Turner v. Safley

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1987 United States Supreme Court case

Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the constitutionality of two Missouri prison regulations. One of the prisoners' claims related to the fundamental right to marry , and the other related to freedom of speech (in sending/receiving letters). The court held that a regulation preventing inmates from marrying without permission violated their constitutional right to marry because it was not logically related to a legitimate penological concern, but a prohibition on inmate-to-inmate correspondence was justified by prison security needs.

The case has been cited as precedent, establishing the "Turner Test" for constitutional challenges to prison regulations.

According to the test, a prison regulation is constitutional if it satisfies four factors:

1. There is a rational connection to a legitimate government interest;
2. There are alternative means for prisoners to exercise their right(s);
3. Accommodation of the right(s) would have excessive "ripple effects"; and
4. There are no "ready alternatives."

This test has been used for decades by US courts, but it has also been criticized by legal scholars for being too deferential to prison administrators.

Background

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The Renz Correctional Institution, at the time a prison of the Missouri Department of Corrections (MODOC, then called the Missouri Division of Corrections) near Jefferson City , transitioned in 1975 from being a men's prison to housing both male and female inmates. It was there that two inmates, a man named Leonard Safley and a woman named Pearl Jane "P.J." Watson, met and began a relationship. There was an unwritten rule at the time that if two inmates developed a "close" or "physical" relationship, one would be transferred to another facility. After an incident that the trial court would describe as "a noisy lover's quarrel," Safley was transferred to the Ozark Correctional Center at Fordland , Missouri. Safley attempted to keep in touch with Watson by mail, but staff at Renz consistently prevented it from arriving. Safley tried using the pseudonym "Jack King," or having friends send letters on his behalf, but only a few of these made it to Watson.

Mail between inmates in different facilities was subject to divisional regulation 20–118.010(e), a rule that always allowed mail between family members or related to legal matters, but said other mail "may be allowed" if prison staff believed it was "in the best interest of the parties involved." Enforcement of this rule was inconsistent and varied by facility; in practice, Renz inmates were not allowed to send or receive mail from non-family inmates at other facilities without prior approval. Renz was the only facility in the state with an effective total ban.

Additionally, inmate marriages were restricted at Renz. At the time, regulation 20.117.050 did not authorize facility superintendents to prohibit inmate marriages, though they were not obligated to assist with them either. However, Renz's superintendent did regularly deny permission for inmates to marry, especially female inmates. After this litigation was filed, in December 1983, MODOC put out a new regulation which put a burden of proof on inmates to convince their superintendent that there was a "compelling reason" to allow them to marry. This did not make much difference at Renz, as the superintendent continued to deny permission to female inmates in most cases, stating that it was not in their "best interest."

As the end of Safley's sentence grew near, and he was transferred to a halfway house , he tried to visit Watson, but was denied permission when he arrived at Renz. MODOC rules prohibited former inmates from visiting prisons until six months after release. The two also wanted to get married, but were denied permission.

Proceedings in lower courts

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District Court

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In 1981, they filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Missouri challenging the constitutionality of the restrictions on inmate mail, marriage, and visitation. In March 1982, during a preliminary injunction hearing, Safley's attorney Floyd Finch suggested to the Judge, Howard Sachs , that Safley and Watson could get married right then and there in court. Sachs allowed it over the objection of the state's attorney, seeing "no 'substantial state interest' in preventing it," and the newlyweds were allowed to sit together for 10 minutes.

This rendered their individual claim about the marriage restriction moot , but the case was certified as a class action and continued.

A five-day trial was held in February 1984, and in May 1984 a ruling was issued that overturned the restrictions on mail and marriage, but left the visitation rule intact. As visitation was not nearly as important a right as the rights of marriage and free speech, the visitation rule was upheld "as a matter of legitimate discretion."

On the other hand, Judge Sachs' ruling applied strict scrutiny to the mail and marriage rules. The rationale offered by MODOC witnesses for the mail rule was discouraging the formation of inmate gangs, and preventing coordination of riots, escapes, etc. Sachs noted that in _Procunier v. Martinez _ the Supreme Court had refrained from crafting a specific standard for mail between inmates, but after discussing various other opinions by appellate courts , he ruled that the mail regulations were "unnecessarily sweeping", and were therefore unconstitutional.

For the marriage rule, he relied on cases such as _Zablocki v. Redhail _ and _Loving v. Virginia _ that held marriage to be a fundamental human right. In his findings of fact, the judge found that the superintendent, out of an apparent "protective attitude", denied permission for female inmates to marry except where there was a birth or a pregnancy. Even though incarceration came with the loss of certain rights and freedoms, Sachs wrote,

. . . defendants have no right to have the last word on a personal decision of this import. Even inmates have the right to make their own mistakes.

— Safley v. Turner, 586 F. Supp. at 595 (W.D. Mo. 1984)

Court of Appeals

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MODOC appealed the ruling to a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals , arguing that the trial court was wrong about the appropriate standard of review , and was clearly erroneous in its finding of fact. The Court disagreed, and affirmed the rulings of the trial court. It spent very little time discussing the "clearly erroneous" argument, simply noting that after reviewing the "entire record," they found "substantial evidence to support each finding of fact."

With respect to the mail rule, MODOC argued that that plaintiffs' status as inmates meant that the regulation should be review under a rational basis standard, rather than strict scrutiny. MODOC compared their rule to other prison rules which had been upheld, but the Court distinguished them as a "time, place, or manner " rules (as with _Pell v. Procunier _ and _Bell v. Wolfish _,

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