Opinion ID: 1187735
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Excessive Use of Sanctions To Punish An Inmate's Efforts to Clarify the Law For The Purpose Of Preventing Irresponsible Documents To Cloud the Legitimacy of Parole Process Would Place An Impermissible Burden On Prisoners' Access To The Courts

Text: ¶ 14 Sanctions are appropriate when a prisoner's pleading is unreasonable under all the circumstances in existence at the time of filing. Excessive use of sanctions to punish litigants for a legitimate effort to clarify existing law has a negative impact on a prisoner's unimpeded access to the courts. It is in violation of Art. 2, § 6, Okl. Const. [26] ¶ 15 Oklahoma jurisprudence is silent on what impact the absence of liberty-interest characteristics in the State's parole process will have upon the contents of material the board could use in considering a prisoner for parole. There is no extant decisional law clearly pronouncing that since an Oklahoma prisoner's quest for parole is no more than a mere expectation, the entire process by which it is granted or withheld is freed from due process strictures. ¶ 16 Shabazz had no means of learning from available (or accessible) legal sources (or literature) at hand that a prosecutor's act of placing a highly prejudicial instrument on file with the Oklahoma parole board would go unprotected by the constitutional safeguards of due process. His exercise of the right of access to the courts [27] was impermissibly penalized when sanctions came to be imposed for his attempt to purge his parole file of a report alleged to contain material serving no purpose other than that of prosecutorial vindictiveness. ¶ 17 Resolving as we must all doubts in Shabazz's favor, we hold today that, when measured by the standards of Brewington, [28] the trial court's order imposing sanctions cannot pass muster. [29]