Court Opinion

ID: 9457948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:39:13.759166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:35.424194
License: Public Domain

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
Nine-tenths of Breeden’s complaints have been undercut but not mooted, as the majority seems to concede, by his release from maximum security and parole from the system. I am not much interested in his prayer for damages — because it would seem unfair to allow a substantial damage award to stand against individual prison administrators who until now have had no warning that deprivation of a prisoner’s normal privileges is not a perfectly proper way to protect him from the violence of other inmates.
But the possibility that parole can be revoked and his entitlement to nominal damages leaves us with a live case. Breeden may have to go back to the State Farm. He can die there.1 I think the time has come to enunciate clearly to prison administrators that it is their responsibility to protect life and that they may not condition such protection on relinquishment of earned prison privileges. It seems important to my brothers that Breeden asked for maximum security confinement knowing of its attendant loss of privileges.2 Since the alternative *582was alleged to be personal injury and possible death, I think he was given no real choice.
I would remand to the district court for an evidentiary hearing. See Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1971); Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963). What we do not know about this case is much more than what we do know. Why is it not possible to identify and separate the violence-prone ? If this approach is impractical and Breeden must himself be segregated, why must he suffer the alleged deprivations? What are the reasons, compelling or otherwise, that justify denying him possession of his personal belongings, curtailing his visitors and even his food and sanitation? Could Breeden have been protected by transfer to another prison?
In short, why must he choose between a reasonably safe life more miserable than that of other well-behaved prisoners and the risk of serious physical injury and death ? I do not believe the state may constitutionally put such a choice to a prisoner, but, instead, must assume its responsibility to provide a reasonably safe place of imprisonment. To abdicate control of prisons to the rule of terror of the inmate “bulls” is, to me, to allow cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. On the other hand, to subject a well-behaved prisoner to deprivations imposed as punishment upon unruly prisoners seems to me arbitrary and capricious action in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.3
An evidentiary hearing might show that involved here is “institutional treatment of such character or consequences as to shock general conscience or to be intolerable in fundamental fairness,” Lee v. Tahash, 352 F.2d 970, 972 (8th Cir. 1965), justifying judicial interference in the administration of this prison.
I would remand for an evidentiary hearing.
ORDER DENYING REHEARING
It is ordered, That rehearing en banc is denied because the prisoner’s release on parole and the unavailability of equitable relief have made the ease inappropriate for en banc consideration.

. Knifing Fatal To Convict, 21
A prisoner at the State Farm in Powhatan County was stabbed to death as he and other inmates were returning to their cells after supper last night.
Z. V. Saunders, a state police investigator identified the prisoner as Julius V. Netties, 21, who was serving time from Portsmouth on a statutory burglary conviction.
Saunders said the victim was stabbed in the chest.
He was carried to St. Mary’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Saunders said no arrests had been made last night.
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Feb. 10, 1972, at 6-B, col. 1.

. The deprivations in maximum security are alleged to be:
1. no exercise,
2. only two meals a day of leftovers,
*5823. only one shower and one shave a week in cold water,
4. only one visitor a month, and
5. no personal belongings.

. Smith v. Swenson, 333 F.Supp. 1258 (W.D.Mo.1971), relied upon by the majority, should be read in conjunction with the companion case of the same name reported at 333 F.Supp. 1253. At page 1257 the court stated the rationale of decision in these words: “that he is ' currently charged . . . with the stabbing of another inmate warrants his continued confinement in maximum security.