Hooks v. Wainwright

• Decision Date: 14 April 1982
• Docket Number: No. 71-144-Civ-J-S,71-1011-Civ-J-S.,71-144-Civ-J-S
• Citation: 536 F. Supp. 1330
• Parties: Harold Raymond HOOKS, et al., Plaintiffs, Michael E. Provence, et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, Secretary, Department of Corrections, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Florida

536 F. Supp. 1330

Harold Raymond HOOKS, et al., Plaintiffs Michael E. Provence, et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, Secretary, Department of Corrections, Defendant.

Nos. 71-144-Civ-J-S, 71-1011-Civ-J-S.

United States District Court, M. D. Florida, Jacksonville Division.

April 14, 1982.

Sydney H. McKenzie, III, Dept. of Legal Affairs, Tallahassee, Fla., for defendant.

Richard A. Belz, Thomas A. Daniel, Florida Institutional Legal Services, Inc., Gainesville, Fla., for plaintiffs-intervenors.

Charles H. Livingston, Sarasota, Fla., for plaintiffs.

David J. W. Vanderhoof, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for amicus curiae U. S. Dept. of Justice.

Thomas McAiley, Miami, Fla., for amicus curiae The Florida Bar.

Bruce S. Rogow, Miami, Fla., for amicus curiae Florida Volunteer Parole Aide Program.

Professor Leslie Harold Levinson, Nashville, Tenn., amicus curiae.

OPINION

CHARLES R. SCOTT, Senior District Judge.

This is a civil rights class action¹ brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983² on behalf of all indigent inmates who are presently or will hereafter be in the custody of defendant Louie L. Wainwright, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections.³ At issue is the right of Florida's inmates to meaningful access to the courts. This litigation has enjoyed an active, varied and progressively significant history. Eleven years of litigation has operated as a filtering process, culminating in the instant decision. What began as an innocuous action seeking to compel the Clerk of the Florida Supreme Court to send plaintiff Hooks a copy of a Florida Supreme Court opinion has evolved into an action focusing upon a question of considerable import — is the assistance of attorneys, in some form, an essential ingredient of Florida's attempt to comply with the mandate of Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977), that prisoners be afforded meaningful access to the courts?

HISTORY

On November 12, 1970, the Clerk of this Court received a handwritten civil rights complaint seeking to compel Sid J. White, Clerk of the Florida Supreme Court, to send a copy of a Florida Supreme Court opinion to the plaintiff. The plaintiff was Harold Raymond Hooks, an indigent inmate of Avon Park Correctional Institution, Avon Park, Florida. Hooks had been convicted in state court of distribution and possession of a controlled substance and claimed he needed a copy of the opinion to assist him in pursuing the appeal of his conviction. Mr. White informed Hooks that he would be unable to send a copy of the opinion unless and until Hooks remitted a five dollar fee. Hooks claimed the fee requirement operated to deny indigent prisoners their right of access to the courts.

On November 30, 1970, Hooks submitted a second complaint seeking to compel defendant Louie Wainwright to provide him with access to a law library and a typewriter, thereby considerably broadening the scope of his "access to the courts" claim.⁴ Hooks had filed a habeas corpus petition which was summarily denied by the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal. He desired to appeal the decision, but was totally bewildered as to how to proceed. He expressed his befuddlement in a letter to the late Honorable William A. McRae, Jr., postmarked September 28, 1970:⁵

What am I supposed to do now. The order denying his habeas corpus petition does not give me the slightest indication why the petition was denied. There is no record for appeal, so therefore only grounds for appeal would be mere conjecture on my part. I don't even know if I can appeal the order. If I can appeal it, how do I do it? How much time do I have? To what Court? Who is the Defendant in an appeal? Is it Louie Wainwright through direct appeal? Or is it the Court of Appeal through Mandamus? Or have I now exhausted my state remedies? I have absolutely no idea what to do.

The solution to his dilemma was, in Hooks' view, access to a law library and a typewriter. On March 2, 1971, the Court entered an order to show cause directing defendant Wainwright to respond to the issues raised in plaintiff's complaint, that is, the availability of law books to Florida's prison population and the availability of alternative means through which prisoners could obtain assistance in preparing pleadings in post-conviction proceedings. The defendant responded by filing a list of the various legal materials available at that time in each institution under his control. The list reflected that, even if all of the materials were combined as one library rather than scattered throughout the state, the library would, for the most part, amount to no more than a useless hodgepodge of outdated statutes, incomplete case reporters and nonessential treatises covering topics such as agency, taxes and trusts.

The list was supplemented by defendant's argument that legal materials are not necessary to the preparation of prisoner pro se pleadings. Referring to the most famous "writ-writer" in jurisprudential history, Clarence Earl Gideon, the state of Florida argued that an inmate need only allege the facts upon which he relied to support his claim, not the law. Hooks decried this contention in his "rebuttal" to the state's response to the order to show cause:

It is purported that all that is necessary in an application for writ of habeas corpus is that facts be stated which if true would be grounds for release. Thus all an inmate need do is state facts. Theoretically he need not have any legal knowledge .... This is based on the theorem that every person knows what facts constitute illegal detention. This obviously isn't so.

"Rebuttal" brief for Plaintiff at 5.⁶

The pleadings prepared by Hooks, while far from being stylistically or grammatically perfect, revealed that he was a highly intelligent and insightful pro se litigant. Nevertheless, his lack of legal training combined with his inability to obtain access to any suitable legal materials forced him to state his civil rights claim in the following fashion: "I guess there is a Federal law prohibiting the Defendant from violating my civil rights." Complaint, filed November 30, 1970. Hooks was equally naive with regard to his rights to conduct discovery, setting forth in his complaint that: "a prisoner told me that under a civil action I can make the Defendant answer questions. I guess this is a civil action."

Thus, despite his obvious intelligence, Hooks was manifestly unequipped to pursue a legal action in federal court. This observation served to demonstrate a certain compelling logic inhering in his claims. Nevertheless, because the law at that time failed to provide support for Hooks' position, his complaint was dismissed by order of July 23, 1971.

Shortly after Hooks filed an appeal from the order of dismissal, the Supreme Court decided Younger v. Gilmore, 404 U.S. 15, 92 S.Ct. 250, 30 L.Ed.2d 142 (1971). Younger was a per curiam affirmance of a decision entered by a three-judge district court panel holding that the state of California had an affirmative constitutional duty to furnish inmates with some means through which they could be assured of meaningful access to the courts. Gilmore v. Lynch, 319 F.Supp. 105 (N.D.Cal.1970).

In light of the Supreme Court's decision in Younger, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated this Court's order of dismissal and remanded the cause for further proceedings. Following an evidentiary hearing on October 4, 1972, this Court entered an order finding that the Florida Department of Corrections did not provide indigent inmates with the assistance of counsel and that the legal materials made available to such inmates were inadequate to enable them to meaningfully pursue avenues of post-conviction relief, relying upon Younger v. Gilmore, supra.

Simply put, in order to insure that inmates are not for this reason denied access to the courts, it is constitutionally mandated that the prison authority furnish indigent inmates with some form of legal assistance which to that extent assures meaningful access to the courts.

Order of December 6, 1972 at 6. Accordingly, the Court directed the parties, including the United States as amicus curiae, to submit proposed plans of implementation dealing with the following issues:

1. The extent of professional or quasiprofessional services which would be provided indigent inmates.

* * * * * *

2. The extent of the law libraries which would be provided indigent inmates.

* * * * * * 3. The time frame within which implementation can be perfected.

Order of December 6, 1972 at 8-9. Thus, although the complaint at that time focused primarily upon the law library question, the Court gave its first indication that law libraries alone might be insufficient to guarantee meaningful access to the courts on behalf of all indigent prisoners.

Following entry of the order of December 6, 1972, the Court appointed three additional parties to serve as amicus curiae: The Florida Bar; the Florida Volunteer Parole Aide Program; and Professor L. Harold Levinson, who at that time was a professor of law at the University of Florida and who currently teaches at Vanderbilt University. Given the possible far-reaching consequences of the ultimate decision entered in this cause, the Court wanted to ensure that all of the issues presented would be fully researched and developed prior to entering that decision.

On March 7, 1973, defendant Wainwright filed his response to the Court's order regarding implementation of the precepts set forth therein. Defendant's plan called for the establishment of a law library system as the sole means through which to provide meaningful access to the courts for indigent inmates.⁷ To the contrary, plaintiffs and each of the four amicus parties took the position that law libraries alone, without professional legal assistance, could never operate to ensure meaningful access to the courts. As set forth by counsel for The Florida Bar: "In short, granting...