Worley v. Bounds

• Decision Date: 23 February 1973
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 2703.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of North Carolina
• Parties: Minford Leroy WORLEY, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. V. Lee BOUNDS, Commissioner of the North Carolina Department of Correction, et al., Defendants.

355 F. Supp. 115

Minford Leroy WORLEY, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. V. Lee BOUNDS, Commissioner of the North Carolina Department of Correction, et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. 2703.

United States District Court, W. D. North Carolina, Charlotte Division.

February 23, 1973.

George S. Daly, Jr., Casey & Daly, William K. Diehl, Jr., James & Williams, Charlotte, N. C., and Norman B. Smith, Greensboro, N. C., for plaintiff.

Robert Morgan, Atty. Gen., and Jacob L. Safron, Asst. Atty. Gen., North Carolina Dept. of Justice, Raleigh, N. C., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

McMILLAN, District Judge.

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

This suit seeks relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for several alleged deprivations under color of state law by North Carolina prison authorities of plaintiff's rights under the Constitution of the United States, particularly the First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. At all times pertinent to the case plaintiff, Minford Leroy Worley, was an inmate of the North Carolina prison system, serving a four-to-six-year sentence upon conviction of a felony; and the defendants are the North Carolina Department of Correction and its chief executive officers, and various prison officials and agents. An evidentiary hearing was held and the parties have submitted memoranda on the various issues involved.

The case involves incidents and actions which are of limited scope and the court in its discretion determines that a class action is not properly maintainable. See Wright v. McMann, 321 F.Supp. 127, 137 (N.D.N.Y.1970); Carter v. McGinnis, 320 F.Supp. 1092, 1097 (W.D.N.Y.1970).

The facts and legal conclusions as to each alleged constitutional violation will be treated as a complete and separate unit in this opinion.

1. Denial of the Right to Correspond with the Mother of His Child.

Plaintiff Worley (a Negro) was married in August, 1960, to Christine Shealy Worley, a Negro, and is the father of a child, Gretchen, daughter of Christine Worley. He has been separated from his wife, Christine, since 1960, and she and the child, Gretchen, live in Wichita, Kansas.

The plaintiff is also the father of a second child, Michael Scott Christopher, born in the spring of 1969, several months after Worley began serving his sentence. The mother of that child is Kathi Estes, an unmarried white woman.

In December, 1968, Worley began serving his sentence at the Cleveland County (Shelby) unit of the prison system. There he was allowed to correspond with Kathi Estes. In February of 1969 he was transferred to the Iredell County (Statesville) prison unit. There he was not allowed to correspond with Kathi Estes, who was about to become the mother of his child. The defendant Forrester, superintendent of the Iredell prison unit, said to him, "I'm not going to O.K. it, stud. If you can get someone further up the line, O.K."

Worley was transferred to Central Prison in Raleigh. He requested that Kathi Estes be put back on his correspondence list, and permission was refused because of a stated prison department policy "that a married man cannot correspond with another woman."

Worley in April of 1969 was transferred back to the prison unit at Shelby and remained there until November of 1969. While at Shelby he was allowed to write to the child, who was born in April of 1969, but he was not allowed to write to Kathi Estes. The defendant Ralph Scism, assistant superintendent of the Shelby unit, gave the following reasons to Miss Estes:

"According to our file inmate Worley has never gotten a divorce from his first wife and that makes it against the rules and regulation for me to put your name back in his correspondence and visitors list, furthermore Captain Forrester of the Iredell County Unit must have had some reason for removing your name from inmate Worley's correspondence and visitors list. Therefore I am denying your request." (Plaintiff's Exhibit 1.)

While in the Shelby unit Worley was allowed to write to an unmarried black girl of his acquaintance, unrelated to him, and he wrote letters for another black, married prison inmate, to a 29-year-old black woman who was not his wife but was the mother of a child or children by the inmate, William Alexander.

In November, 1969, plaintiff was transferred to the Huntersville, North Carolina prison unit, where again he was not allowed to correspond with Miss Estes. His letters to her were returned.

In January of 1970 he was transferred to Camp Greene prison unit, also in Mecklenburg County, where he was again denied the privilege of writing to his son or to Miss Estes because he already had a wife and child.

The plaintiff attempted to smuggle letters out through another inmate and was unsuccessful and was threatened with punitive segregation if he persisted.

In addition to previous denials, Chaplain Thomas E. Dunn of the Department of Correction wrote plaintiff's attorney on September 2, 1969, that "it is a Department policy that a married man cannot correspond with another woman." (Plaintiff's Exhibit 3.) Chaplain Dunn also expressed himself about the moral issues in the situation. Mr. Dunn also wrote on September 30, 1969, had further comment on the moralities involved, and adhered to the proposition that he would approve communication with Miss Estes after Worley was divorced legally from his former wife.

The administrative regulations of the North Carolina prison department as they then existed included, in pertinent part, the following:

"(5) . . . Immediate relatives of an inmate shall be approved as regular correspondents and/or visitors unless a good reason can be shown why the inmate's request should be denied. Immediate relatives shall include father, mother, foster parents, grand-parents, brothers, sisters, husband, wife, and children. Other relatives and friends of the inmate may be approved as regular correspondents and/or visitors if the officer in charge believes they will have a constructive influence on the inmate.

"(6) Changes may be made in the list of regular correspondents and visitors when requested by the inmate if approved by the officer in charge of the unit. This officer may remove the name of any person who violates mail regulations or visiting regulations, or whose letters or visits are having a negative influence on the inmate. When an inmate is transferred, the officer in charge of the receiving unit shall check the list of approved correspondents and visitors and make any changes he may deem necessary."

The plaintiff was divorced in September, 1970. He reported the fact to the officer in charge of his unit and after that time was allowed to correspond with Kathi Estes.

Prison authorities have considerable discretion in regulating ordinary mail, McCloskey v. Maryland, 337 F.2d 72 (4th Cir. 1964); Diehl v. Wainwright, 419 F.2d 1309 (5th Cir. 1970); United States v. Stahl, 393 F.2d 101 (7th Cir. 1968), cert. den. 393 U.S. 879, 89 S.Ct. 181, 21 L.Ed.2d 152 (1968).

However, the refusal to allow Worley to write to the mother of his own son was an act of discrimination against Worley because of either (a) the interracial nature of the liaison which produced the child, or (b) the illegitimacy of the child, or both. The defendants' acts in allowing other black men to correspond with black women who were mothers of their illegitimate children but not their wives make these conclusions almost inescapable. Discrimination because of race violates the constitutional right to equal protection of laws, McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184, 85 S.Ct. 283, 13 L.Ed.2d 222 (1964); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967); Lee v. Washington, 390 U.S. 333, 88 S.Ct. 994, 19 L.Ed.2d 1212 (1968). Discrimination because of illegitimacy of the child is also invidious and impermissible, and is not justified by any evidence in the record nor by any imagined or revealed state interest. Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164, 92 S.Ct. 1400, 31 L.Ed.2d 768 (1972); Williams v. Richardson, 347 F.Supp. 544 (3-J.Ct., W.D.N.C.1972).

2. Censorship of Letters from Plaintiff to His Lawyer.

While at Shelby plaintiff wrote Attorney Martin Miller a letter containing some statements critical of prison authorities. The letter was intercepted, and plaintiff was required to rewrite it before being allowed to mail it. This censorship of mail to a lawyer was contrary to the then existing prison mail regulations and to the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. See, Palmigiano v. Travisono, 317 F.Supp. 776 (D.R.I. 1970). Prisoners must be afforded free and uninhibited access to administrative, judicial and legislative forums in order to seek redress of grievances against state officials. An open pipeline to the courts and other public officials is essential to allow uncensored official scrutiny of prisoner complaints. See, e. g., Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 89 S.Ct. 747, 21 L.Ed.2d 718 (1969); Coleman v. Peyton, 362 F.2d 905, 907 (4th Cir. 1966); Burns v. Swenson, 430 F.2d 771 (8th Cir. 1970); Fortune Society v. McGinnis, 319 F.Supp. 901 (S.D.N.Y.1970); Sostre v. McGinnis, 442 F.2d 178 (2nd Cir. 1971). See also, Nolan v. Fitzpatrick, 326 F.Supp. 209 (D.Mass.1971).

3. Denial of Privilege of Reading the Book "SOUL ON ICE."

In the summer of 1969, after returning to the Shelby prison camp, Worley ordered by mail a copy of Eldridge Cleaver's book, "SOUL ON ICE." The book was not delivered. In an interview with the captain in charge of the unit, the captain displayed the book and said that it was Worley's book but that he was not letting Worley have it because "there are too many weak-minded people in this unit" for the book to be read there. Worley had never read the book, he said, just heard it was a good book. He knew that Cleaver was a Black Panther but did not know his philosophy. He assigns the suppression of his book as an unwarranted interference...