Frias

Petitioner is an inmate of Deuel Vocational Institution, having been convicted in 1971 of assault with a deadly weapon. He now has pending before respondent superior court a petition for habeas corpus challenging his incarceration in the K-Wing, the maximum segregation area. The petition before us requests issuance of a writ of mandamus to require respondent court to process his pending petition and all other similar “conditions petitions” 1 filed by other prisoners, in a manner which he claims will comply with sections 1476 to 1484 of the Penal Code and with the due process and equal protection clauses of the *921 United States and California Constitutions. Petitioner, supported by amicus curiae, requests that we disavow the procedural guidelines of Reaves v. Superior Court (1971) 22 Cal.App.3d 587 [ 99 Cal.Rptr. 156 ], and set forth new and comprehensive guidelines for superior court processing of conditions petitions of California prisoners.

Petitioner asserts that the occurrences following his conditions petition in respondent court in San Joaquin County in 1973 are representative of the practices of that court, and he has compiled exhibits of numerous other…

I fully concur in the court’s opinion and decision but believe that additional observations are needful. Despite contrary claims, experienced judges know that a large portion of prisoner petitions are characterized by untrue or distorted allegations and complaints of fancied wrongs. (Cf. 25 Stan.L.Rev. 1, 37-39.) Judges are understandably reluctant to load clogged calendars by issuing orders to show cause in response to habeas corpus petitions which turn out to be frivolous. Some kind of screening capability is essential to the sensible fulfillment of habeas corpus responsibility.

The gap between habeas corpus responsibility and capability is a well-known and unsolved problem in the administration of California justice. Court administrative facilities for handling prisoner petitions have fallen far behind substantive advances in prison law. (See 1971 Report, Judicial Council of Cal., pp. 22-65; Vanderet, Procedural Due *925 Process in California Prisons, 48 State Bar J. 668; Flint, Judicial Responses to Problems of Prison Administration: A Bibliography (Am. Judicature Society Report No. 33).)

Most superior courts have no legal or investigative assistants. In Reaves v. Superior…

Petitioner is an inmate of Deuel Vocational Institution, having been convicted in 1971 of assault with a deadly weapon. He now has pending before respondent superior court a petition for habeas corpus challenging his incarceration in the K-Wing, the maximum segregation area. The petition before us requests issuance of a writ of mandamus to require respondent court to process his pending petition and all other similar "conditions petitions" [1] filed by other prisoners, in a manner which he claims will comply with sections 1476 to 1484 of the Penal Code and with the due process and equal protection clauses of the United States and California Constitutions. Petitioner, supported by amicus curiae, requests that we disavow the procedural guidelines of Reaves v. Superior Court (1971) 22 Cal. App.3d 587 [ 99 Cal. Rptr. 156 ], and set forth new and comprehensive guidelines for superior court processing of conditions petitions of California prisoners.

Petitioner asserts that the occurrences following his conditions petition in respondent court in San Joaquin County in 1973 are representative of the practices of that court, and he has compiled exhibits of numerous…