Opinion ID: 34456
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether Busby is entitled to relief

Text: 45 There is some confusion over the precise nature of Busby's First Amendment claim. 11 The district court's decision granting the COA described the issue as [w]hether the trial court's denying [Busby's] motion to suppress the letters violated his rights under the First Amendment. It may be that the district court was merely making a shorthand reference to the somewhat longer version of the claim set forth in Busby's petition. Busby's habeas petition and his brief here both cast the claim as whether Busby was denied his fundamental due process, due course of law, and fair trial rights under the Fourteenth Amendment when the trial court admitted into evidence, over his objection, copies of personal letters obtained in violation of the First Amendment. That is, as Busby describes it, the claim essentially involves a Fourteenth Amendment due process violation predicated upon the use of evidence obtained in violation of the First Amendment. 46 Whatever the precise manner of phrasing the claim, its necessary predicate is that the jailers' actions somehow violated the First Amendment. This court has addressed this issue before. In Guajardo v. Estelle, 580 F.2d 748 (5th Cir.1978), Texas inmates brought a comprehensive challenge to the state correctional system's policies regarding inmates' mail privileges. We recognized that inmates' correspondence with the media and with attorneys carried special constitutional weight; we therefore held that inmates' letters to reporters and attorneys should be mailed out without being opened and read by prison officials and that inmates should have a right to be present when incoming mail from such persons was opened and inspected for contraband. Id. at 758-59. 12 But we found that inmates' other correspondence could properly be subjected to much greater control. In particular, we decided that legitimate penological concerns regarding security, order, and rehabilitation permitted prison officials to read all incoming and outgoing general correspondence. Id. at 755 n. 4, 756-57. The Cherokee County Jail's mail policies, as gleaned from the policy manual introduced in evidence at Busby's trial, track quite closely the rules laid out in Guajardo. The state habeas court's findings of fact and conclusions of law stated that the jailers' actions served a valid penological purpose and complied with state regulations. 13 47 Given that jail officials could legitimately read Busby's mail, we do not think that the First Amendment would bar them from turning letters over to the prosecutors if the jailers happened to find valuable evidence during their routine monitoring. See Gassler v. Wood, 14 F.3d 406, 408-10 (8th Cir.1994). What has happened here is essentially that agents of the state overheard a damaging admission during the course of their duties. Whatever other legal challenges may exist regarding the jailers informing investigators of what they learned, we do not see how the First Amendment would prevent them from passing that information along. The state officials are not punishing Busby for his speech, and while it is true that his speech had damaging consequences, that is true of all admissions and confessions. 48 Even if we were able to reach a different result on the merits of the First Amendment question, the more important point in a habeas case governed by AEDPA is that we may not grant relief unless the state's adjudication of Busby's claim resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). In this case, the state habeas court concluded that the jail's policy of reading outgoing non-privileged correspondence served valid penological purposes and that the reading and copying of a county jail inmate's outgoing non-privileged mail does not violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. 14 49 The state's determination is not contrary to or an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court has never held that reading inmate mail violates the First Amendment. The primary case relied upon by Busby is Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974), a § 1983 case involving First Amendment limitations on censorship of inmate mail. The Martinez Court held that jailers could censor (i.e., redact or reject) an inmate's outgoing and incoming mail only if the jail policies furthered a substantial governmental interest and limited First Amendment freedoms no more than necessary to protect that governmental interest. Id. at 413, 94 S.Ct. 1800. Later Supreme Court cases have given authorities greater leeway in restricting inmates' rights regarding mail, and Martinez has been overruled at least in part. See Brewer, 3 F.3d at 822-25 (tracing the impact of Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974), Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987), and Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 109 S.Ct. 1874, 104 L.Ed.2d 459 (1989)). Even without those later cases, Martinez on its own terms does not hold that reading an inmate's mail violates the First Amendment. As the Court observed in a case decided shortly after Martinez, freedom from censorship is not equivalent to freedom from inspection or perusal. McDonnell, 418 U.S. at 576, 94 S.Ct. 2963. 15 Highlighting the contrast, Justice Marshall's concurring opinion in Martinez noted that the Court had reserved the issue of the First Amendment implications of reading inmate mail; he would have gone further and held that prison officials do not have a general right to open and read inmate mail. 396 U.S. at 422, 90 S.Ct. 642 (Marshall, J., concurring). Indeed, as one of our sister circuits has stated, Martinez 's holding that certain types of mail can be censored implies that mail can be read. Altizer v. Deeds, 191 F.3d 540, 548 (4th Cir.1999) (Otherwise, a prison official would never know that a letter contained the very type of material that, according to the Supreme Court, could rightfully be censored....). Finally, the only Supreme Court case that actually addresses the evidentiary use of inculpatory jailhouse letters is Stroud, which, while not addressing the First Amendment, found that there was no violation of the Fourth or Fifth Amendments in such a situation. 251 U.S. at 21-22, 40 S.Ct. 50. The state court's decision is thus not contrary to Supreme Court precedent, nor does it apply the governing law to the facts of this case unreasonably. 50 Even if the jailers' actions were improper under the First Amendment, Busby would still need to explain why items so obtained must be suppressed. The state argues that such a First Amendment exclusionary rule would be a new rule of criminal procedure, which we may not announce on habeas review. See Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 310, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989) (plurality opinion). Additionally, the state contends that Busby's argument — though nominally invoking the First Amendment — is at bottom essentially a Fourth Amendment claim in that it seeks the exclusion of improperly obtained evidence. Although Busby's complaint about the letters is probably strongest as a Fourth Amendment argument, such claims are of course not cognizable in federal habeas corpus proceedings. See Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 494-95, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976). Given our conclusion above, we need not address these arguments further.