Court Opinion

ID: 9471257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:28:09.41835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:19.902089
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The panel majority misconceives the law of qualified “good faith” immunity in concluding that the defendants, Richard Young and T. Don Hutto, are immune from suit for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.1 The constitutional obligation of responsible state officials to provide inmates with adequate legal resources was firmly established well before the time period at issue in the case before us. In fact, the obligation had been thrice imposed upon the very state system under challenge here in federal litigation that was completed before the plaintiff, Stanley Sylvester Harris, ever spent a moment in the Commonwealth’s custody as a convicted felon. I therefore am constrained to dissent.
It has never been the law that a state official is immune from liability under § 1983 so long as he or she is able to proffer a colorable, and not patently frivolous, argument in support of the denial of a plaintiff’s constitutional rights. State officials *625have an obligation to be diligent and vigilant when they are dealing with the constitutional rights of the citizenry. If a defendant knew of the constitutional right he was infringing, or, alternatively, if, as a reasonable public official, he should have known of the constitutional obligation, the immunity defense will not lie. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 814-15, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2736-37, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). “The official cannot be expected to predict the future course of constitutional law.” Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U.S. 555, 562, 98 S.Ct. 855, 860, 55 L.Ed.2d 24 (1978). By the same token, however, the official cannot stand pat, ignore clearly indicative authority and simply await an absolutely indistinguishable legal decision from the Supreme Court itself that will govern his conduct. Such a dogmatic refusal to accept other reasonable sources of the law amounts to avoidance, if not evasion, of constitutional obligations that any reasonable public official clearly would recognize. The law simply does not invite state officials, prone to recalcitrance and subject to the political and fiscal demands of the voting populace, to blink reality and shirk a plain duty to honor the constitutional rights of others.
If a reasonable public official would have known, by August of 1977, that a prisoner was entitled to adequate legal resources,2 then the defendants, having failed to do so, cannot now interpose a qualified immunity defense to defeat this cause of action. Harlow, supra, at 814-15, 102 S.Ct. at 2736-37; Procunier, supra, at 565, 98 S.Ct. at 861; Wood v. Strickland, 420 U.S. 308, 322, 95 S.Ct. 992,1001, 43 L.Ed.2d 214 (1975). The evidence on that score is overwhelming. No reasonable public official intent on honoring constitutional imperatives could have denied Harris’ right to adequate legal resources.
The pertinent evidence consists of the decisions of the Supreme Court, the courts of appeals, and the Virginia district courts. E.g., Procunier, supra, at 565, 98 S.Ct. at 861. Consistently, those courts were, by 1976, firm and fixed in the resolution that inmates are entitled to adequate legal research facilities or, in the alternative, an adequate legal assistance program.
In 1971, the Supreme Court decided Younger v. Gilmore, 404 U.S. 15, 92 S.Ct. 250, 30 L.Ed.2d 142 (1971), affirming the landmark decision of a three-judge panel in the Nothern District of California, Gilmore v. Lynch, 319 F.Supp. 105 (N.D.Cal.1970). Gilmore was a brief one-page per curiam opinion by the Supreme Court. Perhaps the majority is correct in observing that, as a matter of judicial exposition, “Gilmore was itself not as clear as to the state’s duties as it might have been.” Whether-Gilmore’s exposition could have been clearer, however, is not the question. The question is whether the holding in Gilmore was clear enough to put state officials on notice of their constitutional obligations. The answer to that question is best reached by considering the evidence.
On the basis of Gilmore and its lower-court progenitor, a veritable groundswell ensued so that almost immediately the universal understanding was that inmates are entitled to adequate legal resources so that their rights to meaningful access to the courts may be effectuated. Circuit courts of appeals so held. See, e.g., Mead v. Parker, 464 F.2d 1108 (9th Cir.1972); Cruz v. Hauck, 475 F.2d 475 (5th Cir.1973);3 Noorlander v. Ciccone, 489 F.2d 642 (8th Cir. 1973); Bryan v. Werner, 516 F.2d 233 (3d Cir.1975); Knell v. Bensinger, 522 F.2d 720 (7th Cir.1975). On September 30, 1975, the Fourth Circuit so held, noting that the *626state’s “duty was plain: The State was obligated to provide the inmates with adequate legal research facilities.” Smith v. Bounds, 538 F.2d 541, 544 (4th Cir.1975), aff’d, 430 U.S. 817, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977). We reiterated and reaffirmed that rule on January 19, 1976, in Kirby v. Blackledge, 530 F.2d 583 (4th Cir.1976) (Per Justice Clark, sitting by designation).
I am at a loss to discern what lack of clarity existed in the Supreme Court’s decision in Gilmore, or in the decisions of the courts of appeals, or in our decisions in Bounds and Kirby — all decisions which well preceded the time period at issue here. The lesson of those cases certainly was not lost on the district courts within the Fourth Circuit. Judge Merhige, sitting in the Eastern District of Virginia, applied our Bounds decision in a ease involving the correctional system of the Commonwealth of Virginia. On September 28, 1976 — four months before Harris was convicted, eleven months before Harris’ appeal expired — Judge Merhige’s decision in Peterson v. Davis, 421 F.Supp. 1220 (E.D.Va.1976), aff’d mem., 562 F.2d 48 (4th Cir.1977), was issued, holding that Virginia must provide its inmates either adequate legal research facilities or an adequate legal assistance program. Id. at 1223-24.
Judge Merhige was not alone among his brethren in Virginia. Judge Dalton, in the Western District of Virginia, applied the clear rule of Gilmore against the Commonwealth of Virginia twice — and, indeed, applied the rule even before our decision in Bounds appeared. Judge Dalton held, on the basis of the Supreme Court’s Gilmore decision, that the Commonwealth faced an obligation to ensure its inmates adequate legal resources, an obligation satisfied in those cases by a legal assistance program. See Russell v. Oliver, 392 F.Supp. 470, 473 (W.D.Va.1975), modified, 552 F.2d 115 (4th Cir.1977); Collins v. Haga, 373 F.Supp. 923, 925 (W.D.Va.1974).
That evidence is surely enough to put a reasonable public official in Virginia on notice of his or her constitutional obligations. The Seventh Circuit, facing a shorter list of authorities and not benefitted by decisions actually involving the state system at issue, concluded that the Supreme Court’s decision in Gilmore — entered in 1971 — was enough to put state officials on notice of their obligation to provide inmates adequate legal resources. Knell, supra, at 725-26. In accord with that determination is the Supreme Court’s observation in Bounds, supra, 430 U.S. at 828-29, 97 S.Ct. at 1498-99, that its decision therein was “a reaffirmation of the result reached in Younger v. Gilmore.”
All that remains to be considered is whether the fact that the Richmond City Jail is not a prison is a fact of consequence. As the Fifth Circuit perceived in as early as 1975, the denomination of an institution as a “prison” or a “jail” is irrelevant for purposes of determining whether a state is obligated to provide its prisoner adequate legal resources. The relevant question to be answered by state officials is whether the prisoner is facing a brief or temporary period of confinement. If the anticipated length of confinement is not brief or temporary, then the constitutional obligations attach and must be satisfied. Cruz v. Hauck, 515 F.2d 322, 333 (5th Cir.1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 917, 96 S.Ct. 1118, 47 L.Ed.2d 322 (1976). See also Williams v. Leeke, 584 F.2d 1336 (4th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 442 U.S. 911, 99 S.Ct. 2825, 61 L.Ed.2d 276 (1979). Neither Williams nor Cruz established a “new” rule. Neither case extended the state’s constitutional duties to new unchartered fields. Rather, those decisions merely acknowledged logically inescapable implications of the basic doctrine first set forth in Gilmore.
Of critical import, then, is the fact that Harris was sentenced to a total of 26 years in confinement. Upon his conviction, Harris was legally committed to the custody of the director of the Commonwealth’s Department of Corrections. Va.Code § 53.1-20 (1982 Repl. Vol.).4 The anticipated *627length of confinement could not rationally be deemed brief or temporary and, consequently, the Commonwealth’s obligation to ensure its prisoner adequate legal resources attached. The director, as the official legally responsible for the conditions of Harris’ confinement, could not wash his hands of that obligation by the simple expedient of transferring Harris to another correctional system without adequate facilities, nor could the director avoid his constitutional duties by leaving Harris in the Richmond City Jail, the facility which housed Harris before his trial and had been and remained unequipped to satisfy the constitutional rights of Harris. See Rich v. Zitnay, 644 F.2d 41, 42-43 (1st Cir.1981).5 “Receiving as well as sending officials share responsibility for insuring prisoners’ access to the courts,” id. at 43 n. 1, and that responsibility cannot be shirked by a divide-and-conquer approach whereby the prisoner is confined, in reality, for a substantial period of time, but never for more than a brief or temporary period in any one facility. Such an approach would render the constitutional right no right at all.6
*628The record reveals that, accepting the plaintiff’s allegations, an unconstitutional deprivation did in fact occur, and any reasoned and rational reading of the state of the law at the time the deprivation occurred yields but a single conclusion — the defendants were on clear and ample notice of the constitutional obligations they failed to meet. I would reverse the decision of the district court and remand the case for further proceedings.

. The lead opinion concludes that the defendant Hutto enjoys a qualified immunity, a conclusion in which Judge Widener has indicated his concurrence. The panel majority likewise holds that the defendant Young is entitled to dismissal because there has been no adequate showing of his responsibility for the deprivation of Harris’ constitutional rights. Because I have concluded that the facts as alleged by Harris sufficiently set out a basis for the liability of defendant Young, see n. 6 infra, the discussion that follows treats the immunity defense as raised by both Hutto and Young.

. Prior to August 1977, Harris’ constitutional rights were satisfied without regard to the adequacy vel non of the law library at the Richmond City Jail. That is so because, until August 1977, the Commonwealth was providing the plaintiff with court-appointed counsel. The deprivation of constitutional rights began when Harris’ appeal from conviction, and thus his right to counsel, expired, and it is the state of the law at the time the deprivation of constitutional rights began which is relevant to the qualified immunity defense.

. Decided after remand from the Supreme Court for further consideration in light of Younger v. Gilmore. See Cruz v. Hauck, 404 U.S. 59, 92 S.Ct. 313, 30 L.Ed.2d 217 (1971).

. Both Judge Gordon, in the lead opinion, and I conclude that defendant Hutto, as director of the Department of Corrections, is directly responsible for the conditions of Harris’ confine*627ment and, accordingly, is a proper party to the suit.
Judge Widener, in his concurring opinion, expresses the view that Hutto is entitled to dismissal because his liability could only be predicated upon a theory of respondeat superi- or, citing our decision in Vinnedge v. Gibbs, 550 F.2d 926 (4th Cir.1977). Such a view fails to acknowledge, however, that Hutto, as the director of corrections, had more than a mere supervisory duty with regard to the conditions of confinement prevalent in the system under his control. In fact, Hutto is the official personally responsible for the conditions of Harris’ confinement. See Payne v. Rollings, 402 F.Supp. 1225, 1228 (E.D.Va.1975).

. In Rich v. Zitnay, 644 F.2d 41 (1st Cir.1981), a Maine prisoner who was transferred to a federal facility in Kansas for security reasons brought a § 1983 suit against Maine corrections officers. The prisoner alleged that the law library at the federal facility was constitutionally inadequate because it did not contain materials on Maine law necessary for the prosecution of state post-conviction petitions. Although the Maine officials undoubtedly had no control over the law library, or any conditions of confinement, at the federal prison, they were held to be proper parties in the suit. “[W]e think that Maine authorities may not wash their hands of their obligation to insure access to Maine courts simply by transferring a prisoner out of state .... ” Id. at 43. See also Hohman v. Hogan, 458 F.Supp. 669 (D.Vt. 1978). The Rich court further observed that the federal authorities also would be proper defendants, as “receiving” officials responsible for the conditions of confinement. 644 F.2d at 43 n. 1.
A failure of the majority opinion is its narrow focus upon the actual facility in question, as opposed to the full extent of the confinement which Harris was to face at the hands of the Commonwealth. Perhaps that failure is the consequence of a preoccupation with the concept of a constitutional “obligation” upon the responsible state officials. A concern with “obligation” or “duty” invariably directs attention to the particular parties and institutions empowered to act, and deflects attention from the “right” owed to Harris, a right which the state’s criminal justice system must safeguard. It cannot be seriously argued, for instance, that the Commonwealth’s legislators could immunize individual officials by scattering the power to meet constitutional obligations across several offices. In that instance, all the officers would stand responsible. Indeed, that is the logical underpinning of the Rich decision: By formally reducing the power of its officers, the State of Maine could not avoid responsibility for the constitutional rights of the individual it committed to confinement.
That much understood, the futility of the defendants’ distinction between the city jail and the state penitentiary, each with its own chief officer and bureaucracy, is established.

. For the same reasons, a theory exists to hold defendant Young liable under § 1983 and, consequently, he is not entitled to dismissal on the ground that an adequate basis for his liability has not been established.
Harris’ verified complaint alleges that he was entitled to be “immediately received into Virginia Penitentiary, as mandated by plaintiffs convictions and sentences” and, thus, that he was entitled to the “full benefits of rights and privileges afforded and enjoyed by penitentiary inmates.” Plaintiff’s theory for holding Young, the Acting Warden of the penitentiary at the time Harris was deprived of adequate legal resources, liable under § 1983, then, is analogous to the theory advanced in Rich v. Zitnay, 644 F.2d 41 (1st Cir.1981) — the warden should not escape responsibility for a prisoner who, in effect, is properly under his care but has been transferred to a different, constitutionally inadequate, facility.
Because there has been no trial on the merits, it is impossible to reject the factual contentions made by Harris in his verified complaint. Assuming, as we must, the truth of the facts *628asserted in the plaintiffs complaint, e.g., Vinnedge v. Gibbs, 550 F.2d 926, 927 (4th Cir. 1977), it follows that dismissal of defendant Young is, at the least, premature. See e.g., Vinnedge, supra, at 927 (“Because we are unable to say with assurance from the record that a claim upon which relief could be granted was not stated .... we must vacate the district court’s order of dismissal as to” certain defendants).