U.S. District Court: PRIVILEGED CORRES.

• Position: Correspondence - Brief Article

Ballance v. Young, 130 F.Supp.2d 762 (W.D.Va. 2000). A state prisoner brought a pro se federal civil rights suit against prison officials, arising out of their seizure of several items of his personal property. The district court held that the prisoner had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell that would make seizure of a letter from his cell a Fourth Amendment violation that could be addressed in a [sections] 1983 suit. The court found that the decision by officials to confiscate the prisoner's scrapbook and clippings, in accordance with a prison regulation that prohibited such items, was reasonable in light of security concerns that the metal parts of scrapbooks could be used as weapons and that razors and other contraband could be hidden in the clippings or scrapbooks, and in light of the time-consuming or...