Court Opinion

ID: 9701574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:25:35.037977+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:25.406318
License: Public Domain

McMILLAN, District Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
The majority would take bad law (the “publishers only” decision in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), cautiously announced by a badly divided court, and limited to a narrow situation), and would extend it into new territory. They cite Zaczek v. Hutto, 642 F.2d 74 (4th Cir. 1981), which is not binding on this court, and which did not decide the question at all, but merely accepted the appellant’s erroneous concession that the case was controlled by Wolfish. The majority do not in *484their opinion recognize the numerous ways in which this case differs in significant fact from Wolfish and in which the result they reach far outdoes Wolfish in unjustified and apparently inadvertent repressiveness. I am unable to concur.
Bell v. Wolfish was tried on a skimpy record; this case was tried on a fully developed record, in which all the premises accepted by a slender majority of the Wolfish court were sharply repudiated by strong testimony. That fact makes a difference to me.
Wolfish and his fellow litigants were short-term prisoners; they were inmates at a New York City detention center which ordinarily housed only pre-trial detainees and persons awaiting sentencing; more than half of the inmates were kept there less than ten days, while sixty days was about the maximum duration for anyone. The Wolfish court said that
“... we are also influenced in our decision by the fact that the rule’s impact on pretrial detainees is limited to a maximum period of approximately sixty days.” 441 U.S. at 552, 99 S.Ct. at 1881 (emphasis added).
Wolfish also relied on the short duration of stay in the New York institution to uphold its challenged “double bunking” practice (requiring an inmate to share toilet facilities and a small sleeping space with another person). By contrast, plaintiff in this case and the class he represents are all the persons serving active sentences in institutions of the North Carolina Department of Correction. Their sentences range from a few months to life imprisonment. Those facts make a difference to me.
The rule of Wolfish was limited to hardback books, and it allowed such books to be received from book stores and book clubs as well as from publishers. By contrast, the North Carolina rule under attack applies to all books and magazines, and makes no distinction between hard cover and soft cover publications. In the majority opinion in Wolfish, Justice Rehnquist carefully pointed out that when the case was before the Court of Appeals, which affirmed the District Court’s injunction against enforcement of the rule, it applied to all books and magazines. 441 U.S. at 549, 99 S.Ct. at 1879. Before the case was argued in the Supreme Court, however, the rule was amended to permit inmates to receive books and magazines from book stores as well as from publishers and book clubs and, at the time of the Supreme Court decision, there was an amendment under consideration which would allow soft cover materials to be received from any source. Those facts make a difference to me.
Wolfish and his fellows had additional means of obtaining reading materials. Among the sources specifically mentioned in the majority opinion of Rehnquist were: (1) Soft bound books and magazines could be received from any source, and hard back books could be received from book stores and book clubs as well as from publishers. North Carolina permits prisoners to receive no publications except from the publisher. (2) The New York prison offered for sale to inmates four daily newspapers and certain magazines, 441 U.S. 551, 552, 99 S.Ct. 1880, 1881. No comparable availability of newspapers and magazines in North Carolina prisons is shown. (3) The single New York City facility involved in Wolfish had a prison library containing over eight thousand volumes! North Carolina offers no such wealth of access to information in its various prisons. Those facts make a difference to me.
Wolfish was pointedly restricted to its own facts, with caution against unwarranted extension to other fact situations. The Supreme Court’s statement, at 441 U.S. 552, 99 S.Ct. 1881, was that
in sum, considering all the circumstances, we view the rule, as we now find it, to be a “reasonable ‘time, place and manner’ regulation that is necessary to further significant governmental interests . ... ” [Citations omitted, emphasis supplied.]
The Supreme Court’s warning limitation on its own decision makes a difference to me.
In Wolfish there was “simply no evidence in the record to indicate that MCC officials have exaggerated their response to this se*485curity problem and to the administrative difficulties posed by the necessity of carefully inspecting each book mailed from unidentified sources. Therefore, the considered judgment of these experts. must control in the absence of prohibitions far more sweeping than those involved here.” 441 U.S. at 551, 99 S.Ct. at 1880 (emphasis added). By contrast, the weight of the evidence before us shows that the “publishers only” rule can not be justified by “security risks.” And this panel is faced with a situation in which the prohibitions are indeed “far more sweeping.”
The strong showing by the plaintiff’s witnesses is that:
(a) Abrogation of the rule would not increase security problems. In the absence of such a rule, the actual experience has been that security problems are minimal. In fact, North Carolina has no security problems in the minimum custody units, where the rule does not apply.
(b) The main sources of contraband in prisons in descending order of frequency and importance are: (1) the institution itself with its kitchens, supply rooms, equipment and work and educational facilities; (2) a small number of corrupt, naive or opportunistic employees, delivery people or tradespeople who have access to the institutions; (3) inmates who are admitted or discharged or pass in and out as trustees, on work detail or on their way to and from court; (4) visitors; and (5) letter and package mail that is inadequately inspected. The reading materials which the rule prohibits are thus only a portion of the fifth most frequent source of contraband.
(c) A diligent inspection of an average book or magazine should take less than thirty seconds. Weapons and escape devices can be easily detected. Other implements which may not be so easily detected are readily available in the prison environment.
(d) An avowed original purpose of the “publishers only” rule was to censor and control the content of prisoners’ reading material and not to control the introduction of contraband.
(e) There is no evidence and no reason to believe that employees of publishers are any more honest than employees of book stores, libraries and other distributors.
(f) Substantial quantities of drugs and money are already a problem in North Carolina prisons. These problems cannot be entirely eliminated without employing inhumane security measures.
Defendants’ experts did not have any evidence of actual experience to the contrary. Defendants’ claims are mainly assertions of economic and administrative inconvenience in searching for contraband in publications. Most of the supposed increased risk in security could be obviated by adequate inspection techniques. If the mass mailings they fear actually resulted from abolishing the rule, they could limit the number of mailings each prisoner could receive.
The great weight of the evidence in this case that the rule is not justified on “security” grounds makes a difference to me.
Wolfish reiterated the principle enunciated in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 556, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2974, 41 L.Ed.2d 935, that there must be a “mutual accommodation between institutional needs and objectives and the provisions of the Constitution that are of general application.” 441 at 546, 99 S.Ct. at 1877 (emphasis added). Wolfish does not support a conclusion that a broad “publishers only” rule in any prison setting should be upheld as constitutional. The First Amendment rights of North Carolina prisoners outweigh the minimal security risks which might result from partial or even total abrogation of the “publishers only” rule. The restriction against all publications from any source other than publishers is an over-reaction by prison officials to potential security problems. The rule cannot be sustained as a reasonable time, place and manner regulation that is necessary to further a significant governmental interest. Though the government and all we citizens have a significant interest in the security of the prison system, and though restrictions and regulations are essential to *486maintaining a secure prison, the rule the majority is upholding today is unreasonably broad in scope and unconstitutionally infringes the First Amendment rights of North Carolina prisoners.
I cannot help musing on the advertised purposes of imprisoning people who have been convicted of crimes. The literature abounds with articles discussing the goals of retribution versus punishment versus rehabilitation versus protection of society. The prison department is titled the North Carolina “Department of Correction.” If “correction” includes rehabilitating persons to live non-violent and non-criminal lives, then the “publishers only” rule runs totally counter to that goal.
One of the numerous epigrams which Pansy Howell (mother of Ida Friday, wife of Bill Friday, President of the University of North Carolina) taught my tenth grade English class at Lumberton High School in 1930 was that “Books are the windows through which the soul looks out.” Rehabilitation, or correction, or retribution, may require imprisonment of the body; but is it also necessary, without demonstrated reason, to black out the windows of the soul ? Prisoners as a group are impoverished; they can’t afford to pay publishers’ prices like $12.95 or $29.50 for new books from publishers when cheaper sources are available. The two books which were mailed to the plaintiff and were returned to the sender by prison officials- were Great Short Works of Mark Twain and The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yacqui Way of Knowledge. The meager listing of books available through the prison system library does not include these titles nor the titles of many books through which prisoners, with nothing but time on their hands, can become motivated to complete their education or to learn a skill, or through which they can be provided with positive, non-debilitating prison experiences.
Breaking the cycles of poverty, ignorance, criminal behavior and recidivism is hard enough if it is done in an enlightened way. Protecting prisoners’ First Amendment rights is mandatory if we are going to approach the task humanely and with any hope of success.
I respectfully, but emphatically, dissent.