Opinion ID: 711056
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Access to the Courts and Other 6th Amendment Rights

Text: 68 Mr. Nash, who has graduated from law school (although, apparently, he has not been admitted to a state bar), chose to represent himself at trial. His efforts at self-representation were, however, somewhat encumbered by his status at the time of this trial as a prison inmate serving out a sentence under a prior conviction for falsifying tax documents. 13 He claims here that the resulting constraints upon his time and actions deprived him of his Sixth Amendment right to defend himself. 69 We agree that the Sixth Amendment demands that a pro se defendant who is incarcerated be afforded reasonable access to law books, witnesses, or other tools to prepare a defense. Milton v. Morris, 767 F.2d 1443, 1446 (9th Cir.1985); see also United States v. Robinson, 913 F.2d 712, 717 (9th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 1104, 111 S.Ct. 1006, 112 L.Ed.2d 1089 (1991). The right of access is not unlimited, but must be balanced against the legitimate security needs or resource constraints of the prison. See Robinson, 913 F.2d at 717; Lindquist v. Idaho State Bd. of Corrections, 776 F.2d 851, 858 (9th Cir.1985); Milton, 767 F.2d at 1446-47. We turn now to Mr. Nash's specific allegations of deprivation. 70
71 Mr. Nash first contends that he was denied adequate access to his institution's law library. The record indicates that in the months prior to trial he was allowed to use the library for roughly 120 to 140 hours. After trial began, Mr. Nash had access to the library for approximately five hours per week. 72 After weighing the other legal resources available to Mr. Nash, we conclude that Mr. Nash was given adequate library time prior to trial to fashion his defense. We note, first of all, that Mr. Nash was not a lay person with no knowledge of the law, but had in fact graduated from law school. He therefore had no need to learn the essentials of procedure or criminal law. Furthermore, the central legal issue of the case--whether predictive statements or statements of opinion could violate 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1014--was common to the defenses presented by all three of the defendants. With respect to this issue, therefore, Mr. Nash was able to draw upon the efforts of his co-defendants' counsel. The remaining issues relevant to Mr. Nash were not, as the district court noted, legal in nature, but turned largely on the facts of the case, which were matters within Mr. Nash's personal knowledge. Lastly, Mr. Nash had access to the skills and knowledge of an attorney appointed to assist him in the preparation of his defense and the filing of documents. 73 We are more troubled by the amount of library time allotted Mr. Nash during the trial. The prison library, apparently, is typically open only during the day; thus, a defendant who spends his or her day in court has little opportunity to visit the library during normal operating hours. This situation is hardly ideal. Nonetheless, while a prison must take steps to provide incarcerated defendants with reasonable access to legal materials, the rights of a pro se defendant must be balanced against institutional resource constraints. See Robinson, 913 F.2d at 717. Under all of the circumstances of this case, we are not prepared to hold that the access afforded Mr. Nash was unreasonably limited.
74 Mr. Nash next asserts that his access to witnesses (either in person or over the phone) was impermissibly restricted. This assertion is foreclosed by the district court's factual findings. See Gov't Nash Appendix Vol. II, at 516-17. The district court found that (1) Mr. Nash could receive visits from witnesses upon the provision of forty-eight hours notice and certain minimal personal information; (2) Mr. Nash did not submit a visitor list until June 19, 1993, four days after the beginning of the trial; following that submission, approval of visitor requests followed rapidly; (3) Mr. Nash could make monitored phone calls at all times, and, after May 25, could make two unmonitored calls per day; he made no such calls; and (4) Mr. Nash had access to co-defendant Sarno at pretrial hearings and during their joint trial. While Mr. Nash disputes the accuracy of these findings, he has not produced sufficient evidence for us to find them to be clearly erroneous. 75 Mr. Nash does credibly argue that his ability to make unmonitored telephone calls during trial was severely limited because he was at court during the hours in which unmonitored phone calls were allowed. After he brought this conflict to the court's attention (on June 22), the matter was remedied by June 25 (Mr. Nash was allowed to use the courthouse phone at lunch). This admitted restriction on his access to the telephone does not therefore seem so unreasonable as to merit reversal. 76
77 The Government gathered some 250,000 pages of documents in preparation for this trial. Mr. Nash was allowed to review these documents and mark those that were relevant to his defense; the marked items were then copied for Mr. Nash at government expense. Roughly 6000 additional pages were identified by the Government and provided by the Government before trial. It is, however, undisputed that Mr. Nash was given only approximately twenty hours in which to inspect the 250,000 pages of material. He argues that this period of time was insufficient. 78 While we agree that Mr. Nash's access to discovery materials was hardly optimal, we conclude that the limitations imposed on him were reasonable. The Government sensibly attempted to accommodate Mr. Nash's status by copying and identifying documents for him. While the time during which Mr. Nash could survey the discovery materials was brief, the district court found that the documents relevant to Mr. Nash's case composed only a small fraction of the 250,000 pages collected by the Government and, furthermore, were readily identifiable. Mr. Nash points to no evidence that suggests that these findings were clearly erroneous. We note, moreover, that Mr. Nash's access to the documents was constrained, at least in part, by the needs of his co-defendants. We hold therefore that the time provided Mr. Nash was sufficient under the circumstances. 79 Mr. Nash also contends that he was denied access to relevant personal papers (specifically, personal address books and day calendars) and that the Government failed to provide him with certain requested documents. The district court rejected the first of these claims on factual grounds, expressly declining to believe that Mr. Nash could not fit his address book and day calendar into the two boxes of material he was allowed in jail. In any event, Mr. Nash had the option to send his personal papers to his wife; he chose instead to leave his personal papers in storage at another facility. Mr. Nash does not point to any evidence that suggests that there findings are clearly erroneous, and they refute the claim at hand. 80 The Government concedes that Mr. Nash never received two of the documents which he marked for copying. There is absolutely no evidence to support the conclusion that this omission was purposeful. Furthermore, the district court found that Mr. Nash never brought the omission to the court's attention during trial or otherwise sought to obtain the documents in a timely manner. Under these circumstances, the failure to deliver the documents was unfortunate but does not require reversal.