Meola v. Fitzpatrick

• Decision Date: 08 February 1971
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 70-833-G.
• Citation: 322 F. Supp. 878
• Parties: Michael A. MEOLA, Plaintiff, v. John J. FITZPATRICK et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

322 F. Supp. 878

Michael A. MEOLA, Plaintiff, v. John J. FITZPATRICK et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 70-833-G.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

February 8, 1971.

Michael A. Meola, pro se.

Robert A. Bell, Center for Criminal Justice, Boston, Mass.

Mark Berson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

GARRITY, District Judge.

This action is brought under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, to enjoin the defendants from interfering with plaintiff's access to the courts. The court has jurisdiction under 28 U. S.C. § 1343(3). The plaintiff, Michael A. Meola, was at the time of the filing of the complaint an inmate of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution located at Walpole, Massachusetts (hereinafter referred to as Walpole). He is presently confined at Bridgewater State Hospital, a facility under the Department of Correction, for observation as to his sanity pursuant to Mass.G.L. c. 123, § 103. The defendants are John J. Fitzpatrick, Commissioner of Corrections of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Robert Moore, Superintendent of Walpole. After an evidentiary hearing at which plaintiff was represented by court-appointed counsel the court makes the following findings of fact and conclusions of law.

Findings of Fact

1. On June 10, 1965 plaintiff was sentenced to Walpole for a term of 5 to 10 years by the Superior Court of Essex County after pleading guilty to the crime of sodomy. Since his confinement at Walpole in 1965, plaintiff has been charged on numerous occasions with violating institution rules and regulations. These violations have resulted in numerous disciplinary proceedings against the plaintiff by the defendants at Walpole. Disciplinary action by the defendants at Walpole against the plaintiff as the result of these violations has taken the form of loss of privileges, transfers to segregation areas, and loss of good time. Plaintiff has been and is presently considered a serious disciplinary problem by the defendants at Walpole.

2. The procedure for transmittal of petitions for habeas corpus, other post-conviction remedies and other legal papers of prisoners to state and federal courts by Walpole authorities is as follows: The prisoner encloses the communication to the court (hereinafter referred to generically as a petition) in an unsealed envelope and personally places it or has it placed into a mailbox at the institution. All petitions by prisoners to state or federal courts are reviewed by the institution mail censor, who usually forwards them to the court forthwith. No record is kept of such petitions. The mail censor may question the propriety of sending a prisoner's petition to the courts, in which event he refers it to the superintendent for review.

3. After reviewing a questioned petition, the superintendent may forward it to the courts "as is", in which event his secretary records the date when forwarded, the inmate's name, the type of petition, and to what court it is sent. Or the superintendent may return the petition to the prisoner. He will do so if the petition contains improper language or if there are multiple petitioners and not all of them have signed the petition. The reason for this latter practice is to insure that the consent of all co-petitioners named as parties to an action has been obtained. These are the only grounds for the superintendent's returning a petition to an inmate.

4. On April 16, 1967 former Superintendent Palmer C. Scafati returned to plaintiff a petition for a writ of mandamus¹ addressed to the Superior Court of Norfolk County. This petition charged John A. Gavin, Commissioner of Corrections, Scafati and Francis Weaver, School Principal, with cruel and unusual punishment and denial of educational materials. It called the respondents "liars and dissembers" sic, who would "dupe the court, or veil the truth." Four days later a watered-down version of the same petition was posted by the plaintiff and forwarded to the court after review by the Superintendent.

5. In March 1968 an explosive device blew up in the cell of an inmate named Lewis. The superintendent and his deputy believed that plaintiff was responsible and transferred him on March 28 to the "new man's section" of the prison for segregation and kept him there for approximately two months. Plaintiff was not given an opportunity to refute the authorities' suspicions and was never brought before a disciplinary board with respect to the incident. No one was charged with responsibility. Plaintiff's release from segregation and return to the general population at the end of May came on the day after he mailed an application for a writ of mandamus against the authorities for placing him in segregation solely on the basis of suspicion. There is no record that this application was forwarded into court by the Walpole authorities.

6. On January 5, 1969 plaintiff was transferred to block #9, the principal segregation unit at the prison, for creating a major disturbance. Plaintiff remained there until his transfer to the departmental segregation unit, Bridgewater (hereinafter referred to as D.S. U.) on February 17, 1969. On January 24, 1969 plaintiff was reported for breaking up his room in block #9. Action with respect to this incident was not taken by the disciplinary board until March 2, 1969, after petitioner had been transferred to the D.S.U. This action resulted in petitioner's loss of 60 days' good time.²

7. During January and February, 1969, while in block #9, plaintiff sent two petitions to the Superior Court for Norfolk County, one claiming a denial of educational materials and the other claiming cruel and unusual treatment. On February 11 plaintiff drafted and posted a petition claiming denial of medical treatment to himself and certain other inmates confined in block #9. On February 16, 1969 Assistant Deputy John Bates, on instructions from the superintendent, informed the plaintiff that his petition would not be forwarded to the court because there were too many names on it and the superintendent did not know if all co-petitioners had consented to be named as parties. Later on the same day plaintiff drafted and posted a habeas corpus petition addressed to the United States District Court at Boston, in which he was the only plaintiff, alleging that the defendants had thrice denied him access to state courts. The next morning, Deputy Butterworth visited the plaintiff in block #9 and had with him the petition plaintiff had addressed to the federal court on the day before. Butterworth warned plaintiff against sending out any more such petitions and tore into pieces the one he had with him.

8. On the afternoon of February 17 plaintiff was transferred to the D.S.U. at Bridgewater. Plaintiff was given no notice of this transfer. Superintendent Scafati had written to the Commissioner of Corrections on February 14 requesting the transfer. The primary reason given for the request was plaintiff's involvement as a "racial agitator" at Walpole. However, no evidence in plaintiff's personnel folder at Walpole supported the allegation that plaintiff was a racial agitator and testimony in this court indicated that he was not. The primary reason for plaintiff's transfer to D.S.U. was his persistent and irritating attempts to bring his grievances against the defendants to the attention of the courts. The plaintiff lost the opportunity to earn approximately 30 days of "good time" as a result of this transfer. He was returned from D.S.U. to Walpole on April 29, 1969.

9. Upon his return to Walpole from D.S.U. plaintiff was confined in block #9 for reasons which did not appear in the evidence. On June 19, 1969 plaintiff posted a habeas corpus petition against the prison authorities addressed to the Superior Court for Norfolk County, claiming cruel and unusual punishment. Shortly thereafter he was visited by Superintendent Scafati, who had the petition with him and who told him that if he persisted in filing court petitions he would be transferred out of state. There is no record that the petition was forwarded into the court by the Walpole authorities.

10. Mass. G.L. c. 123A, § 6, provides in part that a superintendent of a prison may initiate proceedings for commitment of an inmate to the Treatment Center for Sexually Dangerous Persons (hereinafter referred to as the Treatment Center) if it appears to him that an inmate is sexually dangerous.³ At Walpole, an advisory screening board (hereinafter the Board) is responsible for the classification of inmates first entering the institution. Among the further duties delegated to it by the superintendent is the making of the initial determination as to whether to bring c. 123A proceedings against a particular inmate.⁴ The key member of the Board is the director of treatment, who since January 1966 has been Dr. Stanley Kruger.

11. The Board's preliminary step in initiating a c. 123A proceeding is requesting a psychiatrist on the staff of the Division of Legal Medicine of the Department of Mental Health to examine the inmate in question and to determine whether he may be, in the opinion of the psychiatrist, a sexually dangerous person and whether further observation at the Treatment Center is recommended. The policy of the Board is to request routinely such an examination of any inmate committed to Walpole for a crime of a sexual nature. If the psychiatrist recommends further observation, the Board submits its recommendation and the psychiatrist's report to the superintendent. The superintendent, upon receipt of these papers, files a c. 123A motion in the Superior Court requesting that the prisoner be committed by the court to the treatment center for a sixty-day observation period. The policy of the superintendent is to file motions to commit soon after receipt of the recommendation of the Board.

12. On July 9, 1965 the Board at Walpole requested a c. 123A psychiatric examination of the plaintiff. On September...