Court Opinion

ID: 9534569
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:41:02.958845+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:31:40.068991
License: Public Domain

KAUGER, Justice,
concurring in result in Part I; dissenting to Part II with whom HANSEN, S.J., joins.
I dissent from the majority’s requirement — that a pro se indigent prisoner must provide the court clerk with stamped self-addressed envelopes to receive file-stamped copies of his pleadings. This ignores the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 825, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 1496, 52 L.Ed.2d 72, 81 (1977). In Bounds the Court noted that the issue was whether States must protect the rights of prisoners
“It is indisputable that indigent inmates must be provided at state expense with paper and pen to draft legal documents, with notarial services to authenticate them, and with stamps to mail them. States must forego collection of docket fees otherwise payable to the treasury and expend funds for transcripts. State expenditures are necessary to pay lawyers for indigent defendants at trial.”
The majority overlooks the fact, that at least in this Court, the clerk often provides the postage to send file-stamped copies of pleadings to litigants who are not indigent. The majority also ignores the access to *1052courts provision of the Oklahoma Constitution art. 2 § 6.1 While the majority notes that prisoner’s approved stamp allowance is two postage stamps per month, we can take judicial notice that $0.58 will not allow timely mailing of a properly prepared petition in error. The opinion denies meaningful access to the courts of this state to this prisoner.
We noted in Woody v. State ex rel. Dept. of Corrections, 833 P.2d 257, 259 (Okla.1992), that a pro se prisoner is hampered in monitoring a lawsuit because the prisoner cannot travel to the court clerk’s office and make sure the pleading was filed. If the pleading is either not filed or untimely filed the prisoner ordinarily is unable to prove fault. Here the pro se indigent prisoner was attempting to monitor his lawsuit and to maintain a file to protect him from any alleged procedural errors. I would follow Bounds, uphold art. 2 § 6, and require the court clerk to furnish the stamps to mail copies of the file-stamped pleadings.

. Okla. Const, art. 2, § 6 provides:
"The courts of justice of the State shall be open to every person, and speedy and certain remedy afforded for every wrong and for every injury to person, property, or reputation; and right and justice shall be administered without sale, denial, delay, or prejudice."