Court Opinion

ID: 9471618
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:37:03.672861+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:29.919775
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
For reasons initially advanced by Judge Craven in his dissent in Breeden v. Jackson, 457 F.2d 578, 581, 582 (4th Cir.1972)1 and instructively and persuasively elaborated by Judge Butzner in his special concurrence (in which Judge Craven and Judge Winter joined) in the en banc decision in Sweet v. South Carolina Department of Corrections, *1102529 F.2d 854, 866, 868 (4th Cir.1975),2 I conclude that to equate the opting for protective segregation by a prisoner in reasonable apprehension for his physical safety, when that is the only proffered alternative, to a choice “at his own request” is to misuse language.3
To punish someone through withdrawal of substantial amenities where he had violated no institutional rules and the motivating consideration was solely dangerousness of other prisoners, he not being dangerous to them, is to infringe the Eighth Amendment guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment. The offer by the prison authorities to Allgood of protective segregation with its resulting loss of human contact and of recreation and canteen privileges as the only way in which he could escape bestial behavior towards him by cellmates cannot properly suffice as a discharge of the responsibilities of penal officers.
The present case differs from Breeden and Sweet in the not-insignificant respect that Allgood stuck out the dangers of his cell assignments rather than go into solitary.4 I certainly would not extend the holdings in Breeden and Sweet to bar an action to correct, or to secure adequate compensation for, having had to endure what is manifestly more serious than protective custody in terms of danger of physical abuse. Serious physical abuse was actual, not merely theoretical, in Allgood’s case. Breeden and Sweet avoided physical harm at the cost of loss of other valuable attributes of life. Allgood did not make the same “choice” as to which of the inevitable losses to endure that Breeden and Sweet made, but no one can reasonably fault him, since who is to say which loss produces, for a particular individual, the greater distress. The point simply is that a civilized society should not restrict a prisoner to two such inadequate and unsatisfactory alternatives.
At the very minimum, the case should be reversed and remanded so that the facts might be' investigated as to the presence, or lack, of other alternatives than the draconian two presented to Allgood. Accordingly, I dissent.

. “Since the alternative was alleged to be personal injury and possible death, I think he was given no real choice.”

. “a preference for solitary confinement over the probability of death is not a real choice.”

. Indeed, while the style of the case indicates that Richard F. Allgood is the plaintiff, it would be more realistic to indicate that Hobson is actually the one here involved.

. For purposes of disposition at the summary judgment stage, Allgood had established that: (1) From early June, 1981 until a culminating treble stabbing by a fellow inmate on October 1, 1981, Allgood had made, to no avail, repeated requests for transfer out of cell block units to which he had been assigned. (2) All-good was the only white prisoner, the other eleven being black. (3) He received numerous threats of physical harm, the origins for which lay in racial animus. (4) During that period, Allgood rejected the “solution” of protective segregation.
Following the stabbing, Allgood apparently finally appreciated which was the lesser of the evils, and which was the greater, for he then acquiesced in protective segregation.