Stevenson v. Reed

• Decision Date: 27 March 1975
• Docket Number: No. GC 73-76-K.,GC 73-76-K.
• Citation: 391 F. Supp. 1375
• Parties: Willie X. STEVENSON and Ronald Paul Adams et al., Plaintiffs, v. Jack K. REED et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Mississippi

391 F. Supp. 1375

Willie X. STEVENSON and Ronald Paul Adams et al., Plaintiffs, v. Jack K. REED et al., Defendants.

No. GC 73-76-K.

United States District Court, N. D. Mississippi, Greenville Division.

March 27, 1975.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

David M. Lipman, Jackson, Miss., National Legal Aid and Defender Asso., National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, amicus curiae, for plaintiffs.

P. Roger Googe, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, Miss., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

KEADY, Chief Judge.

This § 1983 class action is a separate chapter of litigation against the Mississippi State Penitentiary brought by Willie X. Stevenson and Ronald Paul Adams, black and white inmates respectively, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of all present and future penitentiary inmates against the penitentiary superintendent and other prison officials.¹ Plaintiff-inmates contend that defendants have failed to provide the inmate population with adequate means to have access to the courts for redress of grievances and legal resources sufficient to enable them to pursue their legal and constitutional rights. They assert that, as a constitutional minimum, prison inmates are entitled to access both to an adequate law library and state-supplied legal counsel.

On July 3, 1974, the parties submitted stipulations, upon which the court entered a consent order, which satisfied one aspect of the plaintiffs' dual contentions. By that order, defendants are bound to establish and maintain an adequate central law library, the contents of which were specified, for the use of all penitentiary inmates.² To assure inmate access to these legal materials, moreover, defendants were directed to promulgate and submit to the court rules governing library hours, use and procedures. Defendants submitted such rules and regulations (Appendix A), which counsel for plaintiffs found unobjectionable. We find that these procedures, until experience may prove otherwise, provide reasonable access by the inmate population to the central library materials.

This disposition of the law library question left only the issue of state-supplied legal counsel for consideration. When agreement between the parties on this point proved impossible, the court, on January 27, 1975, conducted an evidentiary hearing, at which extensive stipulations, live testimony, and materials were entered into evidence. In addition to pretrial briefs from the parties, the court allowed National Legal Aid and Defender Association and the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union to participate amicus curiae. The case being ripe for decision, we incorporate herein findings of fact and conclusions of law, as required by Rule 52.

I. FACTS

The Mississippi State Penitentiary, familiarly known as Parchman and situated in rural Sunflower and Quitman Counties, has never provided legal counsel of any description for its 2100 inmates. Indeed, Mississippi has not established a statewide public defender program; three of the state's 82 counties sponsor public defender programs which defend indigents accused of felonies, but in the other 79 counties all defense of the indigent accused is performed by local bar members, upon court appointment. Two other service agencies routinely handle inmate requests for legal assistance—Mississippi Prisoners' Defense Committee, a privately funded group sponsored by Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, located at Jackson, and North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, a federally funded organization with offices at Greenwood, Oxford, West Point, Batesville, and Holly Springs. Parchman inmates earn no wages for work performed at the institution and for the most part are indigent individuals who must rely on pro bono publico representation if they are to obtain professional legal counsel. Due to its rural location, Parchman is not close to any large municipality supporting an extensive bar association.

Despite the paucity of readily available attorneys to handle inmate legal matters, the penitentiary does permit or provide a wide-ranging panoply of services designed to facilitate inmate access to the state and federal courts. First, as previously noted, a modern law library has now been established at the institution which contains legal resources fully adequate for preparation of workmanlike legal documents and briefs on questions of inmate rights; and the library operates under rules and regulations designed to allow all inmates reasonable access to these materials.

Second, inmates proficient in legal draftsmanship and analysis are normally found at Parchman, and they may assist other inmates to pursue their claims. For legitimate security reasons, however, inmate writwriters are not permitted to travel among the various residential camps which are widely scattered over the prison farms, and there confer with "client-inmates". Thus, writwriting assistance is, by and large, limited to those inmates who reside in the same residential camp as does the writwriter. In some instances, particularly with frequently changing personnel, it is possible that a particular camp may be bereft of a "jail-house" lawyer.

Third, prison rules allow inmates to purchase and possess their own legal materials and to keep typewriters at their resident camps. Indigent inmates can obtain free transcripts of their state court trials and in forma pauperis filing and service of process privileges.

Fourth, under present prison rules, once an inmate secures legal representation, either from private attorneys or from counsel appointed by courts or employed by available service organizations, the inmate may designate an attorney of record to whom unimpeded access by mail is allowed. Outgoing mail to a designated attorney or to a state or federal court is classified as privileged mail and not opened or otherwise interfered with. Further, inmates are not restricted in the number of letters which may be sent to their attorneys or to a court. Designated attorneys of record are also free to visit their inmate-clients during normal business hours, after notice to penitentiary officials is given.

Finally, it is the ordinary practice in this federal judicial district to appoint counsel for indigent inmates whose habeas corpus or civil rights claims proceed beyond the report and recommendations of the United States Magistrate.

While conceding the existence of these legal aids, plaintiffs dispute defendants' conclusion that, without more, they satisfy the inmates' constitutional right to access to the courts. In support of their contention that staff legal counsel must also be provided the inmate population, plaintiffs have submitted data tending to show that the Parchman inmates are intellectually unable to utilize the law library materials which they first sought and have now been provided by court order. As a matter of fact, Parchman's brief experience with inmate use of a modern law library permits no firm conclusion as to the degree of its utility. Thus plaintiffs have adduced expert testimony seeking to establish certain working hypotheses. Although the submitted data is sophisticated and lengthy, it is sufficient for our purpose to note that the technical information was intended to establish—and did establish with reasonable certainty—two propositions: First, that reading materials commonly found in a law library make for tediously difficult reading, generally on a college or college graduate level;³ second, that inmates at Parchman are so ill-educated that most prisoners would not be able to well comprehend and make intelligent use of the law library materials.⁴

Against this factual background, our task is to define the precise scope of the constitutionally guaranteed right of penitentiary inmates to access to the courts, and then measure the Parchman system in accordance with that standard. We undertake this assignment fully cognizant that primary responsibility for handling offenders convicted of state crime in our federal system is lodged with state authorities, and not with the federal judiciary. When federal judges are required to intervene by invocation of their congressionally-mandated jurisdiction, they should act with appropriate circumspection, and only to the extent that the Constitution and laws of the United States permit no other course.

II. THE LAW

Implicit in our discussion is a recognition of what this case does not involve. It emphatically does not concern the well-delineated requirements of the Sixth Amendment concerning the right to counsel. The Sixth Amendment's guarantees of effective representation of counsel, fully applicable to Mississippi, apply, by the express terms of the Amendment, only to an accused faced with criminal prosecution.⁵ For the present plaintiffs, criminal prosecution is at an end; and each Parchman inmate has, at least presumptively, already received the benefits of his Sixth Amendment rights before and at trial and on appeal. If those rights were denied any member of the plaintiff class, they may be speedily asserted through post-conviction proceedings available in the state and federal courts of Mississippi. Once criminal culpability is finally established and sentence imposed, however, the Sixth Amendment has no further role to play. Thus, it is not required that the state provide an attorney to represent every inmate who may wish to challenge the constitutionality of his conviction through habeas corpus, or to prosecute claims arising from the conditions of his incarceration. Such litigation being civil in nature, the right to counsel does not inhere in the Sixth Amendment.

The less demanding constitutional guarantees of legal representation extended to a person convicted of transgression against the criminal laws of our society recognize, not that the rights of the convicted offender are of less importance than those of the accused, but that the extraordinary threat to those...