Lamb, In re

• Decision Date: 22 February 1973
• Parties: , 63 O.O.2d 153 In re LAMB et al.
• Court: Ohio Court of Appeals

Page 85

34 Ohio App.2d 85

296 N.E.2d 280, 63 O.O.2d 153

In re LAMB et al.

Court of Appeals of Ohio, Eighth District, Cuyahoga County.

Feb. 22, 1973.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Punishment of prisoners in a punitive segregation facility in a penal institution, in the absence of a prior meaningful evidentiary hearing to determine the justification for such punishment, violates due process of law guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution.

2. Where prisoners are indicted, found guilty, sentenced and serving a prison sentence for the crime of escape from prison, prohibited by R.C. 2901.11, prison authorities cannot, during that period of incarceration, subsequently punish them for the same offense by further confinement in a segregated punitive detention facility of the prison without violating the double jeopardy provisions of the Ohio and federal Constitutions.

Glenn Billington, Robert Karl Handelman, and Edward R. Stege, Jr., Cleveland, for petitioners.

Herbert Whiting, director of law, Cleveland, Malcolm C. Douglas, Lyndhurst, and Nicholas DeVito, Cleveland, for respondent city of Cleveland.

MANOS, Chief Justice.

This case arises upon an original petition for writ of habeas corpus in this Court claiming that petitioners, four inmates at the Cleveland House of Correction (Warrensville Workhouse), a prison facility operated by the City of Cleveland, have been illegally detained in its punitive segregation facility.

Petitioners were originally jailed to await their trials on criminal charges in the Common Pleas Court of Cuyahoga County. On February 11, 1972, they escaped from confinement. They were subsequently recaptured and indicted for the escape in violation of R.C. 2901.11. On May 4, 1972, they pled guilty to the charge and each was sentenced to six months in the Cleveland House of Correction. On May 11, 1972, they were transported to the prison facility to commence serving their sentences. They remained in isolation for medical examination and testing until May 14, 1972, when a prison officer advised them that they were to be placed in segregated detention in the 'New Deal,' a punitive segregation facility, as punishment for escaping. Their requests for a hearing, or conferences with other prison, personnel, were denied; they were placed in the 'New Deal' and remained there from May 14, 1972, until May 26, 1972.

A second disciplinary action raised by the habeas corpus application here in issue involved only petitioner Johnson. On June 3, 1972, he was called to the office of a prison officer approximately one hour after he had observed an assault upon an inmate by a prison guard. After an exchange of words with the prison officer, Johnson was confined to the 'New Deal' facility from June 3, 1972, to June 14, 1972, without notice of the charges against him or hearing of any kind.

It is undisputed that such punitive detention resulted in loss of 'good time' credit for each of the petitioners. As a consequence, they were all required to serve their entire six-month sentences; had they not been punished, each would have been entitled to an automatic diminution of his sentence by one month, and would thereby have been released after but five months of incarceration.

The evidence established that the punitive detention facility is an eight by twelve foot concrete cell with a dirty sink and toilet connected together; no bed or other furniture and no lighting. The petitioners testified that it was situated above a laundry and became excessively hot during the day, that they were denied soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste or towels, that the toilets twice backed up, flooding the cell with unsanitary water, and bugs came into the cell at night.

This application for writ of habeas corpus now before us thrusts this court squarely into consideration of some of the constitutional implications of the complex and delicate business of prison administration. We do not shrink from this assignment. For we believe the subject to be timely presented, appropriately lodged in this jurisdiction, and properly raised by the Great Writ.

Its timeliness is obvious. Although there was a period when a prisoner was 'a slave of the state,' Ruffin v. Commonwealth (1871), 62 Va. (21 Grattan) 790, 796, that time is, mercifully at an end. No longer may courts continue, along with the vast bulk of our citizenry, to wash their hands of the plight of those who populate our penal institutions.

For courts now recognize that in a society which calls itself civilized, prisoners do not abandon all their constitutional rights when the prison doors clang shut behind them. Without denying that '(l)awful incarceration brings about the necessary withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights, a retraction justified by the considerations underlying our penal system', Price v. Johnston (1948), 334 U.S. 266, 285, 68 S.Ct. 1049, 92 L.Ed. 1356 it is clear that a convict does not lose all his constitutional rights once he enters the prison population; constitutional rights of a fundamental nature, adapted to the context and penologic purposes of the imprisonment, are still available to him. Coffin v. Reichard (6th Cir. 1944), 143 F.2d 443, 445, cert. den. 325 U.S. 887, 65 S.Ct. 1568, 89 L.Ed. 2001 (1945). Freedom from discriminatory punishment because of his religious or secular beliefs, Cooper v. Pate (1964), 378 U.S. 546, 84 S.Ct. 1733, 12 L.Ed.2d 1030, discriminatory treatment on the basis of his skin color, Lee v. Washington (1968), 390 U.S. 333, 88 S.Ct. 994, 19 L.Ed.2d 1212 and denial of access to the courts and the mails to enforce these rights, Johnson v. Avery (1969) 393 U.S. 483, 89 S.Ct. 747, 21 L.Ed.2d 718, have not been stripped from him because of his status as a prisoner.

Nor can we deny that he retains some procedural rights before disciplinary punishment. See Sands v. Wainwright, M.D.Fla. 1973, 357 F.Supp. 1062; Gray v. Creamer (3rd Cir. 1972), 465 F.2d 179, 185; Sostre v. McGinnis (2nd Cir. 1971), 442 F.2d 178, 196; Landman v. Royster (E.D.Va.1971), 333 F.Supp. 621, 644-645; Carothers v. Follette (S.D.N.Y.1970), 314 F.Supp. 1014, 1027.

The extension of fundamental fairness to prison inmates is not in any way inconsistent with appropriate penologic considerations; indeed, it may well be that the grant of basic constitutional rights to prisoners will enhance, rather than impede, legitimate penologic ends.

Whatever may have been the attitudes of the administrators of our penal system in the past, it is now clear that '(r)etribution is no longer the dominant objective of the criminal law. Reformation and rehabilitation of offenders have become important goals of criminal jurisprudence.' Williams v. New York (1949), 337 U.S. 241, 248, 69 S.Ct. 1079, 1084, 93 L.Ed. 1337.

That a prisoner is more likely to be rehabilitated in a humane environment where the jailer sets an example of civilized behavior to the inmate than under conditions which further alienate and embitter him against the society that put him there is eminently sensible. For '(a) person who receives what he considers unfair treatment from correctional authorities is likely to become a difficult subject for reformation'. The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: Corrections, 83 (1967); and see Jackson v. Godwin (5th Cir. 1968), 400 F.2d 529, 535.

Students of penal conditions and correctional officials themselves have suggested that prison life which most closely approximates living conditions in outside society is most likely to rehabilitate the imprisoned. See, e. g., American Correctional Association, A Manual of Correctional Standards, 347 (1954):

'Discipline with the immediate aim of good conduct . . . must look beyond the limits of the inmate's term of confinement. It must seek to insure carry-over value by inculcating standards which the inmate will maintain after release. The ultimate aim of discipline is individual self-reliance, self-control, self-respect and self-discipline; it is not merely the person's ability to conform to institutional rules and regulations but his ability and desire to conform to accepted standards for individual and community life in free society' (emphasis supplied).

And see the conclusion reached by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, that

'. . . a first principle of any correctional institution is that staff control can be greatest, and certainly inmate life will be most relevant to that in the free community, if rules regulating behavior are as close as possible to those which could be essential for law and order in any free community, together with such minimal additional rules as are essential to meet the conditions peculiar to the institution.' Id. at p. 50.

While the argument that just and fair treatment of prisoners will increase the speed and frequency of their rehabilitation into useful citizens is apparently supported in logic and experience, we do not, and need not, undertake to guarantee such a result. It is not necessary in order to consider petitioners' claim of constitutional right, for our obligation to deal with these questions emanates not from an attempt to supervise the administrative process of prisoner rehabilitation, but rather from our self-image as a civilized community and from the command of the Constitution itself. We raise the point only to suggest that, in our view, no adverse penologic side-effects will flow, and perhaps some rehabilitative good may come, from the performance of our constitutional duty.

It is not surprising that the federal courts have begun to give serious attention to the delineation of prisoners' rights in both federal and state penal institutions. What is astonishing is the failure of the state courts to come to grips with these problems in their own custodial institutions. The courts which have been responsible for placing men behind bars...