Nordgren v. MitchellNordgren v. Mitchell
- Reporters:
- ,
- Before:
- Logan
The appellants are defendants in paternity actions filed in the Utah state courts. Utah’s method of resolving paternity disputes is similar to the Connecticut system described in Little v. Streater, 452 U.S. 1, 101 S.Ct. 2202, 68 L.Ed.2d 627 (1981). When Utah’s department of social services pays child support benefits, it becomes the
Each of the appellants is an inmate in the Utah State Prison and we assume each is indigent.2 Each appellant filed a motion in his state court paternity case requesting that counsel be appointed to represent him at public expense. The state courts denied these motions. Appellant Nordgren attempted an interlocutory appeal which the Utah Supreme Court refused to grant. Thereafter, the appellants filed this § 1983 action seeking to have the federal district court order the state to provide counsel. The district court 524 F.Supp. 242, granted summary judgment for the State of Utah on stipulated facts. The only issue on appeal is whether the Due Process Clause or the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the state to provide counsel for indigent inmates in paternity proceedings initiated by the state and the mother. For purposes of this appeal the state admits that the Utah State Prison law library is not adequate to provide the legal materials needed to defend paternity actions and that no free legal assistance is available through the prison or through outside legal service organizations to aid prisoners in defending paternity actions.
A man who loses a paternity action does not as a direct consequence of that decision face an immediate loss of physical liberty. Therefore, the scope of an indigent’s right to counsel in a paternity suit is determined by the two-step analysis enunciated in Lassiter v. Department of Social Services, 452 U.S. 18, 25-27, 101 S.Ct. 2153, 2158-60, 68 L.Ed.2d 640 (1981). The court must first determine whether the due process evaluation contained in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335, 96 S.Ct. 893, 903, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976), demands the presence of counsel. Then the court must “set [the] net weight [of the Eldridge balance] in the scales against the presumption that there is a right to appointed counsel only where the indigent, if he is unsuccessful, may lose his personal freedom.” Lassiter, 452 U.S. at 27, 101 S.Ct. at 2159.
In Eldridge, the Court set forth the following test for determining when the Due Process Clause demands a certain procedural safeguard:
“[Identification of the specific dictates of due process generally requires consideration of three distinct factors: First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government’s interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.”
424 U.S. at 335, 96 S.Ct. at 903. In weighing these factors in the instant case we are guided by the Supreme Court’s decision in
In Little, the Court declared that the putative father’s interests in paternity proceedings are compelling:
“The private interests implicated here are substantial. Apart from the putative father’s pecuniary interest in avoiding a substantial support obligation and liberty interest threatened by the possible sanctions for noncompliance, at issue is the creation of a parent-child relationship. This Court frequently has stressed the importance of familial bonds, whether or not legitimized by marriage, and accorded them constitutional protection. See Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 651-652 [92 S.Ct. 1208, 1212-13, 31 L.Ed.2d 551] (1972). Just as the termination of such bonds demands procedural fairness, see Lassiter v. Department of Social Services, post, p. 18 [101 S.Ct. p. 2153], so too does their imposition. Through the judicial process, the State properly endeavors to identify the father of a child born out of wedlock and to make him responsible for the child’s maintenance. Obviously, both the child and the defendant in a paternity action have a compelling interest in the accuracy of such a determination.”
Id. at 13, 101 S.Ct. at 2209 (footnote omitted).
Assessing the extent to which the provision of a lawyer to indigent inmates would enhance the fairness and reliability of the paternity procedure is more difficult. The Utah statute provides that the judge in a paternity case is obligated to order blood tests, see
In many cases that continue past the blood-test stage, the proceedings are likely to be uncomplicated. The defendant may have lived with the child’s mother for a long time in a monogamous relationship that may even have produced other children. Nevertheless, complex cases may arise for which legal services are important. Utah law requires exoneration of the defendant unless the blood tests, or expert opinion based upon blood tests, indicate that the defendant could be the father.4 While these tests apparently have great accuracy in eliminating a man as the father, they cannot prove that he is the father. Thus, if the blood tests fail to rule out the accused man difficult legal, medical, and scientific questions may arise in the trial. The putative father may wish to challenge the testing procedures or the validity of the results. Such a challenge can involve investigation of the procedures, presentation of expert testimony, cross-examination of the state’s experts, and sophisticated legal arguments on admissibility. See
Because of the admitted inadequacy of the prison library, indigent inmates of the Utah State Prison are unable to perform even the most rudimentary legal or medical research for purposes of discovery or trial to which persons on the outside have at least theoretical access. And because the men are incarcerated, their ability to perform even elementary factual investigations that may be critical to their cases is virtually foreclosed. Furthermore, in Utah paternity cases, government lawyers, with all the resources of education, research, and investigation that normally pertain to their offices, advocate both the interests of the mother and the interests of the state. Compare Lassiter, 452 U.S. at 29, 101 S.Ct. at 2160-61 (state “sometimes represented at termination hearings by social workers instead of by lawyers”). This imbalance of litigative power makes the restrictions on the ability of indigent inmates to defend these actions even more consequential. We are convinced that the provision of counsel in cases that proceed after the blood tests have been taken would help ensure the correctness of paternity determinations.
The final Eldridge factor is the state’s interest in the proceeding. The state has a recognized interest in the welfare and financial support of a child receiving public assistance. Little, 452 U.S. at 14, 101 S.Ct. at 2209. It also has an interest in resolving paternity as inexpensively as possible. Of course, the state shares with the mother, the child, and the defendant the interest in resolving paternity accurately. The presence of a lawyer can enhance the efficiency of a paternity proceeding and, as we have noted, the accuracy of the result. Providing a lawyer would raise the cost of the proceeding, but the Supreme Court’s comments in Lassiter are instructive:
“But though the state’s pecuniary interest is legitimate, it is hardly significant enough to overcome private interests as important as those here, particularly in light of the concession in the respondent’s brief that the ‘potential costs of appointed counsel in termination proceedings ... is [sic] admittedly de minimis compared to the costs in all criminal actions.’ ”
452 U.S. at 28, 101 S.Ct. at 2160. Utah’s interest in monetary savings cannot outweigh the strong private interests of the putative father, the shared interests of all the parties, and the substantial procedural fairness achieved by providing a lawyer for the indigent inmate. An analysis of the Eldridge factors weighs in favor of providing counsel for indigent inmates at the Utah State Prison in paternity cases that proceed after completion of blood tests.
The next analytical step is to determine whether the conclusion dictated by the Eldridge factors outweighs the “presumption that there is no right to appointed counsel in the absence of at least a potential deprivation of liberty.” Lassiter, 452 U.S. at 31, 101 S.Ct. at 2161. We must determine whether a Utah paternity suit involves a potential deprivation of liberty. Like the Connecticut paternity actions at issue in Little, Utah paternity suits “have ‘quasi-criminal’ overtones.” 452 U.S. at 10, 101 S.Ct. at 2207. Paternity actions brought on behalf of children receiving welfare benefits are really brought at the behest of the state, not just at the request of the mother. The actions are prosecuted by a county attorney or other government prosecutor. The state’s involvement in establishing paternity and support obligations of indigent inmates indicates that the paternity actions differ, from ordinary civil actions. Cf. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 344, 83 S.Ct. 792, 796, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963) (presence of prosecutors one indication of need for defense lawyers); compare Lassiter, 452 U.S. at 29, 101 S.Ct. at 2160-61. Once the defendant is found to be the father an immediate support obligation arises, for both past and future support.
Since defendants in paternity suits do not face deprivation of liberty, there is a presumption that they do not have a right to appointed counsel. We must balance that presumption against the weight of the Eldridge factors. Our conclusion parallels the Supreme Court’s conclusion in Lassiter, 452 U.S. at 18, 101 S.Ct. at 2155. We can imagine complicated paternity suits in which the risks of error would be high enough that the presumption against the right to appointed counsel would be overcome. But we hold that the Due Process Clause does not require Utah to appoint counsel for all indigent prisoners who are defendants in paternity cases.
The appellants’ equal protection argument is that Utah’s prosecution of paternity suits against indigent inmates denies the inmates “fundamental rights to privacy in matters of family life and meaningful ac
AFFIRMED.
Notes
. Utah participates in a federal program providing reimbursement of a large part of the cost of operating a state’s child support plan on the condition that the state undertake to establish the paternity of children receiving aid. See
. The appellees’ brief asserts that two of the appellants have been paroled and that one of the parolees is not indigent. Those facts are not contained in the appellate record and so we treat all appellants as indigent prisoners.
. At oral argument counsel questioned whether uncounseled prisoners would know enough to demand their right to the blood tests. Given the statutory obligations cited above and the holding in this case, we doubt that this presents a real problem.
. The Utah statute provides:
“If the court finds that the conclusions of all experts, as disclosed by the evidence based upon the tests, are that the alleged father is not the father of the child, the question of paternity shall be resolved accordingly. If the experts disagree in their findings or conclusions, the question shall be submitted upon all the evidence. If the experts conclude that the blood tests show the possibility of the alleged father’s paternity, admission of this evidence is within the discretion of the court, depending upon the infrequency of the blood type.”
. For example, the Utah Supreme Court, after a lengthy and legally complex discussion of scientific evidence, established a set of standards to guide the discretion of trial courts in determining the admissibility of the results of HLA blood tests, one of the tests discussed in Little, in paternity actions. A trial court must consider:
“(1) the correctness of the genetic principles underlying the test for determining paternity; (2) the accuracy and reliability of the methods utilized in application of the principle to determine paternity; (3) the effect of variables such as occur in persons of different nationalities or ethnic origins that would influence the accuracy of the test; (4) other factors that might tend to invalidate the test or significantly change the probability of accuracy; (5) establishing that the actual method employed and the particular test used in a given case were performed in accordance with proper procedures and with proper materials and equipment; and (6) the qualifications of the necessary witnesses.”
Phillips v. Jackson, 615 P.2d 1228, 1235 (Utah 1980) (footnote omitted). The court noted that “[p]ublished articles and books may also be used as evidence supporting points (1) and (2).” Id. at 1235 n. 8. It is readily apparent that uncounseled indigent inmates, whose access to books and articles is severely hampered, whose scientific knowledge is likely to be limited, and whose ability to discover and advocate a legal position on any of these six elements is likely to be minimal, are unlikely to be able to effectively argue for admission of favorable test results or against admission of unfavorable ones.