Clark v. Hendrix

397 F. Supp. 966, 1975 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11554
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Georgia
DecidedJuly 7, 1975
DocketCiv. A. C74-27G
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 397 F. Supp. 966 (Clark v. Hendrix) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Clark v. Hendrix, 397 F. Supp. 966, 1975 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11554 (N.D. Ga. 1975).

Opinion

ORDER

O’KELLEY, District Judge.

This 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action is before the court on the plaintiff’s motion to *968 compel his production at trial and also to compel the production of a witness in his behalf. The cause of action in this suit arises from a time when the plaintiff was incarcerated in the Jackson County Correctional Institution and is one for which he seeks some $750,000 in monetary damages for the alleged denial of his constitutional rights by the named defendants. The plaintiff is presently a federal prisoner incarcerated at the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. The witness whose attendance he seeks is presently a state prisoner incarcerated in the Georgia State Prison at Reidsville, Georgia. Since the plaintiff is indigent and proceeding in forma pauper-is, he seeks to have the federal government bear all the expenses connected with this motion.

At the request of this court, the plaintiff is now being represented by Mr. Ernest V. Harris of the Georgia Legal Services Program. Mr. Harris has submitted an affidavit stating that in order for the plaintiff to receive a fair trial, the plaintiff must be in court and be able to testify personally and that it is equally necessary that the requested witness be present. The plaintiff essentially argues that he has a right to be brought to court and that he also has a right to have his witness produced for trial. The plaintiff does not cite any authority which would directly support his contention that he has such a right or that this court has the authority to order such production, but he relies on the principle that prisoners do not lose their right of access to the courts but that they retain their right to seek redress for their grievances even though they are incarcerated, citing Cruz v. Beto, 405 U.S. 319, 92 S.Ct. 1079, 31 L.Ed.2d 263 (1972); Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 89 S.Ct. 747, 21 L.Ed.2d 718 (1969).

Cruz held that the district court had erred in dismissing the complaint of a prisoner who alleged “that he was not allowed to use the prison chapel, that he was prohibited from writing to his religious advisor, and that he was placed in solitary confinement for sharing his religious material with other prisoners.” 405 U.S. at 319, 92 S.Ct. 1079. The Court said that while prison officials had wide latitude in the administration of prison affairs, prisoners did have the right of access to the courts to seek redress for their grievances about the administration of the prison. Johnson held that Tennessee could not absolutely bar inmates from furnishing assistance to other prisoners in preparing petitions for post-conviction relief in the absence of some alternative for prisoners who were unable to prepare their own petitions. Each of these cases involved a situation where the prisoner sought to air a complaint about his confinement. See Andrade v. Hauck, 452 F.2d 1071 (5th Cir. 1971), where the Fifth Circuit noted that the fourteenth amendment protected “the right of prisoners to seek access to the courts for consideration of claims concerning the conditions of their incarceration.” Id. at 1072 (emphasis supplied). Unlike the above cases, the plaintiff in this action does not complain about the conditions of his present confinement, nor does he seek any relief with respect to such confinement. Rather, the plaintiff seeks monetary damages in the sum of $750,000 in a civil suit for deprivations which were alleged to have occurred with respect to some earlier confinement. The Fifth Circuit has held that prisoners do not have an absolute right to file any civil action they desire and upheld a prison rule prohibiting the filing of any civil action unrelated to their personal liberty. Tabor v. Hardwick, 224 F.2d 526 (5th Cir. 1955), cert. denied, 350 U.S. 971, 76 S.Ct. 445, 100 L.Ed. 843 (1956). See also Kirby v. Thomas, 336 F.2d 462 (6th Cir. 1964). While prisoners do retain their right of access to the courts, this does not necessarily mean that a prisoner has some inherent constitutional right to appear personally at a hearing or at a trial with respect to the civil suit which he has *969 filed. McKinney v. Boyle, 447 F.2d 1091 (9th Cir. 1971); Potter v. McCall, 433 F.2d 1087 (9th Cir. 1970); Armstrong v. Rushing, 352 F.2d 836 (9th Cir. 1965) ; cf. Edgerly v. Kennelly, 215 F.2d 420 (7th Cir. 1954). The Supreme Court very succinctly stated this principle in the case of Price v. Johnston, 334 U.S. 266, 285-86, 68 S.Ct. 1049, 1060, 92 L.Ed. 1356 (1948) :

Lawful incarceration brings about the necessary withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights, a retraction justified by the considerations underlying our penal system. Among those so limited is the otherwise unqualified right given by § 272 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. § 394 [now 28 U.S.C. § 1654] to parties in all courts of the United States to “plead and manage their own causes personally.”

It is thus clear that the plaintiff in this action has no right to have a lawfully incarcerated prisoner produced as a witness at his civil trial for damages, nor does plaintiff have a right to be present himself. This is not to say, however, that a prisoner-plaintiff is totally foreclosed from having such witnesses in every circumstance—in situations where the court has jurisdiction over the potential witnesses it could undoubtedly exercise its discretion in a proper case and have such witnesses produced at trial.

To have the witnesses produced in this case as the plaintiff requests, the proper avenue for obtaining such relief is not through a motion to compel their production but is through the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 2241.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
397 F. Supp. 966, 1975 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11554, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/clark-v-hendrix-gand-1975.