Pedophile Prison Mail Dispute Revived by 8th

ST. LOUIS (CN) - A federal judge should have considered the immunity defense of Nebraska prison officials being sued over the confiscation of allegedly pedophilia-related mail, the 8th Circuit ruled.

Christopher Payne, an inmate at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution, filed a federal complaint in Lincoln, Neb., against various prison officials he said had violated his constitutional rights by censoring and confiscating his incoming and outgoing mail.

Prison officials argued that the mail was pedophilia-related. Payne is serving 40 to 50 years on two convictions of first-degree sexual assault of a child.

Though the defendants moved for dismissal based on qualified immunity, the trial court did not rule on the motion, but converted it into a motion for summary judgment. The officials reasserted qualified immunity, yet the court them granted summary judgment in part on a limited issue and did not rule on qualified immunity.

A partly divided three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit reversed Wednesday, remanding the case for judgment on the qualified immunity issue, which it said the District Court was required to make.

"We write further because, although we are compelled to remand, we are sympathetic with the District Court in this case and understand clearly why the District Court followed the seemingly reasonable, but impermissible, path that it chose," Judge Michael Melloy wrote for the majority. "The prison officials are legally entitled to a ruling on their assertions of qualified immunity. In the present case, as with many cases, however, such a ruling would appear to be at the expense of efficiently getting to the heart of the material issue in the case. Here, that issue clearly involves a simple fact question: what is in the withheld mail (much of which is mail that only the officials have seen)?"

Noting that the FBI elected not to open a criminal investigation when the officials alerted them to the confiscated mail, Melloy said the dispute over the mail's contents might not be frivolous. No court has reviewed the confiscated mail, which remains in the possession of the officials, according to the ruling.

"As we understand the core legal issues surrounding the allegations in this case, any analysis of the merits of the qualified immunity defense will require the District Court to assess whether the regulation or policy at issue under which the mail is being held is valid and neutral and whether it addresses a legitimate penological concern," Melloy wrote. "A qualified immunity analysis will then require the district court to conduct an independent review of the evidence to determine if the officials have demonstrated an exaggerated response to those penological concerns in relation to a particular item of mail that has been confiscated."

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