Ross v. Reed
| Decision Date | 12 October 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 83-6137,83-6137 |
| Parties | Daniel ROSS, Appellant, v. Amos REED, individually and in his official capacity as Sec. of N.C. Dept. of Correction; Ralph D. Edwards, individually and in his official capacity as Dir. of Prisons; Fletcher K. Sanders, individually and in his official capacity as Complex Administrator, Caledonia-Odom Complex; L.V. Stephenson, individually and in his official capacity as Supt. of Caledonia Corr. Inst.; L.E. Edwards, Superintendent, Halifax Corr. Inst.; Randall E. Lee, Chairman, Caledonia Disciplinary Comm., Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Alexander Charns (Thomas F. Loflin, III, Loflin & Loflin, Durham, N.C., on brief) for appellant.
Jacob L. Safron, Sp. Deputy Atty. Gen., Raleigh, N.C. (Rufus L. Edmisten, Atty. Gen., Raleigh, N.C., on brief), for appellees.
Before PHILLIPS, SPROUSE and ERVIN, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Daniel Ross, a former North Carolina prison inmate, appeals from an order of the district court directing a verdict in favor of six defendant-employees 1 of the North Carolina Department of Corrections in Ross's action against them under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Ross alleged that during his incarceration his first amendment rights had been violated when he was disciplined under a prison regulation for writing several letters to a state employee; he further claimed he had been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of his eighth amendment rights. The district court agreed that the prison regulation had been unconstitutionally applied to Ross, but ruled that all the defendants were immune from liability for damages. The court also directed a verdict in favor of the defendants on the eighth amendment claim. Ross appeals, seeking to have the prison regulation declared facially unconstitutional and to be awarded a new trial on the cruel and unusual punishment claim. We affirm.
While serving a sentence for first degree murder, Ross escaped in 1975 from the custody of the North Carolina prison system. He was on escape status for over two years until recaptured in Pennsylvania and returned to North Carolina.
Upon being returned to state custody, Ross's thoughts turned toward parole. Before his escape, Ross's parole eligibility date had been computed by state personnel to be November 30, 1978. As a collateral consequence of being absent from custody without authorization, however, his parole date was recomputed to be October 13, 1980.
Unwilling to accept that the time spent on escape would not be counted in computing his parole eligibility date, Ross undertook to change that fact. (Ross asserted a belief that, because he had not been convicted of escape in a state court, the two years that he was actually on escape should still count as time served toward completion of sentence.) In addition to several other lawsuits concerning parole practices and procedures, Ross filed a lawsuit on December 12, 1979, against Ms. Hazel Keith. Ross alleged that Ms. Keith, who was the Supervisor of Combined Records for the North Carolina Department of Corrections, had violated his constitutional rights by not crediting the two years of escape time as time served toward completion of sentence. 2
Shortly after that lawsuit was filed, Ms. Keith received the following letter from Ross: Dear Ms. Keith:
Since you fail to correct my prison record to reflect my original parole eligibility date to have been November 30, 1978, I am compelled to bring a lawsuit against you upon the following grounds: (1) no escape is shown in the record. (2) Because the same does not (undecipherable), you are unable to provide the court, inmate Ross, or anyone else, with a valid Judgment and Commitment of an escape conviction. (3) Erroneous information contained in inmate Ross' prison file has been and still is being relied on to a constitutionally significant degree to deny parole and other privileges, emoluments and benefits offered. (4) Inmate Ross was admitted to the N.C. prison under a Judgment and Commitment of first degree murder on March 19, 1969 with three months pre-trial credit. None other commitment is shown in record.
Apparently unwilling to rely upon the judicial process to vindicate his legal rights, Ross also started mailing a series of other letters to Ms. Keith. These letters were not addressed to Ms. Keith, but rather were addressed to North Carolina Congressman L.H. Fountain and to members of the news media. Ms. Keith was sent handwritten copies of these letters, which indicated that she was to receive a carbon copy. The text of all the letters was the same:
Re: Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Dear Congressman Fountain:
Ms. Hazell W. Keith, Director of N.C. Prison Combined Records has deliberately falsified my eligibility date for parole by programming the computer to compute escape. I have repeatedly begged her to correct this miscarry of justice by furnishing me a copy of escape judgment and commitment or compute my eligibility parole date to have been November 30, 1978. Please assist me.
Ms. Keith is a former racist supporter and has been and currently is known to accept a bribe for computerizing false and racist information in prison files for exchange of political favors. I request a prompt response.
s/Daniel Ross
cc: Ms. Hazell W. Keith
Director of Combined Records
831 West Morgan Street
Although Ross testified that he intended to do so, he never mailed the originals of these letters to the addressees. In mailing the designated copies to Ms. Keith, however, Ross, as he later testified, was engaging in a "last ditch effort" to get credit for the time he was on escape. Ross hoped Ms. Keith would think that he had mailed the letters to the indicated addressees, and that this would pressure her into "correcting an error" in his parole eligibility.
Upon receipt of the copies of these letters, Ms. Keith, who was understandably upset, brought the letters to the attention of corrections authorities. After inquiry and investigation, Ross was convicted by a disciplinary committee of violating a prison regulation and was ultimately given the disciplinary sanction of being reduced from minimum to medium custody. Ross's internal administrative appeals of his conviction were denied.
The demotion in custody status also entailed a transfer from the minimum custody Halifax facility to the medium facility at Caledonia. About a month after this transfer, on February 21, 1980, Ross notified the assistant superintendent of Caledonia of an emergency. An inmate with whom Ross had had a previous altercation had been transferred to Caledonia, and Ross assertedly was in fear for his life. Ross requested a transfer out of Caledonia. The Caledonia Classification Committee met that same day and reviewed Ross's claim for protective custody. Ross was then placed in administrative segregation pending a transfer, and was kept there until he was finally transferred on May 20, 1980, to another medium custody facility.
Shortly after his final transfer, Ross filed this lawsuit alleging violations of his first and eighth amendment rights. Ross claimed that the prison regulation he was convicted under was unconstitutional on its face or at least was unconstitutionally applied to him in derogation of his free speech rights. He further claimed that his placement in administrative segregation and the conditions of his confinement therein constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
The district court ruled, on a motion for summary judgment, that the prison regulation had been unconstitutionally applied to Ross, and ordered an immediate return to minimum custody (which, as a matter of fact, had already occurred). At trial confined to the eighth amendment claim and the immunity and damages issues on the first amendment claim the court directed a verdict for the defendants on all counts. Ross then took this appeal.
Ross's first contention is that the district court erred in not striking down the prison regulation as unconstitutionally overbroad and vague. 3 He seeks injunctive and declaratory relief against future enforcement of the regulation. The law does not entitle him to relief on this claim.
We agree with Ross initially that when overbreadth or vagueness challenges to a law are made, those challenges usually should be resolved before the validity of the law as applied is addressed. See Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, Hoffman Estates, 455 U.S. 489, 494-95, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 1191, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982). To be stricken for overbreadth, the regulation must reach a substantial amount of constitutionally protected conduct, Hoffman, 455 U.S. at 494, 102 S.Ct. at 1191; and because the regulation purports to cover both speech and conduct its overbreadth is less easily established than if it covered speech alone, see Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 615, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 2917, 37 L.Ed.2d 830 (1973). The regulation in issue could only be stricken for vagueness if it is "impermissibly vague in all of its applications," Hoffman, 455 U.S. at 495, 102 S.Ct. at 1191.
In order to resolve Ross's facial challenges, we would need first to look to the extent of first amendment rights had by prison inmates. Fundamentally, we know that
a prison inmate retains those first amendment rights that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system. Thus, challenges to prison restrictions that are asserted to inhibit first amendment interests must be analyzed in terms of legitimate policies and goals of the corrections system to whose custody and care the prisoner has been committed in accordance with due process of law.
Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 2804, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974). We could not tell, however, without extended inquiry, whether the state's interests in deterrence of crime,...
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