THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250277
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 46 lines
Prisons don't have to help inmates become ``litigating engines,'' the Supreme Court said Monday in making it harder for inmates to sue for better law libraries or other government-funded legal help.
The justices reversed a lower court ruling that ordered a detailed plan to beef up Arizona's prison law libraries, saying it was ``a model of what should not'' be done in such cases. A more liberal Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that inmates have a constitutional right of meaningful access to the courts and that they must be provided with law libraries or other legal help.
But that ``does not guarantee inmates the wherewithal to transform themselves into litigating engines capable of filing everything from shareholder derivative actions to slip-and-fall claims,'' Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court.
``The tools it requires to be provided are those that the inmates need in order to attack their sentences . . . and in order to challenge the conditions of their confinement,'' Scalia said.
The ruling in the Arizona case follows numerous complaints in Congress and elsewhere that inmates are clogging courts with too many frivolous lawsuits.
A new federal law enacted this spring limits prisoner civil-rights lawsuits by requiring meritless claims to be dismissed immediately and allowing court orders affecting prison conditions to be lifted after two years.
The inmates' lawyer, Elizabeth Alexander of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, said the decision will make it harder for inmates to challenge the adequacy of prison legal help, particularly in class-action suits.
However, she added, ``now that we know what the evidentiary burden is, we're going to go forward and tackle it.'' ILLUSTRATION: OTHER ACTION
Monday, the court also:
Upheld a major strategy in the war on drugs, ruling in cases from
California and Michigan that the government can prosecute people
while also suing them to confiscate drug-connected property.
Ruled 5-4 in a New York case that criminal defendants who face
more than one minor charge are not entitled to a jury trial even if
the possible sentences add up to more than six months in prison.
KEYWORDS: SUPREME COURT PRISONS INMATES by CNB