## Facts

- Boyd, an incarcerated plaintiff, was housed in a Louisiana prison.
- Prison officials instituted a temporary ban on publications featuring women in “sexy poses.”
- Boyd sued prison official Venetia Michael, alleging the ban violated his First Amendment rights.
- In discovery, other inmates gave deposition testimony stating they were denied access to magazines during the ban period.
- Those inmates also described conversations among the general inmate population about the magazine restrictions.
- Michael filed a motion in limine seeking to bar the other inmates’ testimony at trial.

## Issues

1. Whether, in Boyd’s First Amendment challenge to the prison’s publication ban, other inmates’ testimony about their own denied access to magazines—and about inmate conversations concerning the ban—should be excluded at trial on evidentiary grounds (including relevance and hearsay).

## Decision

- The court ruled on Michael’s motion in limine by limiting the scope of the other inmates’ testimony rather than excluding it wholesale.
- Testimony by other inmates based on personal experience (e.g., that they were denied particular magazines) was permitted as relevant, first-hand evidence.
- To the extent the proposed testimony consisted of recounting generalized inmate-population conversations offered for their truth, the court treated it as inadmissible hearsay and excluded it absent a nonhearsay use or an applicable hearsay exception.
- The motion in limine was therefore granted in part and denied in part, allowing trial testimony focused on personal knowledge while restricting rumor- or conversation-based accounts.

## Legal Principles

- Evidence is admissible only if it is relevant to a fact of consequence in the case. Irrelevant evidence is excluded.
- A motion in limine is designed to address evidentiary disputes in advance of trial; categorical exclusion is appropriate only when evidence is clearly inadmissible for any purpose.
- Witnesses generally may testify only from personal knowledge; testimony not grounded in what the witness perceived is subject to exclusion.
- Out-of-court statements offered to prove the truth of what they assert are hearsay and are inadmissible unless an exception applies or the statements are offered for a nonhearsay purpose (such as notice, effect on the listener, or context).

## Conclusion

In *Boyd v. Louisiana*, a prisoner challenged a temporary prison ban on sexually suggestive publications and, before trial, the defendant prison official sought to exclude deposition testimony from other inmates. The court did not bar the testimony across the board; instead, it allowed inmates to testify about their own magazine denials based on personal knowledge while restricting testimony that simply repeated inmate-population conversations when offered for their truth, resulting in a partial grant and partial denial of the motion in limine.


Boyd v. Louisiana, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27364, 2008 WL 920304 (2008)