Opinion ID: 111430
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Institutional Hazards and the Threat of Reprisal

Text: The primary factor that caused the Court in Wolff to qualify and restrict the right to call witnesses was said to be institutional safety. Fearing that inmates might be subject to the unwritten code that exhorts immates not to inform on a fellow prisoner, id., at 562, and concerned that honoring a witness request might subject the witness to a risk of reprisal or [might] undermine authority, the Court concluded that the hazards presented in individual cases of reprisal against testifying inmates made dangerous the disclosure to a charged inmate of a board's reasons for refusing to hear his witnesses. Id., at 566. Again today, the Court relies on the very real dangers in prison life which may result from violence or intimidation directed at either other inmates or staff. Ante, at 495. Presumably, the Court's concern is that an inmate will intimidate or coerce defense witnesses into testifying falsely, and that a witness who goes to officials to disclose such threats will be the target of retaliation if a disciplinary board announces that institutional safety precludes it from hearing the witness. [11] The option of sealed files, subject to later judicial review in camera, [12] would fully protect against the threat of reprisal and intimidation by allowing prison officials to refuse to disclose to the inmate those record statements they feared would compromise institutional safety. The in camera solution has been widely recognized as the appropriate response to a variety of analogous disclosure clashes involving individual rights and government secrecy needs. For example, after this Court in McCray v. Illinois, 386 U. S. 300 (1967), held that the identity of informants relied on by the police need not always be disclosed to the defense at suppression hearings, lower courts turned to in camera hearings to protect the interests of both the government and the defendant. W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 3.3, p. 583 (1978). Through such hearings into informant identity, the government can be protected from any significant, unnecessary impairment of secrecy, yet the defendant can be saved from what could be serious police misconduct. United States v. Moore, 522 F. 2d 1068, 1073 (CA9 1975). [13] Similarly, Congress specifically invoked in camera review to balance the policies of disclosure and confidentiality contained in the exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act. 5 U. S. C. § 552(a)(4)(B). Congress stated that in camera review would plainly be [the] necessary and appropriate means in many circumstances to assure that the proper balance between secrecy and disclosure is struck. S. Rep. No. 93-1200, p. 9 (1974). Other examples in which Congress has turned to similar procedures abound, such as the federal wiretapping statute [14] and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, [15] both of which rely on closed judicial process to balance individual rights and Government secrecy needs in determining whether wiretapping is justified. If the compelling Government secrecy needs in all these settings can be safeguarded fully through closed judicial process, it can hardly be gainsaid that the interest of prison officials in keeping confidential the basis for refusing to hear witnesses will be fully protected by the same process. Indeed, the in camera solution protects the institutional concerns with which the Court purports to be concerned just as well as does the Court's solution. Under the Court's approach, prison officials at some point [must] state their reason for refusing to call witnesses . . . . Ante, at 492. But if institutional safety or reprisal threats formed the basis for the refusal, stating that reason [16] in open court would create hazards similar to those the Court relies on to eschew a requirement that these reasons be disclosed at the disciplinary hearing. Recognizing this fact, the Court holds that, if prison security or similar paramount interests appear to require it, ante, at 499, the courtroom justifications for refusing to hear a witness can in the first instance, ibid., be presented in camera. [17] Yet once the Court acknowledges that in camera review adequately protects the institutional safety concerns discussed in Wolff, such concerns simply evaporate in the consideration of whether due process demands a contemporaneous-record explanation for the refusal to hear witnesses. As even the Court acknowledges, then, the combination of sealed files and in camera review more than adequately protects institutional safety, the primary factor that justified Wolff's qualification of the inmate's right to present defense witnesses.