Michaud v. Sheriff of Essex County

• Decision Date: 05 December 1983
• Citation: 458 N.E.2d 702,390 Mass. 523
• Parties: Michael MICHAUD et al. 1 v. SHERIFF OF ESSEX COUNTY et al. 2
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 702

458 N.E.2d 702

390 Mass. 523

Michael MICHAUD et al. ¹ v. SHERIFF OF ESSEX COUNTY et al. ²

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,

Suffolk.

Argued Nov. 8, 1983.

Decided Dec. 5, 1983.

W. Barry MacDonald, Danvers, for County Com'rs of Essex County & another.

Joseph David Casey, Lynn, for Sheriff of Essex County (William D. Luzier, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., for Com'r of Correction, with him).

Barry Barkow, Boston (John Reinstein, Boston, with him), for Michael Michaud & others.

Before HENNESSEY, C.J., and WILKINS, ABRAMS, LYNCH and O'CONNOR, JJ.

HENNESSEY, Chief Justice.

This is an appeal by the defendants, the sheriff of Essex County, the county commissioners for Essex County, and Essex County, from an order by a Superior Court judge prohibiting occupancy after May 11, 1983, of any cell at the Essex County House of Correction and Jail at Lawrence (jail) not having a flush toilet, which can be flushed from within the cell, and hot and cold running water. The defendants appealed the judgment and we transferred the case here on our own motion. We conclude that the judge correctly found the human waste disposal system and related sanitary conditions at the jail violative of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. We modify his order, however, and will allow the defendants until June 1, 1984, to complete all repairs necessary for conditions at the jail to meet constitutional standards.

The facts are not disputed. The plaintiffs are incarcerated in cells at the jail which have no flush toilets, sinks, or running water. Rather, prisoners are provided with five gallon metal or plastic containers into which they must urinate and defecate. Most of the metal buckets are old and rusted, while the plastic ones turn black with use. The prisoners, housed two, three, and sometimes four, men to an eight foot by eight foot cell, must keep these buckets in their cells, with two men sharing a bucket. Many of the buckets do not have covers and others have covers which do not fit tightly. The prisoners generally are allowed to empty the buckets once in a twenty-four hour period. Accordingly, the inmates must smell and breathe air permeated with the odor of their waste. Moreover, prisoners confined to their cells take three meals a day next to these buckets and complain that flying insects intermittently land in the buckets and on their food. Some prisoners are confined in their cells between seventeen and twenty-four hours a day. To empty the buckets, the prisoners must carry them to the "Bucket Room" where they wait in line to dump them in a sink approximately three feet wide and two feet deep. Only unpressurized cold water is provided to wash the buckets, although a liquid sanitizer may be poured into them after they are emptied. Accordingly, the buckets have become "feces encrusted." The odor during this process is described as unbearable. This bucket room is directly next to the room where the inmates are allowed, after dumping the buckets, to shower, and the odor from the human waste filters into the showers as well.

The plaintiffs commenced a class action in the Superior Court in Suffolk County, challenging this alleged failure to provide adequate toilet and plumbing facilities. After allowing a motion for interim injunctive relief and certifying the claim as a class action, ³ the judge issued on November 17, 1982, a partial final judgment on the plaintiffs' application for further injunctive relief. The judge found that conditions at the jail violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, as well as 105 Code Mass.Regs. 450.113 and 105 Code Mass.Regs. 450.406 (1979).

The judge ruled that the most sound basis for the plaintiffs' challenge to the jail's conditions is the alleged violation of their rights under the Eighth Amendment and art. 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. He then concluded that the plaintiffs' rights secured under these provisions had been violated and ordered as follows: "[T]his Court orders that any cell at the Jail within which an inmate may be locked for any part of a 24-hour day which does not have a working toilet and a working hand-washing sink with hot and cold running water shall not be occupied after May 11, 1983 and for such time thereafter until such facilities are installed in a cell at the Jail." The defendants appealed the decision and order. ⁴ On May 10, 1983, the Superior Court judge denied the defendants' motion to stay his order, but on May 25, 1983, a single justice of the Appeals Court stayed the order entered on November 17, 1982. In doing so, the single justice directed the defendants to proceed with the renovations required by the Superior Court judge's order and to submit to the Superior Court a detailed schedule for making the necessary repairs.

1. Violation of State Regulations.

We first consider the plaintiffs' argument that they should be granted relief solely because conditions at the jail are in violation of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's regulations. If the plaintiffs were entitled to relief on this basis, we would not need to reach the constitutional issues presented to us. See Beeler v. Downey, 387 Mass. 609, 613, 442 N.E.2d 19 (1982). The plaintiffs' standing to seek relief based solely on the existence of conditions at the jail which violate State regulations, however, is unclear. The parties have not fully briefed and argued the issue. Moreover, even if we were to find the plaintiffs had standing to seek relief based on the violation of State regulations alone, the result we reach in this case would not differ. We therefore decline to address whether the plaintiffs may obtain judicial relief through a private action against the defendants based solely on conditions at the jail which violate State regulations. Nevertheless, we focus, infra, on the extent to which conditions at the jail violate standards set forth in validly enacted State regulations. State regulations governing conditions of confinement reflect current standards of decency against which we measure alleged violations of the right to be free from "cruel and unusual" or "cruel or unusual" punishment.

2. Violation of United States Constitution.

We next consider whether the right to be free from "cruel and unusual" punishment guaranteed the plaintiffs under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and held applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 666-667, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 1420-1421, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962), is being abridged by the existing conditions at the jail. The United States Supreme Court recently has summarized and reaffirmed the standards applicable for determining what conditions of confinement are constitutionally impermissible as "cruel and unusual." See Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 345-346, 101 S.Ct. 2392, 2398-2399, 69 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981): "The Eighth Amendment, in only three words, imposes the constitutional limitation upon punishments: they cannot be 'cruel and unusual.' The Court has interpreted these words 'in a flexible and dynamic manner,' ... and has extended the Amendment's reach beyond the barbarous physical punishments at issue in the Court's earliest cases.... Today the Eighth Amendment prohibits punishments which, although not physically barbarous, 'involve the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain,' ... or are grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime.... Among 'unnecessary and wanton' inflictions of pain are those that are 'totally without penological justification.' ... No static 'test' can exist by which courts determine whether conditions of confinement are cruel and unusual, for the Eighth Amendment 'must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.' ... The Court has held, however, that 'Eighth Amendment judgments should neither be nor appear to be merely the subjective views' of judges" (citations omitted). See Libby v. Commissioner of Correction, 385 Mass. 421, 431, 432 N.E.2d 486 (1982). Accordingly, we are bound in this case to apply flexibly the prohibitions of the Eighth Amendment and determine whether the conditions of the jail offend our evolving standards of decency as measured by objective standards.

This is not the first time the constitutionality of a prison's human waste disposal system has been subject to judicial scrutiny. We write against the background of many, thoughtful decisions by the Federal courts. See, e.g., Chavis v. Rowe, 643 F.2d 1281, 1291-1292 (7th Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Boles v. Chavis, 454 U.S. 907, 102 S.Ct. 415, 70 L.Ed.2d 225 (1981); Kirby v. Blackledge, 530 F.2d 583, 586-587 (4th Cir.1976); LaReau v. MacDougall, 473 F.2d 974, 978 (2d Cir.1972), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 878, 94 S.Ct. 49, 38 L.Ed.2d 123 (1973); Lovell v. Brennan, 566 F.Supp. 672, 695-696 (D.Me.1983); Griffin v. DeRobertis, 557 F.Supp. 302, 305-306 (N.D.Ill.1983); Strachan v. Ashe, 548 F.Supp. 1193, 1202-1203 (D.Mass.1982); Flakes v. Percy, 511 F.Supp. 1325, 1332 (W.D.Wis.1981); Mitchell v. Untreiner, 421 F.Supp. 886, 894 (N.D.Fla.1976); Bel v. Hall, 392 F.Supp. 274, 276-277 (D.Mass.1975); Osborn v. Manson, 359 F.Supp. 1107, 1112 (D.Conn.1973). Several courts specifically have singled out the housing of prisoners in cells without toilets which may be flushed from within the cell, as a circumstance, often in connection with one or more other circumstances, warranting a finding of an Eighth Amendment violation. LaReau v. MacDougall supra at 978 ("What is most offensive to this Court was the use of the 'Chinese toilet.' Causing a man to live, eat and perhaps sleep in close confines with his own human waste is too debasing and degrading to be permitted"). Strachan v. Ashe, supra at 1202 (citing LaReau v. MacDougall, supra ). Flakes v. Percy, ...