855 F.2d 874 | D.C. Cir. | 1988
Lead Opinion
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge ROBINSON.
Concurring Statement filed by Circuit Judge STARR.
This case is yet another chapter in the long and unfortunate history of efforts to control overcrowding and improve conditions in the prison system of the District of Columbia.
I.The Background
On August 20, 1980, appellees, a class of inmates confined at Central, brought an action challenging as unconstitutional the conditions at the facility. After extensive discovery and negotiations, the parties reached agreement, the terms of which were incorporated into a consent decree, approved and entered by the District Court on April 28, 1982, which prescribed various improvements in the conditions at Central.
The consent decree established a procedure for monitoring the District’s compliance,
Since issuance of the decree, the District has periodically been out of compliance with its provisions, and counsel for the inmates have made several trips to the District Court to enforce its terms. The instant case was the upshot of one such journey, which occurred after the District in July, 1987, began to exceed the population maximum. At that time, Occoquan, another Lorton facility, was also under a court-imposed population restriction, and the Lorton administrators found it necessary to alleviate overcrowding at Occoquan by transferring some inmates incarcerated there to Central.
II. The DistRict’s Contentions
The District maintains that the contempt adjudication is infirm because it lacks essential factual findings. The District insists that a significant increase in the number of inmates in the prison system has made it impossible to conform to the maximum-population specification, and that this constitutes a complete defense to the contempt charge. The District complains that this defense was rejected without benefit of specific findings on the issue.
The District also presses two additional arguments. First, the District asserts that a contempt adjudication was not an appropriate remedy because appellees ignored the negotiation procedure set out in the decree and went straight into court upon notification that Central’s inmate population was excessive. Second, the District asserts that the maximum-population specification was never intended to be an absolute limit, but only a target figure which both parties knew might be impossible to maintain.
III. The Terms of the Decree
We may readily dispose to the District’s arguments respecting appellees’ alleged circumvention of the decree’s negotiation provisions and the proper interpretation of the maximum-population specification. The decree explicitly conferred upon appel-lees the prerogative to go directly into court if, in their counsel’s estimation, noncompliance posed “imminent danger to the health or safety of [Central] residents.”
Contrary to the District’s strained interpretation, it is clear that the maximum-population specification was designed as an absolute ceiling, violation of which would subject the District to a contempt charge. If this was not manifest from the original language of the decree, two subsequent amendments negated any uncertainty. The first prescribed that “[the District] shall reduce the total population of Central to the adjusted rated capacity established [by the decree],” and imposed automatic monetary sanctions for failure to comply within 90 days.
IV.Findings of Fact and the Impossibility Defense
The District Court unquestionably had power to hold the District of Columbia in civil contempt for violations of the consent decree.
After hearing argument on this point, the District Court orally acknowledged that prison officials had encountered “a very difficult time”
[T]his has all been happening over the years. It hasn’t suddenly occurred overnight. It was the duty of the District of Columbia to prevent its happening and to cope with it. And they haven’t done so.16
The court then announced that it would hold the District in contempt.
We have repeatedly stressed the need for findings of fact when a colorable claim of impossibility is presented as a defense to a contempt motion.
First, although rulings on contempt motions fall within the requirements of Civil Procedure Rule 52(a) that district courts “find the facts specifically and state separately [their] conclusions of law,”
The District has for years been aware of recurrent overcrowding in its prisons, and has not taken steps adequate to eradicate the problem. The lengthy duration of this litigation and the frequency of inmates’ resorts to the courts suggest a degree of intransigence on the District’s part. Furthermore, the District has failed to build a sorely-needed new prison facility, or even to utilize fully the less burdensome measures available to it. No new halfway house space was added between September, 1986 and December, 1987.
Second, findings of fact are necessary only if a colorable claim of impossibility is presented. In the case at bar, the District urges a novel use of the defense. Heretofore, it has been invoked largely in circumstances in which it was literally impossible for a party to accomplish the court-ordered action — for example, where the litigant is financially unable to comply with a court order.
The record before us does not support the contention that it is impossible, in the traditional sense of the term, for the District to comply with the population ceiling. The District may well face political difficulties that prompt it to shun acquisition of the additional facilities needed to house the constantly increasing prison population, or dissuade it from taking other action to accommodate the overflow. Conditions such as these, however, do not establish a lack of power to alleviate the overcrowding, even if that means release of or refusal to accept prisoners. Since the contempt order under review may well have the intended effect of forcing the District to comply with the decree, it is not appropriate to countenance the District’s disobedience.
In a similar situation, the Second Circuit refused to extend the impossibility defense to prison officials who had failed to abide by a court-ordered population cap.
We do not gainsay the difficulty of the District’s task. We share, however, the District Court’s sentiment, albeit obliquely expressed, that the limits of judicial tolerance have been reached. It is our hope that, confronted by the prospect of heavy fines, the District will at last face up to its responsibilities and proceed to meet the obligations to which it agreed in the decree.
Affirmed.
. The District maintains a Central Detention facility — better known as the "D.C. jail” — within its territorial boundaries, and a prison complex located in Lorton, Virginia. Three actions, each involving a distinct Lorton unit, have been consolidated in the District Court: Doe v. District of Columbia, Civ. No. 79-1726 (D.D.C.) (Maximum Security facility); Twelve John Does v. District of Columbia, Civ. No. 80-2136 (D.D.C.) (from which this appeal stems) (Central facility); and Inmates of Occoquan v. Barry, Civ. No. 86-2128 (D.D.C.) (three Occoquan facilities). There also have been challenges to conditions at the D.C. jail. Inmates of D.C. Jail v. Jackson, Civ. No. 75-1668 (D.D.C.) and Campbell v. McGruder, Civ. No. 77-1462 (D.D.C.). This court has previ
.Final Settlement and Consent Decree, Twelve John Does v. District of Columbia, Civ. No. 80-2136 (D.D.C. Apr. 28, 1982), Appendix for Appellants (A. App.) 35-93 [hereinafter Consent Decree],
. Id. at 54, A. App. 88.
. Id.; see also Does I, supra note 1, 268 U.S.App. D.C. at 316-317, 841 F.2d at 1141-1142.
. Consent Decree, supra note 2, at 55-56, A. App. 89-90.
. Id. at 55-56, 57-58, A. App. 89-90, 91-92.
. Id. at 58, A. App. 92.
. The population cap set for Occoquan was eventually overturned by this court. Inmates of Occoquan v. Barry, supra note 1.
. Plaintiffs’ Motion for Finding of Contempt and Imposition of Sanctions, Twelve John Does v. District of Columbia, Civ. No. 80-2136, A. App. 94.
. Twelve John Does v. District of Columbia, No. 80-2136 (D.D.C. July 30, 1987) (order), A. App. 126.
. Consent Decree, supra note 2, at 58, A. App. 92.
. Consent Decree Amending Final Settlement Agreement and Consent Decree, Twelve John Does v. District of Columbia, Civ. No. 80-2136 (D.D.C. Aug. 18, 1983) at 8-9, Appellees Appendix (Ae. App.) 84-85.
. Consent Decree Amending Final Settlement Agreement and Consent Decree of December 17, 1982 and The Amended Decree of August 18, 1983, Twelve John Does v. District of Columbia, Civ. No. 80-2136 (D.D.C. Mar. 4, 1985) at 8, Ae. App. 152.
. See 18 U.S.C. § 401(3) (1982); Interdynamics, Inc. v. Firma Wolf, Inc., 653 F.2d 93, 97 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1092, 102 S.Ct. 658, 70 L.Ed.2d 631 (1981); Combs v. Ryan's Coal
. Transcript, Proceedings of July 30, 1987, at 66, A. App. 281.
. Id. at 66-67, A. App. 281-282.
. Id. at 67, A. App. 282.
. See Twelve John Does v. District of Columbia, Civ. No. 80-2136 (D.D.C. July 30, 1987) (order & memorandum), A. App. 121.
. Tinsley v. Mitchell, 256 U.S.App.D.C. 225, 227, 804 F.2d 1254, 1256 (1986); SEC v. Ormond Drug & Chem. Co., 238 U.S.App.D.C. 264, 266-267, 739 F.2d 654, 656-657 (1984); WMATA v. Amalgamated Transit Union, 174 U.S.App.D.C. 285, 289, 531 F.2d 617, 621 (1976).
. Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a).
. Clark v. Marsh, 214 U.S.App.D.C. 350, 354, 665 F.2d 1168, 1172 (1981).
. Id. at 354, 665 F.2d at 1172 (quoting Swanson v. Levy, 509 F.2d 859, 861 (9th Cir.1975)); accord Louie v. United States, 776 F.2d 819, 823 (9th Cir.1985).
. See Transcript Proceedings of Dec. 17, 1987, at 12-13, Ae. App. 318-319.
. D.C. Code Ann. § 24-902 (1988 Supp.).
. See, e.g., Tinsley v. Mitchell, supra note 19; SEC v. Ormond Drug & Chem. Co., supra note 19.
. Maggio v. Zeitz, 333 U.S. 56, 69, 68 S.Ct. 401, 408, 92 L.Ed. 476, 487 (1948) (contempt appropriate "only when it appears that obedience is within the power of the party being coerced by the order").
. Badgley v. Santacroce, 800 F.2d 33 (2d Cir.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1067, 107 S.Ct. 955, 93 L.Ed.2d 1003 (1987).
. Id. at 37.
. Id.
. The District's argument that the conditions at Central do not implicate the Eighth Amendment is of no avail. The District voluntarily agreed to the terms of the consent decree in lieu of litigating the constitutional issues raised by appellees’ complaint. The requirements of the decree, not the Eighth Amendment, are the measure of the District's responsibilities. The District cannot unilaterally alter the terms of the decree in its endeavor to erect a defense to the contempt motion.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring:
I concur fully in Judge Robinson’s opinion for the court. Prison litigation continues to befall the District Court with regularity, as revealed by both the daily newspapers and the growing docket of this court. I write only to emphasize one obvious point about this case: the issue here pertains to the District’s non-compliance with the terms of a consent decree. See Maj.Op. at 878 n. 30. This case thus provides no occasion for consideration of issues that might well arise (and indeed have arisen) outside the setting of an agreement by parties to litigation.