Stevens v. Ralston, 81-2310

• Citation: 674 F.2d 759
• Decision Date: 09 April 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-2310,81-2310
• Parties: Steve STEVENS, Appellant, v. George RALSTON, Warden, United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 759

674 F.2d 759

Steve STEVENS, Appellant, v. George RALSTON, Warden, United States Medical Center for

Federal Prisoners, Appellee.

No. 81-2310.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted April 5, 1982.

Decided April 9, 1982.

Steve Stevens, pro se.

Robert Ulrich, U. S. Atty., Frederick O. Griffin, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., Kansas City, Mo., for appellee.

Before HEANEY, BRIGHT and STEPHENSON ^*, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

This is a habeas action arising out of a mail restriction imposed by the warden of the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri. The district court dismissed the petition. We reverse.

The petitioner was sentenced in Texas in 1974 to consecutive twenty-year terms for robbery and escape and was initially confined in the Texas state prison system. He was transferred to the federal prison system in 1979, apparently for his own safety, following his participation in a federal class action challenging conditions at certain Texas prison facilities. Since 1977, the petitioner has been a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair. Upon transfer to the federal system in 1979, he was assigned to the Medical Center at Springfield, where he struck up a continuing friendship with a female correctional officer whose employment has since been terminated. After her termination, the petitioner and the former employee corresponded over a period of nine months, until prison authorities banned any correspondence between the two in December of 1980. After exhausting administrative remedies, the petitioner commenced the present action, contending that the mail ban was an arbitrary and capricious infringement of his First Amendment rights. On the unusual facts of this case, we agree.

The respondent concedes that prisoners have a constitutionally protected right to correspond with persons outside the prison. Resp.Br. at 15. Such a right, however, is subject to restriction to the extent clearly necessary to protect the government's interest in security and order within the prison. See Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 413, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1811, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974). Prison administrators certainly have discretion in assessing the potential threat to security which particular correspondence might pose and courts do not interpose their judgments when administrators appear to be acting out of reasonable concerns for order. Here, however, the mail ban seems to have been applied in an unreasonable manner.

The government's principal claim is that mail to or from the former employee threatens security because the former employee had knowledge of the Medical Center's security system and might impart such knowledge to the petitioner in aid of either his escape or an escape by other prisoners. In support of this claim, the government emphasizes that one of petitioner's present sentences arose out of an escape from a Texas facility in 1973. ¹ These security concerns could present legitimate grounds for mail restrictions as a general matter, but they are not supported by any evidence in the present record. Indeed, the record as a whole contradicts the claim that there is a genuine risk of escape created by the correspondence between the petitioner and the former employee.

There is nothing in the record which even suggests that the former employee has ever-during or subsequent to her employment-aided or...