McCloskey v. State of Maryland
| Citation | 337 F.2d 72 |
| Decision Date | 17 September 1964 |
| Docket Number | No. 9100.,9100. |
| Parties | James G. McCLOSKEY, Appellant, v. STATE OF MARYLAND, Appellee. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit) |
Benjamin Lipsitz, Baltimore, Md. (Court-assigned counsel), for appellant.
Robert F. Sweeney, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Maryland (Thomas B. Finan, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, on brief), for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH and BRYAN, Circuit Judges, and BUTZNER, District Judge.
McCloskey, held as a defective delinquent1 in Maryland's Patuxent Institution, seeks a court order requiring officials of the Institution to permit him to engage in an extensive correspondence, one broader than any possible judicially enforceable right he may have. He does not question, in this proceeding, the legality of his detention. Under the circumstances, we conclude that dismissal of the petition without a hearing was warranted.
McCloskey declares in his petition that he is anti-Semitic, and he alleges that he is held in punitive segregation at Patuxent because of his expression of his anti-Semitic beliefs. He wishes to correspond on the subject with members of Maryland's Legislature representing Cecil County, the United States Representative who represents the District of which Cecil County is a part, the two United States Senators from Maryland, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Bar Association. He asks for an order which would require the Patuxent officials to permit him to write to each of those prospective correspondents, expressing his anti-Semitic opinions and beliefs, registering complaints which he thinks legitimate and seeking legal assistance of them.2
In this Court, we appointed an able and responsible attorney to represent McCloskey. Ironically, it develops that the attorney is Jewish.3 With high fidelity to his duty as an officer of the court, the attorney has urgently and ably presented McCloskey's contentions that he has an absolute right, even in the circumstances of his confinement, to express his beliefs to his prospective correspondents and to request their aid. As was said of Voltaire, the attorney, who must strongly disagree with McCloskey's anti-Semitic opinions, rushes to the defense of McCloskey's right to hold and express them.
Imprisoned felons and inmates of such institutions as Patuxent cannot enjoy many of the liberties, the rights and the privileges of free men. They cannot go abroad or mount the housetops to speak. They are subjected to rigid physical limitations and to disciplinary controls which would find no shred of justification in any other context. Even the disciplinary powers of military authorities are not so absolute.
Because prison officials must be responsible for the security of the prison and the safety of its population, they must have a wide discretion in promulgating rules to govern the prison population and in imposing disciplinary sanctions for their violation. If a tractable inmate is subjected to cruel and unusual punishment or if his exercise of a constitutional right is denied without semblance of justification arising out of the necessity to preserve order and discipline within the prison, he may have a right of judicial review.4 In the great mass of instances, however, the necessity for effective disciplinary controls is so impelling that judicial review of them is highly impractical and wholly unwarranted.5 The remedy of the inmate is through administrative review, which ought to be available always.
While an inmate of such an institution should be allowed a reasonable and proper correspondence with members of his immediate family and, at times, with others, it is subject to censorship to be certain of its reasonableness and propriety. A broader correspondence is subject to substantial limitations or to absolute prohibitions. Control of the mail...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Procunier v. Martinez 8212 1465
...Some have maintained a hands-off posture in the face of constitutional challenges to censorship of prisoner mail. E.g., McCloskey v. Maryland, 337 F.2d 72 (CA4 1964); Lee v. Tahash, 352 F.2d 970 (CA8 1965) (except insofar as mail censorship rules are applied to discriminate against a partic......
-
Souza v. Travisono
...an organization such as the Civil Liberties Union. Accord: Burns v. Swenson, 300 F. Supp. 759 at 761-762; see McCloskey v. State of Maryland, 337 F. 2d 72, 74-75 (4th Cir. 1964); see also Sostre v. Rockefeller, supra 312 F. Supp. 863 (D.C.); Hymes v. Dickson, 232 F.Supp. 796 See Cross v. Po......
-
Adams v. Carlson
...1970); Nolan v. Scafati, 430 F.2d 548 (1st Cir. 1970); Coleman v. Peyton, 340 F.2d 603 (4th Cir. 1968); compare McCloskey v. State of Maryland, 337 F. 2d 72 (4th Cir. 1964). The final phase of this development has been a recognition that the effective protection of access to counsel require......
-
Walker v. Hughes
...United States v. Marchese, 341 F.2d 782 (9th Cir.) cert. denied, 382 U.S. 817, 86 S.Ct. 41, 15 L.Ed.2d 64 (1965); McCloskey v. State of Maryland, 337 F.2d 72 (4th Cir. 1964); Sostre v. McGinnis, 334 F.2d 906 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 892, 85 S.Ct. 168, 13 L.Ed.2d 96 (1964); Childs v......
-
Censorship of Mail: the Prisoner's Right To Communicate By Mail With the Outside World
...custody of the prisoner,suppression of contraband or the maintenance of proper prison admin-istration. Thus, in McCloskey v. Maryland, 337 F. 2d 72 (4th 1964) the Court of Appeals held an inmate had no constitutional right to seek legal assistance in the aid of certain anti-semitic propagan......