Opinion ID: 415359
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: violence

Text: 14 The Maximum prisoners complain of violence. However, this court and other courts have held that the existence of a number of assaults in a given prison is not per se unreasonable by common law negligence standards. Murphy v. United States, 653 F.2d 637 (D.C.Cir.1981). As we noted in Murphy, [v]iolence is unfortunately endemic to American prisons .... [A prisoner, and here the class, must prove] ... that [the] numbers [of assaults in question] were outside the range of violence normally associated with this type of penal institution, or that any subset of prisoners suffered from an unusual risk of attack. Id. at 642 (emphasis added) (footnote omitted). Here plaintiffs were required to prove that the assaults clearly exceeded the range of violence normally associated with groups of the most violence-prone felons. Their evidence, viewed most favorably, does not constitute such proof. My colleague asserts that this court is not adequately prepared to undertake a thorough examination of the evidence to support the jury verdict. That statement is erroneous. The court is not only adequately prepared to thoroughly review the evidence, but that is its duty. And as a result of such review I find it insufficient to support the verdict. 15 Prisoners in Maximum are confined together because, of all prisoners in the institution, they have demonstrated by their prior conduct, in or out of prison, that they present the maximum risk of violence or escape. Prison setting is, at best, tense. It is sometimes explosive, and always potentially dangerous. Marchesani v. McCune, 531 F.2d 459, 462 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 846, 97 S.Ct. 127, 50 L.Ed.2d 117 (1976). The existence of some violence in prisons is unavoidable, given the character of the prisoners society must place behind bars. 16 As Justice Powell noted in Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 351, 101 S.Ct. 2392, 2401, 69 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981) (emphasis added) (footnote omitted): 17 This Court must proceed cautiously in making an Eighth Amendment judgment because, unless we reverse it, [a] decision that a given punishment is impermissible under the Eighth Amendment cannot be reversed short of a constitutional amendment, and thus [r]evisions cannot be made in the light of further experience. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. at 176 [96 S.Ct. 2909, 2926, 49 L.Ed.2d 859]. In assessing claims that conditions of confinement are cruel and unusual, courts must bear in mind that their inquiries spring from constitutional requirements and that judicial answers to them must reflect that fact rather than a court's idea of how best to operate a detention facility. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. at 539 [99 S.Ct. 1861, 1874, 60 L.Ed.2d 447]. 7 18 And jury expertise is even more wanting than judicial expertise. Justice Powell went on in Rhodes to quote Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 404-05, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1807, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974) (footnote omitted): 19 [T]he problems of prisons in America are complex and intractable, and, more to the point, they are not readily susceptible of resolution by decree. Most require expertise, comprehensive planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive branches of government. For all of those reasons, courts are ill equipped to deal with the increasingly urgent problems of prison administration and reform. Judicial recognition of that fact reflects no more than a healthy sense of realism. 20 Rhodes v. Chapman, supra, 452 U.S. at 351 n. 16, 101 S.Ct. at 2401 n. 16. 21 Though Maximum does have some violence, the statistics offered by the prisoners at trial show an average of only fifteen assaults per year by inmates on other inmates from 1973 to 1980. JA 154-58. Such a low level of assaults does not support a claim of the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment upon plaintiffs under their own expert testimony, or under our decision in Murphy, which should control here--by virtue of its precedential value and its reasonableness. Comparative statistics were not introduced into evidence and so we are left to glean such statistics as we can from decided cases. First, the assaults in Maximum are very substantially lower than in Holt, Pugh, and the rest. In this case, while an average of fourteen (13.866) assaults per year by inmates on other inmates was reported for the seven-and-a-half year period from 1973 to July 1980, 8 only one death may have occurred, and the evidence is inconclusive that it occurred within the period covered by the complaint. (Tr. 348). No riots causing mass injury took place. There was no trusty system, with its attendant ill-effects, in operation. In Murphy v. United States, supra, which involved the Lorton Youth Center--housing about 560 decidedly less violent inmates--this court ruled that twenty inmate assaults in the calendar year 1976, six of which occurred in a dormitory housing a hundred youths, were not so high as to strike this court as per se unreasonable. 653 F.2d at 642 n. 19 (emphasis added). In view of that precedent, with which my colleague fails to deal, I cannot conclude that an average of fourteen or fifteen assaults per year in the maximum security facility at issue in this case--which houses 400 inmates--is sufficient to support a finding that the number of assaults was unreasonable, excessive or indicative of insufficient protection. The nature of the population in Maximum alone would lead anyone to expect a greater risk of assault than would the population of the Youth Correction facility that was involved in Murphy. A comparison of the assault statistics for Lorton's Maximum with those in Lorton's Youth Correction complex is set forth in the margin. 9 Since the gravamen of the prisoners' complaint is excessive violence, their proof does not support their complaint and their claim that the incidence of assaults was unreasonable cannot withstand our decision in Murphy. 22 NOTE: OPINION CONTAINS TABLE OR OTHER DATA THAT IS NOT VIEWABLE 23 On the issue of what amount of violence may reasonably be expected, it is also significant that Eugene Miller, the plaintiffs' own penological expert witness, testified that twelve to twenty inmate assaults per year at Maximum was the expected range of such assaults. JA 243-44. Thus, by plaintiffs' own standard, an average of fourteen or fifteen assaults per year, falling within that expected range and below that we found to be reasonable in Murphy, cannot be held to constitute sufficient evidence of the official infliction by defendants of cruel and unusual punishment on the class. 24 Prisoners with the most extreme records of violent propensities and violent crimes cannot expect that life in a maximum security prison, where their classification requires them to be housed, will be devoid of all violence. Such expectation is plainly unreasonable, except in an even more highly structured environment. 10 All that the prisoners had a right reasonably to demand was that violence not be excessive. Their own evidence demonstrates that it is not. 25 In Part II.C. of his separate statement, my colleague refers to some of the evidence of violence at Maximum. While these incidents are horrendous, the character of the violence does not exceed what one might expect in a maximum security prison, and the total number of assaults, as discussed fully elsewhere, is not excessive. As Judge Merhige stated in Penn v. Oliver, 351 F.Supp. 1292, 1294 (E.D.Va.1972): 26 It would be fantasy to believe that even the most enlightened prison officials operating with unlimited resources could prevent all acts of violence within the prison. Moreover, even if a prison official fails through his negligence to prevent an act of violence, a violation of constitutional right is not of necessity stated. 27 That case involved an individual complaint under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, and the principle is even more applicable to a class action case. My colleague's opinion naively ignores the wisdom expressed by Judge Merhige. It should also be pointed out that the prisoners' testimony on violence lacked specificity as to the parties involved and the dates. But the greatest defect in their testimony lies in the failure to establish a nexus between the unspecific assaults and the official policies of District officials--a failure to prove that official policy was the proximate cause of the harm complained of. While the testimony as to the assaults had the ring of truth for a prison such as Maximum, much of the testimony as to causation had a self-serving defect. On the general issue of the amount of violence and the staffing required, my colleague's separate opinion misstates my view by asserting it to be my opinion that average conditions will invariably pass constitutional muster. But that is not my stated opinion, which is, rather, that conditions much better than average--better, in fact, than those this court found reasonable in Murphy and which plaintiffs' expert witness did not find to be unreasonable--were insufficient to support a finding of a constitutional violation.