HOLT v. HUTTO - THE SUPREME COURT ADDRESSES THE DARK & EVIL WORLD - Law - http://maxpages.com/arklaw/Holt_v_Hutto_Part

Document 4 of 4.

Lawrence J. HOLT et al., Petitioners, v. Terrell Don HUTTO, Commissioner of Correction, State of Arkansas, et al.,
Respondentsof

No. PB-69-C-24, 33 related cases

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS, PINE BLUFF DIVISION

363 F. Supp. 194; 1973 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12312

August 13, 1973

JUDGES: [**1]

Henley, Chief Judge.

OPINIONBY: HENLEY

OPINION: [*197] MEMORANDUM OPINION

Henley, Chief Judge.

These 34 individual and class actions have been brought by Arkansas convicts against the members of the Arkansas State Board of Correction, Terrell Don Hutto, the Arkansas Commissioner of Correction who administers the prisons within the jurisdiction of the Arkansas Department of Correction, and certain lesser prison officials. Petitioners are inmates of the Cummins Unit of the Department which is located in Lincoln County, Arkansas, and of the Tucker Intermediate Reformatory located in
Jefferson County.

While different individual inmates naturally complain about different things, petitioners as a class contend that in spite of previous decrees and opinions of this Court conditions in and practices at both of the institutions that have been mentioned are such as to render the confinement of human beings there a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. They also complain of racial discrimination and make a number of other complaints which will be mentioned in due course. Respondents deny that the complaints [**2] have merit. n1

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n1 While some of these cases name lower echelon prison personnel as respondents, the term "respondents" as herein used refers to the members of the Board of Correction, the Commissioner of Correction, and the respective superintendents of the Tucker Intermediate Reformatory (Tucker) and the Cummins Unit (Cummins). Those individuals are, of course, responsible within limits for the conduct of their subordinates, and the subordinates are bound by orders of this Court affecting their superiors.

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In 1969 this Court granted a measure of injunctive relief to the inmates of Cummins. Holt v. Sarver, Commissioner of Correction, E.D. Ark. 1969, 300 F. Supp. 825 (Holt I). The litigation continued into 1970 and was extended to include the Tucker Unit and to bring in numerous inmate petitioners. After extensive hearings, the Court found that conditions and practices at both institutions were such as to render the confinement of a human being in either one of them a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited [**3] by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Holt v. Sarver, E.D. Ark. 1970, 309 F. Supp. 362 (Holt II).

The Court entered a decree declaring the constitutionality of the prisons and specifically enjoined the continuation of what was left of racial segregation at both institutions. Jurisdiction of the case was retained, and respondents were directed to file a report setting out what they proposed to do to [*198] bring the Department up to constitutional standards.

Respondents appealed, and the Court's decision was affirmed. Holt v. Sarver, 8 Cir., 1971, 442 F.2d 304. This Court was directed to retain jurisdiction of the prisons at least for a time.

Progress reports were filed by respondents from time to time in 1970 and 1971. On December 30, 1971, the Court, after hearings, filed a Supplemental Decree which amplified and made more specific in certain respects its earlier decree. Jurisdictionwas again retained.

The Court continued to receive numerous inmate complaints in 1972, and on September 8 of that year the Court filed a Memorandum Opinion and entered an order permitting a number of such complaints to be filed under the provisions [**4]of 42 U.S.C.A., section 1983, read in connection with 28 U.S.C.A., section 1343(3). The later cases were consolidated with the earlier ones, and hearings were held in November and December, 1972, and in January 1973. The inmates as a class have been represented ably by Messrs. Jack Holt, Jr. and Philip E. Kaplan of the Little Rock Bar, both serving by Court appointment since 1970. Respondents have been represented by members of the staff of the Attorney General of Arkansas and by Mr. Ted Boswell of Little Rock and Bryant, Arkansas, who was employed by some of the respondents as special counsel.

This litigation today stands in a posture quite different from that in which it stood in 1969 and 1970. In those years the Court was dealing with officially prescribed or sanctioned conditions and practices which were claimed to be unconstitutional, and the controlling facts were essentially undisputed. Today, most of the practices and conditions alleged by petitioners to exist and of which they complain are not officially approved or sanctioned, and a number of them are specifically prohibited by rules and regulations of the Department which appear in the Department's Inmate Handbook [**5] and Employee Handbook, copies of which are in the record. Additionally, controlling facts are sharply disputed in many areas.

Inmate complaints extend over practically the entire spectrum of prison life, and in trying to resolve the disputed factual issues the Court has encountered in full measure the credibility problems inherent in litigation of this kind. In resolving the issues of fact before it, the Court has done the best that it could, employing in that connection its own common sense and its experience with the Department which extends over a period of at least eight years, n2 and which has involved the reading of literally hundreds of inmate complaints or "writs."

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n2 It was in 1965 that the Court decided Talley v. Stephens, Superintendent of the Arkansas State Penitentiary, E.D. Ark., 1965, 247 F. Supp. 683.

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From its consideration of the evidence as a whole, the Court finds ultimately that none of the individual petitioners, as individuals, have shown that they are entitled to specific equitable relief. [**6] But, the Court further finds that notwithstanding significant progress and improvements that have been made at both Cummins and Tucker, some problem areas of constitutional significance continue to exist, and that the inmates as a class stand in need of some additional injunctive relief, and that respondents need to be admonished about a number of things.

I.

To accentuate the positive, the Court will say first that as a result of changing attitudes and efforts on the part of the Arkansas Legislature, the present Governor of Arkansas and his predecessor, the Board of Correction, incumbent Commissioner of Correction, Terrell Don Hutto, and his predecessor, C. Robert Sarver, and some of Mr. Hutto's subordinates, the Arkansas prison system is simply not the same system that existed in 1969 and 1970 and in prior years.

[*199] To start with the iniquitous "trusty system" described in detail in
Holt I and Holt II, supra, has essentially been dismantled. Free world personnel have replaced the trusties in positions of authority throughout both prisons. While there are still a few trusty guards, they do not represent the threat to ordinary inmates that they have done in years past, [**7] and the Court is confident that the few that remain will soon be phased out.

Writing in prior years, the Court was gravely concerned with the risk that inmates confined in barracks ran of homosexual or deadly assaults by other inmates. While the barracks are still seriously overcrowded, and while addditional housing facilities are still needed, particularly at Cummins, and while inmate assaults on other inmates and fights between inmates still occur, as they do in all prisons, the problem is not what it was in former days.

Since Holt II was written, the Department has constructed a maximum security unit at Cummins in which are housed the most dangerous and unstable inmates, and they are thus removed from the general and more tractable prison population. It appears to the Court that somewhat less than 10 percent of the total population of Cummins is confined in the maximum security unit, and a very large portion of the complaints that the Court receives come from the inmates of the unit, a fact which is not without significance.

As its name implies, Tucker is a reformatory type institution, and it has an advancing program of education and training for its comparatively young and [**8] unhardened inmates. Tucker is a much smaller institutionthan Cummins; its population is generally a little over 300 as compared to an average population at Cummins of some 1100 or 1200 inmates. Prior to the 1972-73 hearings the Court received substantial numbers of complaints from the inmates of Tucker; however, during the last few months section 1983 complaints from Tucker inmates have become almost nonexistent.

There is a limited program of vocational and educational training available at Cummins, but inmate participation therein is not as encouraging as that at Tucker. That, however, is explainable by reference to a number of factors, including ages, dispositions, and criminal records of many of the inmates of Cummins.

The Department has recently acquired law libraries for the use of inmates at both institutions, and the Court finds that those libraries are adequate for legitimate inmate purposes, and that rules for the use of the libraries are not unreasonable. The Department has also employed a lawyer who serves full time as Legal Adviser for the inmates at both institutions, and he is of substantial assistance to them in connection with many of their legal problems, although [**9] he is not in a position to assist them when they come into conflict or controversy with prison personnel.

A third institution administered by the Department but not directly involved in this particular phase of the overall prison litigation is the Women's State Reformatory presently located on the same tract of State owned lands as is the Cummins Unit where male prisoners are confined. The Women's Reformatory houses a small number of female inmates. It has given some constitutional trouble in the past. However, the Court has had no complaints about it for months. It is capably administered by a Negro matron or Superintendent, and it appears to be a constitutionally tolerable institution. It is to be moved from its present location to a new site near the City of Pine Bluff, and initial phases of construction of the new facility are now under way.

In pointing out significant improvements that have been made at both institutions the Court does not overlook the fact that serious deficiencies, whether constitutional or not, exist at both Cummins and Tucker. Contributing factors to those deficiencies, some of which will be mentioned, are lack of funds and the [*200] rural locations [**10] of both institutions a substantial distance by road away from each other.

While many inmates have complained that they have been intentionally denied medical and dental services which it was within the power of the Department to provide, the Court does not so find. And it appears to the Court that many of the inmate complaints have stemmed from the fact that they were not treated as quickly or cured as rapidly as they desired or were not given the quantity or quality of medication that they wanted. A great many people in the free world would have the same complaints.

The Court finds that the Department has done the best that it could in the area of medical services with the resources at its command. That is not to say, however, that deficiencies have not existed and do not continue to exist. As of the date upon which the hearings were closed, the Department had never had a full time physician whose services were available to inmates. Inmates were treated by paramedical personnel who generally had to work without the direct supervision of a doctor. Inmates in need of hospitalization were, and still are, carried to Little Rock or Pine Bluff for treatment. Dental services apparently [**11] are largely limited to extractions and the supplying of false teeth.

Since the hearings closed, the Department has been able to employ a full time physician, and his services should be quite helpful. However, his services alone will not by any means solve all of the medical problems of the Department.

One serious problem is that a number of inmates are mentally ill or emotionallydisturbed and probably should not be in a penal institution at all. Unfortunately, a viable alternative to their confinement in the Department does not exist in Arkansas today since the Arkansas State Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Little Rock will not care for them except when they are violent. Some ofthese people are extremely dangerous to themselves and to their keepers and other inmates and tend to keep other inmates in states of unrest and excitement.

Apart from mentally ill inmates, there are also some inmates who have serious and chronic physical ailments which render confinement in an ordinary penal institution undesirable, but, again, there is no viable alternative existing today. The problem is complicated by the fact that the Arkansas State Sanatorium at Booneville, an institution for [**12] the treatment of tuberculosis, has now been closed. It goes without saying that prison inmates who are active tuberculars or who have other infectious or contagious diseases must be segregated from other inmates, and the Court assumes that respondents can and will work out methods whereby such segregation can be effected.

Kitchen and sanitary facilities at Tucker stand in serious need of improvement, and improvements are contemplated. Improvements are also needed at Cummins. The overcrowding of the barracks should be eliminated or mitigated, and there is a strong need for a minimum security unit at Cummins.

In the course of the hearings the Court heard some testimony involving complaints about clothing issues, and after the hearings were closed a number of inmates of Barracks No. 7 at Cummins submitted a complaint about alleged insufficiencies of issues of underwear and about inadequate laundry facilities. The Court denied that petition summarily but stated that it would take up the matter of clothing in this opinion.

The Court does not find that clothing issues and issues of footwear are seriously deficient. Of course, shortages of particular items occur from time to time, [**13] and laundry service may be deficient from time to time. It might also be observed that at times inmates are careless with their clothing, and at times steal items of clothing from other inmates.

The deficiencies that have been mentioned and others like them call for [*201] correction, but they are not such, in the Court's opinion, as to render confinement today at either Cummins or Tucker unconstitutional. The main problem at both institutions from a constitutional standpoint lies in prison administration. The quality of the Department's personnel at both institutions is seriously deficient, and the Court is convinced that that deficiency lies at the root of most of the serious problems in the Department.

Commissioner Hutto, A.L. Lockhart, Superintendent at Cummins, R.G. Britton, Superintendent at Tucker, and some of their subordinates came to the Department from the Texas Penal System. Cecil Boren, Associate Superintendent at Cummins, did not come from Texas and, indeed, was an employee of the Department when C. Robert Sarver was Commissioner. Those four men, plus a very few others, make up the top echelon of the administration of the prisons; they are, so to speak, the [**14] "management" of the institutions. Lower ranking employees grade down through tables of organization to the lowest grade of ordinary guard.

With some reservations as to particular individuals, the Court finds that Messrs. Hutto, Lockhart, Britton, and Boren are qualified for their jobs, and the Court thinks that up to a point at least they are trying to do good jobs and to run an efficient, reasonably humane, and constitutional prison system.

The Court cannot say as much for lower echelon personnel as a class. Those employees have in general been recruited locally; they are poorly paid by modern standards; they have had little training or experience; many of them are uncultured and poorly educated; some of them are quite young, perhaps too young to be in position of authority over convicts; some of them are quick tempered. If one adjective is to be used to describe them, it would be "unprofessional."

From top to bottom the personnel of the Department are predominantly white notwithstanding the fact that the inmate population of both institutions is approximately 50 percent black. There are very few black employees, and with one or two exceptions there are no blacks in positions [**15] of any real authority at either institution. Important as the Classification Committees and Disciplinary Committees at both institutions are, there has been, except for perhaps a few isolated instances, no black representation on those Committees.

A prison staff and the population of the prison naturally react on each other. Ignoring distinctions between Cummins and Tucker, inmates of the Department are not only racially mixed; they also differ greatly in ages, cultural levels, dispositions, criminal records, intelligence, education, training, and experience. Most of them, indeed the great majority of them, had extremely poor work records in the outside world. And, they have carried into the prisons with them the same weaknesses and deficiencies that they had in the outside world and that got them into prison in the first place. With particular regard to the black inmates as a group, it is probably safe to say that they are drawn from the lower strata of the black population. As a class, they are neither well educated nor industrious; and they appear to be highly suspicious of those in authority over them. Some have difficulty in communicating intelligently, particularly under [**16] conditions of stress.

The personnel that have been described and the inmate population that has been described are in day to day contact within the abrasive atmosphere of penal institutions. Given the quality of the personnel and the quality of the inmates, the contacts between them will inevitably produce friction, stress, unrest, and at times violence.

With certain exceptions to be mentioned the Court finds that if the prescribed rules and regulations of the Department were in fact administered conscientiously and with reasonable efficiency [*202] and with appropriate supervision by higher echelon prison employees, it would not have any real constitutional problem with either Cummins or Tucker. Unfortunately, the Court is not able to find that the declared policies and prescribed rules and regulations of the Department are in fact being carried out conscientiously and effectively, and, on the contrary, the Court is persuaded that the Department's policies, rules, and regulations are not being carried out properly in some significant areas.

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