Court Opinion

ID: 9475112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:17:43.327699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:30.880934
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent because the majority, under the guise of enunciating a test which synthesizes previous Supreme Court precedent relating to prisoners’ first amendment rights, has, in effect, placed an insuperable burden on prisoners and taken from them the rights which they retain even in the restrictive constitutional setting of a prison. In its desire to afford prison administrators discretion in the difficult business of running a penal institution, a principle to which, when it is stated abstractly, I strongly adhere, the majority has given those officials carte blanche to restrict prisoners’ communications with one another. It is important to bear in mind that decision making for judges is choosing between, or, if possible, reconciling competing principles, and it does not do perfunctorily to nod at one principle but thereafter wholly to avoid its application.
After paying lip service to the principle that “ ‘a prisoner does not shed his first amendment rights at the prison portals,’ ” the majority proceeds quickly to the “two-part synthesis” which it states “has emerged from the Procunier;6 Pell,7 Jones8 and Bell9 decisions.” At 1182. The first part of the test involves penal regulations which “either intrude[] upon the first amendment rights of non-prisoners or eonstitute[] a total denial of an inmate’s right to free speech, including any possible alternative means of exercising that right.” {Id.). There, “the state must satisfy the Procunier strict scrutiny requirement.” In the second instance, where a regulation “operates only as a limitation on a prisoner’s first amendment rights, then the judicial deference normally accorded prison officials will in most instances defeat a claim of overbreadth.” Id. at 1182-1183.
The majority errs in its neat division of previous prisoners’ rights cases into two categories. The cases which it cites in support of its formulation, Procunier, Pell, Jones, and Bell, do not lend themselves to a gloss of the first amendment rights of prisoners which, as the majority candidly states, “will in most instances defeat a claim of overbreadth.” As stated by the majority, a prisoner must be deprived of all means of communicating, be subjected to a “total denial” of his right to free speech, before he is entitled to the strict scrutiny requirement. The alternative is the highly deferential, essentially nugatory inquiry as to whether an inmate “has shown by substantial evidence that the state has exaggerated its response to an institutional problem.” At 1183. An inmate’s first amendment rights would be placed deep in the deep freeze by such an approach, which forces him to sacrifice legitimate and protected speech, as well as that which may be properly restricted. An inmate may never be able to shoulder the burden of showing complete restriction of his rights, since prison officials may still be able to argue the availability of alternative channels or come up with reasons why their response was not exaggerated.
*1185In the ease at hand, Vester sought to communicate with Boggs on matters relating to Boggs’ post-conviction relief. Such communication, far from being improper, was of the- sort which is not “shed” by a prisoner when he enters the “prison portals.” Brown v. Peyton, 437 F.2d 1228, 1230 (4th Cir.1971). See Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 89 S.Ct. 747, 21 L.Ed.2d 718 (1969).10 The right to communicate on legal matters does not seem, prima facie, “inconsistent with [Vester’s] status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system.” Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. at 822, 94 S.Ct. at 2804. Yet, under the majority’s opinion, deference would necessarily be shown to prison authorities since a prisoner could not effectively shoulder the burden of showing that he had no remaining means of communicating or that the prison officials’ response was exaggerated.11 Although the Virginia guideline suggests that the prison authorities have the power to grant permission to an inmate to communicate to a fellow prisoner, there is no assurance that under the vague standard of that regulation (the “correspondence is in the best interest of the inmate and the institution”) first amendment interests would be addressed. No standards whatever are enunciated to guide precommunication censorship. The district court voiced a concern that even innocuous mail might “contain encoded messages.” But, if prison authorities voiced such a justification, consonant with their concern for institutional security, it would be difficult, indeed, as a practical matter, impossible, for a prisoner to counter with evidence that their response was exaggerated, under the deferential approach suggested by the majority’s opinion. The more innocuous a statement might seem, the more devious at cryptography the authorities might assert the would-be communicator to be.
More importantly, I believe that the majority ■ has read the cases in the area of prisoner’s rights in a way which makes anything but the most transparently sophistical and unsubstantiated enunciation by officials of a justification for a regulation affecting speech pass constitutional muster. The majority goes beyond previous cases by requiring a showing that first amendment rights have been totally obliterated. The majority warns against “focusing excessively” upon the test of Procunier v. Martinez, supra, but, in its complete deference to the justifications proffered by prison officials, it bypasses not only Procu-nier, but Pell, Jones, and Bell. A brief overview of Supreme Court precedent in the area indicates that the majority has erred in the formulation of its “synthesis.”
In Procunier v. Martinez, where the Court found unconstitutional a California regulation which subjected certain classes of correspondence between prisoners and non-prisoners to censorship, the Court stated that it was “unnecessary” to examine the question of whether the first amendment rights of prisoners, per se, were implicated in the prisoner regulation because *1186the correspondence in question in the case worked as a “consequential restriction of the ... rights to those who are not prisoners.” 416 U.S. at 409, 94 S.Ct. at 1809. The Court did not state its holding exclusively in terms of the rights of ndn-prison-ers: it explicitly stated that such a restriction also implicated the rights of prisoners.
The interest of prisoners and their correspondents in uncensored communications by letter, grounded as it is in the First Amendment, is plainly a “liberty” interest within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment even though qualified of necessity by the circumstances of imprisonment.
Id. at 418, 94 S.Ct. at 1814 (emphasis provided). Although the language emphasized is not entirely free from ambiguity, it indicates that the first amendment rights of prisoners, as far as they involve “uncensored communication by letter,” cannot be dismissed as a freedom which the prisoner sheds at the prison gates.
The additional cases in the continuum of prisoners’ rights cases considered by the Court subsequent to Procunier v. Martinez do not take from prisoners their first amendment right of free communication by mail enunciated in Martinez. Indeed, in Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 2804, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974), the Court reiterated the proposition “that a prison inmate retains those First Amendment rights that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system.” The Court noted further that the availability of other channels of communication for a prisoner had to be taken into account in “balanc[ing]” first amendment interests against “legitimate governmental ... interests.” Id. at 823-24, 94 S.Ct. at 2804-05. The Court’s formulation in Pell thus does not support the majority’s view that a restriction on prisoner’s first amendment rights must rise to the level of a “total denial ..., including any possible alternative means of exercising that right” before it offends the Constitution. The balancing mandated by Pell is not nearly as deferential as the minimal scrutiny suggested by the majority.
The next case which the majority believes supports its formulation of its “synthesis,” Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Union, 433 U.S. 119, 97 S.Ct. 2532, 53 L.Ed.2d 629 (1977), involved the solicitation of inmates by one another to join a prisoner’s union, which was not itself prohibited by authorities. The Court found the authorities’ restriction of inmate solicitation of other inmates, meetings between members of the union, and bulk mailings related to the union from outside sources did not violate the first amendment rights of prisoners. The Court stated that “[pjerhaps the most obvious of the First Amendment rights that are necessarily curtailed by confinement are associational rights that the First Amendment protects outside of prison walls____ [T]he inmate’s ‘status as a prisoner’ and the operational realities of a prison dictate restrictions on the associational rights among inmates.” 433 U.S. at 125-26, 97 S.Ct. at 2537-38.
As indicated by the Court, there is also, in terms of the strain on prison facilities, an obvious distinction between an exchange of personalized letters between two discrete individuals and indiscriminate bulk mailings to hordes of others. In Jones, the Court noted that “[m]ail rights are not themselves implicated; the only question respecting the mail is that of bulk mailings.” Id. at 130, 97 S.Ct. at 2540. The prisoners retained “other avenues of outside informational flow by the Union,” 12 so that “the prohibition on bulk mailing, reasonable in the absence of First Amendment considerations, remains reasonable.” Id. at 131, 97 S.Ct. at 2540.
The final case relied on by the majority, Bell v. Wolfish, reiterated previous principles addressed by the Court in the context of a prison rule requiring books and maga*1187zines sent from outside a penal institution to be sent directly to prisoners from the publisher or a book club. The Court enunciated four major principles derived from its previous cases: (1) prisoners do not forfeit all constitutional rights because of confinement in prison; (2) the purpose and rationale of the penal system necessarily means that prisoners are deprived of “many privileges and rights”; (3) among the proper goals of a penal system are the maintenance of “institutional security and preserving internal order and discipline”; (4) “[pjrison administrators ... should be accorded wide-ranging deference in the adoption and execution of policies and practices that in their judgment are needed to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security.” 441 U.S. at 545-47, 99 S.Ct. at 1877-78.
None of the principles reiterated in Bell v. Wolfish can be taken to the length suggested by the majority opinion. In the present case, there has been no showing that there are available alternative means of communication for the prisoner to communicate with a fellow prisoner on matters relating to post-conviction relief. Unlike Jones, which involved associational rights, inevitably restricted in a penal setting, a case where mail rights were only tangentially concerned, the present case directly involves such rights. Unlike Bell, where alternative means of receiving outside communications (directly from publishers or book clubs) were explicitly sanctioned by the regulation in question, there was no showing here that such communications could be made among prisoners in different institutions. Even by the majority’s standard — the “total denial of an inmate’s right to free speech” — the regulation may offend first amendment principles, since there was no showing that the regulation did not foreclose all means of communication. But even if that is not the case, I believe that, under previous Court precedent, the majority’s view of the first amendment rights of prisoners puts an impermissible burden on the exercise of such rights.

. 416 U.S. 396, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974).

. 417 U.S. 817, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974).

. 433 U.S. 119, 97 S.Ct. 2532, 53 L.Ed.2d 629 (1977).

. 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979).

. In Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. at 490, 89 S.Ct. at 751, the Court noted that "the State may impose reasonable restrictions and restraints upon the acknowledged propensity of prisoners to abuse both the giving and the seeking of assistance in the preparation of applications for relief____ But unless and until the State provides some reasonable alternative to assist inmates in the preparation of petitions for post conviction relief, it may not validly enforce a regulation such as that here in issue, barring inmates from furnishing such assistance to other prisoners.” Thus before the regulation here was deemed "reasonable” on grounds relating to prison discipline, the district court was required to conduct an inquiry whether it restricted inter-prisoner communication in such a way as to cut off the right of prisoners to assist one another in formulating post-petition conviction relief. There has been no showing here of actual or potential abuse.

. In the present case the record is not clear whether Vester could, in fact, communicate with a prisoner in another institution by any means other than the mails. The guideline in question flatly states that "[cjorrespondence [i.e., communication] shall not be permitted with inmates serving sentences in other institutions under the authority of the Department of Corrections unless the wardens/superintendents of the involved institutions determine that such correspondence is in the best interest of both the inmate and the institution.”

. It should be noted that the Court, contrary to the majority’s formulation of its test, does not state that all avenues of communication by prisoners be foreclosed, but rather that there be "other avenues" available to prisoners.