Holt v. Hutto

• Decision Date: 13 August 1973
• Docket Number: No. PB-69-C-24 and 33 related cases.,PB-69-C-24 and 33 related cases.
• Parties: Lawrence J. HOLT et al., Petitioners, v. Terrell Don HUTTO, Commissioner of Correction, State of Arkansas, et al., Respondents.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas

363 F. Supp. 194

Lawrence J. HOLT et al., Petitioners, v. Terrell Don HUTTO, Commissioner of Correction, State of Arkansas, et al., Respondents.

No. PB-69-C-24 and 33 related cases.

United States District Court, E. D. Arkansas, Pine Bluff Division.

August 13, 1973.

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Jack Holt, Jr., Philip E. Kaplan, Little Rock, Ark., for petitioners.

Milton Lueken, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Ark., Ted Boswell, Little Rock, Ark., for respondents.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

HENLEY, Chief Judge.

These 34 individual and class actions have been brought by Arkansas convicts against the members of the Arkansas State Board of Correction, Terrell Don Hutto, the Arkansas Commissioner of Correction who administers the prisons within the jurisdiction of the Arkansas Department of Correction, and certain lesser prison officials. Petitioners are inmates of the Cummins Unit of the Department which is located in Lincoln County, Arkansas, and of the Tucker Intermediate Reformatory located in Jefferson County.

While different individual inmates naturally complain about different things, petitioners as a class contend that in spite of previous decrees and opinions of this Court conditions in and practices at both of the institutions that have been mentioned are such as to render the confinement of human beings there a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. They also complain of racial discrimination and make a number of other complaints which will be mentioned in due course. Respondents deny that the complaints have merit.¹

In 1969 this Court granted a measure of injunctive relief to the inmates of Cummins. Holt v. Sarver, Commissioner of Correction, E.D.Ark.1969, 300 F. Supp. 825 (Holt I). The litigation continued into 1970 and was extended to include the Tucker Unit and to bring in numerous inmate petitioners. After extensive hearings, the Court found that conditions and practices at both institutions were such as to render the confinement of a human being in either one of them a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Holt v. Sarver, E.D.Ark.1970, 309 F.Supp. 362 (Holt II).

The Court entered a decree declaring the unconstitutionality of the prisons and specifically enjoined the continuation of what was left of racial segregation at both institutions. Jurisdiction of the case was retained, and respondents were directed to file a report setting out what they proposed to do to bring the Department up to constitutional standards.

Respondents appealed, and the Court's decision was affirmed. Holt v. Sarver, 8 Cir., 1971, 442 F.2d 304. This Court was directed to retain jurisdiction of the prisons at least for a time.

Progress reports were filed by respondents from time to time in 1970 and 1971. On December 30, 1971, the Court, after hearings, filed a Supplemental Decree which amplified and made more specific in certain respects its earlier decree. Jurisdiction was again retained.

The Court continued to receive numerous inmate complaints in 1972, and on September 8 of that year the Court filed a Memorandum Opinion and entered an order permitting a number of such complaints to be filed under the provisions of 42 U.S.C.A., section 1983, read in connection with 28 U.S.C.A., section 1343(3). The later cases were consolidated with the earlier ones, and hearings were held in November and December, 1972, and in January 1973. The inmates as a class have been represented ably by Messrs. Jack Holt, Jr. and Philip E. Kaplan of the Little Rock Bar, both serving by Court appointment since 1970. Respondents have been represented by members of the staff of the Attorney General of Arkansas and by Mr. Ted Boswell of Little Rock and Bryant, Arkansas, who was employed by some of the respondents as special counsel.

This litigation today stands in a posture quite different from that in which it stood in 1969 and 1970. In those years the Court was dealing with officially prescribed or sanctioned conditions and practices which were claimed to be unconstitutional, and the controlling facts were essentially undisputed. Today, most of the practices and conditions alleged by petitioners to exist and of which they complain are not officially approved or sanctioned, and a number of them are specifically prohibited by rules and regulations of the Department which appear in the Department's Inmate Handbook and Employee Handbook, copies of which are in the record. Additionally, controlling facts are sharply disputed in many areas.

Inmate complaints extend over practically the entire spectrum of prison life, and in trying to resolve the disputed factual issues the Court has encountered in full measure the credibility problems inherent in litigation of this kind. In resolving the issues of fact before it, the Court has done the best that it could, employing in that connection its own common sense and its experience with the Department which extends over a period of at least eight years,² and which has involved the reading of literally hundreds of inmate complaints or "writs."

From its consideration of the evidence as a whole, the Court finds ultimately that none of the individual petitioners, as individuals, have shown that they are entitled to specific equitable relief. But, the Court further finds that notwithstanding significant progress and improvements that have been made at both Cummins and Tucker, some problem areas of constitutional significance continue to exist, and that the inmates as a class stand in need of some additional injunctive relief, and that respondents need to be admonished about a number of things.

I.

To accentuate the positive, the Court will say first that as a result of changing attitudes and efforts on the part of the Arkansas Legislature, the present Governor of Arkansas and his predecessor, the Board of Correction, incumbent Commissioner of Correction, Terrell Don Hutto, and his predecessor, C. Robert Sarver, and some of Mr. Hutto's subordinates, the Arkansas prison system is simply not the same system that existed in 1969 and 1970 and in prior years.

To start with the iniquitous "trusty system" described in detail in Holt I and Holt II, supra, has essentially been dismantled. Free world personnel have replaced the trusties in positions of authority throughout both prisons. While there are still a few trusty guards, they do not represent the threat to ordinary inmates that they have done in years past, and the Court is confident that the few that remain will soon be phased out.

Writing in prior years, the Court was gravely concerned with the risk that inmates confined in barracks ran of homosexual or deadly assaults by other inmates. While the barracks are still seriously overcrowded, and while additional housing facilities are still needed, particularly at Cummins, and while inmate assaults on other inmates and fights between inmates still occur, as they do in all prisons, the problem is not what it was in former days.

Since Holt II was written, the Department has constructed a maximum security unit at Cummins in which are housed the most dangerous and unstable inmates, and they are thus removed from the general and more tractable prison population. It appears to the Court that somewhat less than 10 percent of the total population of Cummins is confined in the maximum security unit, and a very large portion of the complaints that the Court receives come from the inmates of the unit, a fact which is not without significance.

As its name implies, Tucker is a reformatory type institution, and it has an advancing program of education and training for its comparatively young and unhardened inmates. Tucker is a much smaller institution than Cummins; its population is generally a little over 300 as compared to an average population at Cummins of some 1100 or 1200 inmates. Prior to the 1972-73 hearings the Court received substantial numbers of complaints from the inmates of Tucker; however, during the last few months section 1983 complaints from Tucker inmates have become almost nonexistent.

There is a limited program of vocational and educational training available at Cummins, but inmate participation therein is not as encouraging as that at Tucker. That, however, is explainable by reference to a number of factors, including ages, dispositions, and criminal records of many of the inmates of Cummins.

The Department has recently acquired law libraries for the use of inmates at both institutions, and the Court finds that those libraries are adequate for legitimate inmate purposes, and that rules for the use of the libraries are not unreasonable. The Department has also employed a lawyer who serves full time as Legal Adviser for the inmates at both institutions, and he is of substantial assistance to them in connection with many of their legal problems, although he is not in a position to assist them when they come into conflict or controversy with prison personnel.

A third institution administered by the Department but not directly involved in this particular phase of the overall prison litigation is the Women's State Reformatory presently located on the same tract of State owned lands as is the Cummins Unit where male prisoners are confined. The Women's Reformatory houses a small number of female inmates. It has given some constitutional trouble in the past. However, the Court has had no complaints about it for months. It is capably administered by a Negro matron or Superintendent, and it appears to be a constitutionally tolerable institution. It is to be moved from its present location to a new site near the City of Pine Bluff, and initial phases of construction of the new facility are now under way.

In pointing out significant improvements that have been made at both institutions the Court does not overlook the fact that serious...