Thibodeaux v. State of South Dakota, 76-1740
| Decision Date | 12 April 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 76-1740,76-1740 |
| Citation | 553 F.2d 558 |
| Parties | Floyd THIBODEAUX, Appellant, v. STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA et al., Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
William P. Fuller, Sioux Falls, S.D., for appellant.
Peter H. Lieberman, Asst. Atty. Gen., Pierre, S.D., for appellee; William J. Janklow, Atty. Gen., Pierre, S.D., on brief.
Before GIBSON, Chief Judge, and WEBSTER and HENLEY, Circuit Judges.
Floyd Thibodeaux, an inmate at the South Dakota State Penitentiary, contends in his pro se civil rights complaint that prison officials at the penitentiary abridged his constitutional rights by refusing to allow him to receive a magazine entitled "Mature". The sole issue on this appeal concerns the propriety of the District Court's summary dismissal of Thibodeaux's complaint.
In November, 1975, prison personnel advised Thibodeaux that a "Mature" magazine had arrived at the facility addressed to him. However, officials refused to deliver the magazine to Thibodeaux until it had been approved by a three-member prison censorship board. At a hearing before the censorship board, Thibodeaux appeared personally and expressed the view that the board should approve "Mature" because other magazines featuring nudity were allowed in the prison. The board, unpersuaded by this argument, refused to release "Mature" for the following reasons:
The Board is of the opinion the magazine has absolutely no rehabilitative value. It is nothing more than a "club" magazine advertizing (sic ) "gay life, swinging, swapping, S & M, AC-DC, and discipline." It has dozens of nude pictures with advertizements (sic ) printed next to them.
Thibodeaux thereafter filed a civil rights complaint 1 contending, inter alia, that the censorship board's decision infringed upon his First Amendment rights. The District Court dismissed the complaint without requesting defendants to respond to Thibodeaux's allegations, without conducting a hearing and without viewing the contents of "Mature". The District Court was convinced that this court's decision in Carpenter v. South Dakota, 536 F.2d 759 (8th Cir. 1976), compelled the summary dismissal of Thibodeaux's petition.
Carpenter involved a previous attempt by the South Dakota Penitentiary to exercise some control over the flow of sexually explicit publications into the prison. In Carpenter, the prison censorship board had refused to release various sexually explicit materials to prisoners and had rendered detailed factual findings to support its decision. The board found that some of the material was detrimental to prisoner rehabilitation, some would encourage deviate sexual behavior and some was pornographic and appealed only to prurient interests. Carpenter v. South Dakota, supra at 762. The aggrieved inmates in Carpenter sought relief in federal court but their complaint was dismissed by the district court without a hearing or a request for a responsive pleading from defendants. A divided panel of this court affirmed the summary dismissal. The majority ruled that the inmates' complaint and the detailed findings of the censorship board were sufficient to rebut the inmates' allegation that the withheld material did not constitute a clear and present danger to the security, order and rehabilitation of the penal institution. 536 F.2d at 763.
We do not perceive Carpenter as dispositive of the instant case. Here, the censorship board did not make a finding that release of "Mature" would be detrimental to the rehabilitative aims of the prison. The board cryptically concluded that "Mature" has no rehabilitative value. Carpenter does not give prison officials unqualified authority to administratively suppress the dissemination of published materials to inmates merely because the materials do not advance...
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...is detrimental to prisoner rehabilitation because it would encourage deviate, criminal sexual behavior. See Thibodeaux v. State of South Dakota, 553 F.2d 558 (8 Cir. 1977); Carpenter v. South Dakota, 536 F.2d 759 (8 Cir. 1976), Cert. denied, 431 U.S. 931, 97 S.Ct. 2636, 53 L.Ed.2d 246 (1977......
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...20 For further discussion of the Procunier standard as applied to censorship of publications, see Thibodeaux v. State of South Dakota, 553 F.2d 558 (8th Cir. 1977); Blue v. Hogan, 553 F.2d 960 (5th Cir.), rehearing denied, 558 F.2d 605 (5th Cir. 1977); Taylor v. Perini, 413 F.Supp. 189 (N.D......
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