioner determined that he was held in defiance of his constitutional rights.

As to one of these defendants, McDowell, the complaint contains a further allegation, that on April 27, 1948, in his capacity as Commissioner of Correction, he ordered, for administrative reasons and without prior notice to or consent of the plaintiff, the transfer of the plaintiff from the State Farm to the Massachusetts Reformatory at Concord. Somehow the plaintiff seems to suggest that the order of transfer would make McDowell liable in damages for false imprisonment, even though he might not be liable prior to that date merely because he held the office of Commissioner of Correction during part of the period when Francis was confined at the State Farm in Bridgewater. We do not think that this suggestion is well taken. There was only one continuous confinement, of which Francis complains, namely, his confinement in the Massachusetts penal system as a defective delinquent in consequence of the commitment order issued by Judge Crafts on March 19, 1940. As already indicated, McDowell was not legally responsible for that confinement; and if McDowell was not legally liable for the original commitment to the Massachusetts penal system, he did not become liable because he made a subsequent order, as a matter of administrative detail, transferring the prisoner from one penal institution to another. Francis had no right, secured by the Constitution of the United States, to be confined only at the State Farm in Bridgewater. It was entirely a matter of state law as to which particular penal institution should incarcerate him, which would depend upon an examination of the state statutes and the applicable administrative regulations thereunder.

There is another group of defendants, whom we may deal with collectively; that is, Joseph S. Mitchell, Reuben L. Lurie, J. Robert Ayers, Frederick J. Bradlee, Jr., Harold R. Lundgren, Matthew W. Bullock and James A. Donovan. These defendants are charged in the complaint in their official capacity as members of the Parole Board at various times during the period in which Francis was confined. The gist of the complaint against these defendants is that, as members of the Parole Board, they failed to inquire into the right of the plaintiff to be released from the alleged unlawful confinement, and that on many occasions they denied applications made by the plaintiff to the Parole Board for release on parole.

Naturally, the refusal of these defendants to release Francis on parole resulted in the continuance of his confinement as theretofore. But these defendants were not the legal cause of the continuous confinement of Francis pursuant to the original order of commitment. As in the case of the former Commissioners of Correction, the failure of the members of the Parole Board to order the release of Francis on the ground that he had been committed in defiance of his constitutional rights was mere nonfeasance in a situation wherein the Parole Board had neither the legal duty nor the legal authority to act. The Parole Board had no function to go behind the commitment order issued by Judge Crafts and to inquire into the original lawfulness of the confinement. It had the function of considering applications by a prisoner for release on parole, and of granting such applications if satisfied that the prisoner was a fit subject for parole under the conditions laid down by law. See Mass.G.L.(Ter. Ed.) Ch. 123, §§ 118, 118A. Whether the various applications by Francis for release on parole met these conditions precedent, so that the Parole Board ought to have...