Smith v. Beard’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The [U.S.] Supreme Court has held that an inmate 'retains those First Amendment rights that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system.' Pell v. Procunier , 417 U.S. 817 , 822, 94 S.Ct. 2800 , 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974). In Turner , the U.S. Supreme Court reconciled the conflicting principles that prison walls do not separate inmates from Constitutional protections and that courts are ill-suited for running prisons by holding that 'when a prison regulation impinges on inmates' constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.' Turner , 482 U.S. at 84-85 , 89 , 107 S.Ct. 2254 . The Turner court further held that, even if the prison regulation infringed upon a fundamental right, the strict scrutiny usually applied to such rights is not applicable in the prison context. Id. Thus, pursuant to Turner , in assessing a prison regulation courts should determine: (1) whether there is a 'valid, rational connection' between the prison regulation and the legitimate governmental interest asserted to justify it; (2) whether alternative means are open to inmates to exercise the asserted right; (3) what impact an accommodation of the asserted constitutional right will have on guards, inmates, and prison resources; and (4) whether there are 'ready alternatives' to the rule that would accommodate prisoners' rights at de minimus [sic] cost to penological inter”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Key v. Pa. Dep't of Corr.

2. “Consistent with its holding in Turner , the U.S. Supreme Court stated in Overton v. Bazzetta , 539 U.S. 126 , 123 S.Ct. 2162 , 156 L.Ed.2d 162 (2003), that courts 'must accord substantial deference to the professional judgment of prison administrators, who bear a significant responsibility for defining the legitimate goals of a corrections system and for determining the most appropriate means to accomplish them.' Id. at 132 , 123 S.Ct. 2162 . Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Overton , stressed that '[t]he burden ... is not on the State to prove the validity of prison regulations but on the prisoner to disprove it.' Id. Our Supreme Court has relied upon both Turner and Overton in two cases challenging [DOC] administrative regulations, which were directed, like [former DC-ADM 803] here, at banning pornography in the corrections system. In [ Payne ] , an inmate challenged a prior version of [DC-ADM 803], which prohibited inmates from sending or receiving correspondence containing obscene materials, as violating Article I, Section 7 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. After concluding that the Turner deferential standard was applicable to inmate challenges to prison regulations under the Pennsylvania Constitution, our Supreme Court held that the policy at issue in Payne was presumptively reasonable and that the inmate had not attempted to satisfy his burden of disproving the validity of the policy . Payne , [ 871 A.2d at 810 n.11 ]. Accordingly, our Supreme Court granted summar”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Key v. Pa. Dep't of Corr.

3. “Given that inmates' constitutionally-protected rights may be subject to greater restrictions than those of the general public, we agree with [DOC] that simply because [DC-ADM 803] is more restrictive than the [Criminal] Obscenity [Statute], [DC-ADM 803] is not unconstitutionally over restrictive. This is particularly so where our Supreme Court has twice held that [DC-ADM 803], or its predecessors, were reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. Brittain ; Payne .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Key v. Pa. Dep't of Corr.