Rodriguez v. James, 826

• Decision Date: 29 June 1987
• Docket Number: D,No. 826,826
• Parties: O. RODRIGUEZ, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Charles JAMES, Superintendent, Melvin Williams, Deputy Superintendent, K. Trim, Senior Mail Clerk, K. Baase, Record Coordinator, DOCS Chief Employee of Records, Albany, NY, and Arthur Leonardo, Deputy Commissioner, Defendants- Appellees. ocket 86-2428.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 8

823 F.2d 8

O. RODRIGUEZ, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Charles JAMES, Superintendent, Melvin Williams, Deputy

Superintendent, K. Trim, Senior Mail Clerk, K. Baase, Record

Coordinator, DOCS Chief Employee of Records, Albany, NY, and

Arthur Leonardo, Deputy Commissioner, Defendants- Appellees.

No. 826, Docket 86-2428.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Submitted March 2, 1987.

Decided June 29, 1987.

O. Rodriguez, pro se.

Robert Abrams, Atty. Gen. of the State of N.Y., Albany, N.Y. (Peter H. Schiff, Deputy Sol. Gen., Wayne L. Benjamin and Denise A. Hartman, Asst. Attys. Gen., Albany, N.Y., of counsel), for defendants-appellees.

Before OAKES and WINTER, Circuit Judges, and ZAMPANO, Senior District Judge. ^*

WINTER, Circuit Judge.

O. Rodriguez, a prisoner in the custody of the New York State Department of Correctional Services ("DOCS"), alleged in his complaint that several DOCS officials had violated his constitutional rights while he was imprisoned at the Collins Correctional Facility ("Collins"). Rodriguez's principal claim was that his first amendment rights were violated by Collins officials' implementation of a DOCS regulation that required inmates to submit all outgoing business mail in unsealed form for inspection. He also claimed that his transfer to the Orleans Correctional Facility ("Orleans") was intended to frustrate his pursuit of legal remedies. Chief Judge Curtin granted summary judgment against Rodriguez, and this appeal followed.

BACKGROUND

From October 11, 1985 to March 15, 1986, Rodriguez was an inmate at Collins, a "medium A" security facility in Helmuth, New York. Sometime in late October 1985, he submitted two sealed letters to the prison mailroom for mailing. Both letters were addressed to businesses; one was addressed to The Sharper Image, the other to Stereo World Electronics Discounters. According to Rodriguez, the first was a notice of a change of address, and the second was an inquiry about overdue merchandise.

Pursuant to DOCS Directive No. 4422, those letters were returned to Rodriguez unopened and unmailed.

Directive 4422, issued by DOCS on December 7, 1983, modified the Inmate Correspondence Program, which regulates the exchange of correspondence between inmates and other persons. The directive was issued after a number of restrictions on inmate mail privileges were invalidated by this court in Davidson v. Scully, 694 F.2d 50, 52 & n. 3 (2d Cir.1982). As a result of the directive, inmates may now submit most of their outgoing personal mail to the prison mailroom already sealed. Inspection is allowed only upon reasonable suspicion that the contents constitute a threat to safety.

Business mail, however, is treated differently. Correspondence addressed to commercial firms must be submitted unsealed and is subject to inspection. This requirement was devised after a number of inmates had ordered merchandise or services without having sufficient funds to make payment. Any business mail that obligates an inmate's funds must receive prior approval of the prison superintendent. The inmate must send advance payment in the form of a check drawn on his prison account for any merchandise ordered by mail. As an additional measure, the Deputy Commissioner of DOCS ordered that all outgoing inmate mail be stamped with the name of the correctional facility. A subsequent revision of Directive 4422 excluded from the definition of "business mail" correspondence to the media not obligating the inmate's funds. ¹

In a letter to Rodriguez explaining the return of the two sealed letters and a third unmailed letter to Radio Shack, Kay Baase, the Collins Inmate Records Coordinator, specifically quoted Directive 4422, Sec. III(E)(2). Baase also noted that had the mailroom employees been able to verify that The Sharper Image and Stereo World letters merely effected a change of address and inquired about overdue merchandise, "they would have promptly been dispatched."

On December 27, 1985, Rodriguez requested that a letter addressed to Senator Edward Kennedy be sent via certified mail. Prison records, including a Postal Service receipt, indicate that the letter was sent on December 30, that Rodriguez was billed for the certified mail charge, but the letter was never received by Senator Kennedy's office. Two tracers submitted by Collins officials at Rodriguez's request received no response from the Postal Service.

On March 15, 1986, Rodriguez was transferred to Orleans, another "medium A" security facility, as part of an inmate "swap" between the two prisons. Rodriguez and one other inmate at Collins were exchanged for two inmates at Orleans to allow the Orleans inmates to participate in programs offered only at Collins. Officials at Orleans apparently initiated the exchange.

Rodriguez's complaint alleged that four officials at Collins, including Baase, had

                deliberately transferred him to Orleans to prevent "legal redress against them for their violations of his rights," to deny him his job assignment at Collins, and to cause him mental anguish.  Rodriguez also alleged that those four officials had destroyed or suppressed his mail to Senator Kennedy and had refused to send out his sealed business mail.  Finally, Rodriguez alleged that Arthur Leonardo, Deputy Commissioner of DOCS, and an unnamed DOCS official had approved and implemented the "illegal and unconstitutional" Directive 4422. 2   All of these actions, Rodriguez claims, were violations of his civil, statutory, human and constitutional rights.  Each of the five named defendants moved for summary judgment and submitted numerous supporting affidavits and prison records.  On November 5, 1986, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of all defendants
                

DISCUSSION

In granting summary judgment, Chief Judge Curtin correctly rejected as lacking any factual basis Rodriguez's claims that Collins officials tampered with the Kennedy letter and illegally transferred him to Orleans. Evidence submitted by the defendants demonstrates that the Kennedy letter was mailed by Collins prison officials and was lost after it had passed into Postal Service custody. Moreover, Rodriguez has offered no evidence contradicting the defendants' submissions indicating that his transfer was carried out for legitimate purposes.

We limit our further discussion to Rodriguez's claim that the refusal of prison officials, pursuant to Directive 4422, to mail Rodriguez's sealed business correspondence abridged his first amendment rights. ³ Rodriguez's challenge to the inspection of his business mail does not include a claim that such inspection deters or "chills" prisoners from engaging in commercial correspondence. Certainly, there was nothing in the letters that he intended to send that was either personal, see Wolfish v. Levi, 573 F.2d 118, 130 (2d Cir.1978) (chilling of "tender note, so important to the morale of the incarcerated individual") or political, see Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 415, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1812, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974) (invalidating prison regulation authorizing censorship of mail that, inter alia, " 'express[ed] inflammatory political ... views' "), and that thereby implicated first amendment privacy rights. Whether the inspection of commercial mail can ever implicate such rights seems doubtful, but we need not resolve that question absent a concrete factual situation giving rise to a colorable first amendment privacy claim.

Reading Rodriguez's claims broadly, see Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520, 92 S.Ct. 594, 595, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972), we do address the constitutionality of the substantive restrictions on the content of inmate prison mail that the inspection provisions of Directive 4422 were designed to implement. Inspection of commercial mail is intended to limit the monetary obligations assumed by inmates and to require that inmates prepay for items ordered by mail. The regulation effectively prevents inmates from entering into a variety of commercial relationships involving debt. We assume for purposes of this case that expression aimed at entering into such commercial relationships implicates the first amendment. See Bolger v. Youngs Drug Prods. Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 64, 103 S.Ct. 2875, 2878, 77 L.Ed.2d 469 (1983).

The appropriate standard for deciding whether a particular regulation or practice relating to inmate correspondence impermissibly restrains first amendment rights was recently articulated by the Supreme Court in Turner v. Safley, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 64 L.Ed.2d 96 (1987). The Court held that "when a prison regulation impinges on inmates' constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests." Id. at 107 S.Ct. at 2261. The Court listed several factors to be considered in determining the reasonableness of such a regulation, including whether there is "a 'valid, rational connection' between the prison regulation and the legitimate governmental interest put forward to justify it," whether "alternative means of exercising the [constitutional] right ... remain open to prison inmates," and whether an alternative regulation could "fully accommodate[ ] the prisoner's rights at de minimis cost to valid penological interests." Id. at 107 S.Ct. at 2262 (quoting Block v. Rutherford, 468 U.S. 576, 586, 104 S.Ct. 3227, 3232, 82 L.Ed.2d 438 (1984)). The Court concluded that a Missouri rule barring virtually all correspondence between inmates in the state prison system was "reasonably related to legitimate security interests." Id. at 107 S.Ct. at 2262.

The business mail policies at issue in this case are necessary, according to prison officials, to prevent inmates from committing fraud on businesses or from obligating funds beyond their means. The legitimacy of the...