Is a convicted felon entitled to procedural due process when seeking parole?

We do not imply by this that it is irrelevant that appellant is a lawfully convicted felon, a fact permitting the constriction of freedoms guaranteed other citizens so far as "justified by the considerations underlying our penal system" Price v. Johnston, 334 U.S. 266, 285, 68 S.Ct. 1049, 1060, 92 L.Ed. 1356 (1948). Moreover, we are cognizant that insensitive judicial intrusions might blunt the flexibility of a useful device such as parole, which may permit both a smoother transition from the dependency of prison to complete freedom and earlier release from incarceration under conditions designed to test the prisoner's capacity to "make it on the outside."

Accordingly, we have refused to shackle a parole board in its endeavor to dispose of each parolee's case on an individual basis by denying it access to relevant information produced by an illegal state police search. United States ex rel. Sperling v. Fitzpatrick, 426 F.2d 1161 (2nd Cir., 1970). For similar reasons we declined in Sostre v. McGinnis 442 F.2d 178 (1971) to import the trappings of trial-type due process into prison disciplinary proceedings. Most closely in point to this case, however, is our holding in Menechino v. Oswald, supra, that a prisoner "is not entitled to procedural due process," including legal representation, "in seeking parole." 430 F.2d at 408-409.