Small v. Hunt
| Decision Date | 16 October 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 95-6635,95-6635 |
| Citation | 98 F.3d 789 |
| Parties | James Lenard SMALL; Stan Hoffman; Steve Hurley, on behalf of themselves and on behalf of the plaintiff class, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. James B. HUNT, Jr., Governor; Franklin Freeman, Secretary, Department of Correction; Lynn C. Phillips, Director of Prisons, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
ARGUED: Louis L. Lesesne, Jr., Lesesne & Connette, Charlotte, NC, for Appellants. Tiare Bowe Smiley, Special Deputy Attorney General, North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, NC, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Melinda Lawrence, Patterson, Harkavy & Lawrence, Raleigh, NC; Marvin Sparrow, Daniele Gerard, Susan H. Pollitt, North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc., Raleigh, NC, for Appellants. Michael F. Easley, Attorney General of North Carolina, James Peeler Smith, Special Deputy Attorney General, W. Dale Talbert, Special Deputy Attorney General, North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, NC, for Appellees.
Before WILKINSON, Chief Judge, and WILLIAMS and MICHAEL, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge MICHAEL wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge WILKINSON and Judge WILLIAMS joined.
Plaintiffs/appellants ("appellants") are a class of prisoners incarcerated at 49 medium and minimum security prisons in North Carolina. Defendants/appellees (collectively, the "state") are the Governor of North Carolina, the Secretary of the Department of Correction, and the Director of the Division of Prisons. Appellants appeal from the district court's order of June 28, 1994, granting the state's petition to modify a consent decree relating to conditions at the 49 prisons. 1 In addition, appellants appeal the district court's grant of the state's motion to alter or amend the June 28, 1994, order. Appellants raise both substantive and procedural objections to the district court's orders. For the reasons that follow, we affirm in all respects.
This is the latest chapter in a dispute that began in 1985 when several North Carolina prisoners filed a class action against the state seeking relief from living conditions alleged to be unconstitutional at 49 medium and minimum security prisons. Altogether, the 49 prisons comprise about half of the North Carolina prison system's adult male capacity. These prisons are dormitory style where prisoners sleep on bunks in large rooms.
On December 28, 1988, appellants and the state entered into a comprehensive settlement agreement that soon terminated the lawsuit. The agreement contained specific provisions aimed at improving prison conditions. One provision required the state to provide 50 square feet of living space per inmate in each dormitory by July 1, 1994. Fifty square feet of living space per inmate is referred to as "standard operating capacity" (SOC). The agreement also contained interim provisions that allowed the state to house prisoners at 140% of SOC in medium security facilities and 125% of SOC in minimum security facilities until July 1, 1994. 2
The agreement contained a number of other provisions. For instance, it required the state to replace all triple bunks with double bunks and to implement direct supervision by correctional officers in the dormitories. The provision for direct supervision required the deployment of correctional officers to patrol the sleeping areas inside each separately locked dormitory. The state also agreed to provide access to dayrooms with a minimum of 25 square feet per prisoner. Other provisions dealt with peer review of medical care, visitation policies, work and study programs, fire safety, new dormitory design, ventilation renovations, medical diets, plumbing repairs, clothing and linen policies, and locker space.
The settlement agreement provided that it would become effective upon the "approval and ratification" by the North Carolina General Assembly and the approval of the district court. In approving the settlement the General Assembly in March 1989 agreed that "funds necessary to satisfy the terms and obligations of th[e] agreement will be appropriated." 1989 N.C. Sess. Laws, ch. 8 § 1. By order of April 3, 1989, the district court approved the settlement agreement, and it assumed the force of a consent decree.
The state moved on four interrelated fronts to tackle the problem of prison overcrowding and to comply with the consent decree. First, the state enacted a prison cap that limited prison population to 18,000. See N.C. Gen.Stat. § 148-4.1. Second, by 1994 the state had appropriated almost $500 million for new prison construction. Third, the state implemented and expanded programs providing alternatives to incarceration, thereby diverting thousands of offenders from prison. Finally, the state enacted the Structured Sentencing Act and later accelerated its implementation. See N.C. Gen.Stat. § 15A-1340.10 et seq. The structured sentencing legislation reduces the length of incarceration for less serious offenders and reserves the longest sentences for the most dangerous offenders.
These considerable efforts by the state, however, were overwhelmed by double-digit percentage increases in prison admissions that began in 1988. When the state, through its settlement committee, 3 negotiated the settlement, the committee relied on a projection by the Division of Prisons that annual inmate admissions would increase between 3 and 5%. The committee believed, based on these projections, that the state would have the financial resources necessary to implement the settlement agreement. However, the actual rates of admission far exceeded the projections. There were significant increases of 11.6% in 1988, 17.6% in 1989, 8.1% in 1990, 16.1% in 1991, and 8.1% in 1992. Although the increases leveled off in 1992 and 1993, total prison admissions had increased from a level of 17,000 admissions per year in 1988 to almost 31,000 per year by 1992.
The state's efforts to comply with the 1989 consent decree and to respond to its prison crisis have come at great expense to North Carolina taxpayers. By 1994 almost half a billion dollars had been spent or committed for prison construction projects. General operating expenses for the prison system more than doubled between 1988 and 1994 to $560 million per year. Many of these increased expenses are directly attributable to the unexpected rise in prison admissions. For example, the state's settlement committee anticipated annual operating costs of approximately $68 million for newly constructed facilities, based on the projected need for about 5,000 new beds by 1996. Yet, because of the unexpected explosion in prison admissions, by 1994 the state had appropriated funds to build facilities for 18,000 new beds, about 13,000 more than initially planned. As a result, the total operating costs for completed and funded construction is estimated at approximately $169 million per year. Thus, the difference between current operating cost projections and the projections that guided the settlement committee's decisions represents a yearly increase in operating costs of almost $101 million. These are costs that will continue each year over the lifetime of the facilities.
At the time (October 13, 1993) the state petitioned to modify the consent decree, it had complied with virtually every provision except the requirement of 50 square feet of living space per inmate. 4 The 50 square feet provision was the subject of the state's October 1993 petition. Specifically, the state sought a modification of the consent decree permitting it to (1) house inmates in the "new" dormitories at 130% of SOC, (2) house minimum and medium custody inmates in the "old" dormitories at 140% of SOC, and (3) make conforming changes to other provisions of the agreement consistent with these capacity changes. 5 The state's petition alleged a "drastic, unanticipated increase in prison admissions rates" that "ha[d] made performance of the Agreement's terms related to dormitory living space inequitable." The petition said that unless the court granted modification, "the public interest w[ould] be harmed."
The district court held a four-day evidentiary hearing. Despite the unanticipated explosion in prison admissions, evidence offered at the hearing established that the state has been operating a secure and humane prison system, substantially above minimum constitutional requirements. The state presented testimony and affidavits from its prison administrators, superintendents, and two experts concerning the quality of living conditions in the 49 prisons at issue. The experts noted that serious assaults by inmates on inmates had greatly diminished. They saw significantly less tension between inmates and officers. They found that the addition of dayrooms had changed the dormitories for the better. One expert said that the prison units operating at the interim capacity levels provided a "better quality of life and safer place for inmates and staff to live and work than most prisons throughout the United States." Another expert said that these units have "one of the lowest assault or violence rates of any prisons I have inspected." In sum, considerable evidence showed that the state could operate the dormitories at capacity levels above 100% of SOC and still provide for the basic needs and safety of the prisoners without risking safety for the staff.
Within a week of the hearing, the district judge visited two of the prison units without the parties or their counsel in attendance. Thereafter, by order dated June 28, 1994, the district court granted the state's petition in part and denied it in part. Specifically, the court permitted the state to house inmates in the new dormitories at 125% of SOC but denied the state's request to continue housing inmates in the old dormitories at 140% of SOC.
The district court found that the settlement committee had not foreseen the extent of prison...
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