Opinion
16-P-1223
05-05-2017
Christopher FLETCHER v. DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION & others.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 1:28
The plaintiff is an inmate who is serving a life sentence at MCI-Cedar Junction. He currently is being held in the department disciplinary unit (DDU) at that facility. On October 15, 2014, he filed this action to challenge the adequacy of his access to legal research materials in the DDU. See generally Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 828 (1977). A Superior Court judge allowed the summary judgment motion filed by the defendants (collectively, DOC) and dismissed the action. We affirm.
As the summary judgment record established, at the time this action was filed, the DDU had its own law library separate from the prison's main library. Although the DDU collection indisputably was not as extensive as that of the main law library, inmates held in the DDU could "access legal materials from the main law library—and its much larger print catalog—by filling out a ‘[r]equest for [a]ccess to [m]aterials from the [m]ain [l]aw [l]ibrary’ form." As of December, 2014 (that is, two months after this action was filed), the DOC had installed computer terminals in both its main law library and DDU library through which inmates can conduct electronic research through a contract with Lexis/Nexis. Training materials and research assistance are also provided. The DOC is transitioning to an all-electronic system.
In allowing the DOC's motion, the judge thoughtfully and concisely explained his reasoning as follows:
"In order to sustain a claim of violation of constitutional rights by denial of access to legal research materials a prisoner must establish that DOC actually impeded or frustrated a non-frivolous claim relating to either the inmate's criminal conviction or his conditions of confinement. Hannon v. Beard, 979 F. Supp. 2d 136, 140 (D. Mass. 2013). See ... Puleio v. Comm'r of Correction, 52 Mass. App. Ct. 302, 311 (2001) (prisoner ‘required to show that those alleged deficiencies [of access to legal research] hindered his efforts to present a non-frivolous legal claim’). Because there is no right to a law library or legal assistance in the abstract, the prisoner must ‘go one step further and demonstrate that the alleged shortcomings in the law library or legal assistance program hindered his efforts to pursue a legal claim.’ Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 351 (1996). Plaintiff's abject failure to show any articulated, non-generalized harm is fatal."
We agree with this reasoning and therefore affirm. Although the plaintiff makes reference to delays in filing a civil action in Superior Court, the facts he provides are vague, at best, and altogether fail to establish the level of obstruction of access to the courts needed to establish the requisite injury. See Jiles v. Department of Correction, 55 Mass. App. Ct. 658, 662 (2002), quoting from Lewis v. Casey, supra at 356 ("The actual injury that must be established by an inmate is that an actionable claim involving a challenge to a sentence or to conditions of confinement ‘has been lost or rejected, or that the presentation of such a claim is currently being prevented, because this capability of filing suit has not been provided’ "). We additionally note that the DOC is now providing DDU inmates electronic access to a broad range of legal materials comparable to that available to inmates in the general prison population.
Judgment affirmed.