Case Title: Scarberry v. Turner

Citation: 2014-Ohio-1587

Docket Number: 2013-1228

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 2014-04-16T00:00:00Z

Document:
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as 
Scarberry v. Turner, Slip Opinion No. 2014-Ohio-1587.] 
 
 
NOTICE 
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in 
an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports.  Readers are requested 
to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 
65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or 
other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be 
made before the opinion is published. 
 
SLIP OPINION NO. 2014-OHIO-1587 
SCARBERRY, APPELLANT, v. TURNER, WARDEN, APPELLEE. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets,  
it may be cited as Scarberry v. Turner, Slip Opinion No. 2014-Ohio-1587.] 
Habeas corpus—Habeas corpus not proper remedy to address alleged improper 
revocation of parole—Proper remedy is new hearing—Prisoner has not 
shown clear right to hearing based on alleged misstatement in violation 
report—Judgment affirmed and writ denied. 
(No. 2013-1228—Submitted November 19, 2013—Decided April 16, 2014.) 
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Marion County, No. 9-13-22. 
____________________ 
 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Appellant, Darby Scarberry, an inmate in the North Central 
Correctional Complex in Marion, Ohio, alleges that the Ohio Adult Parole 
Authority (“OAPA”) violated his constitutional rights by denying his parole 
application based upon a violation report that falsely stated he used a knife in a 
robbery and raped the victim.  Scarberry filed an original action asking the Third 
District Court of Appeals to issue a writ compelling the OAPA to expunge the 
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false statement from the violation report and conduct a new parole hearing.  The 
court of appeals dismissed the petition. 
{¶ 2} We affirm the judgment of the court of appeals. 
Factual Allegations 
{¶ 3} On June 13, 1984, Scarberry was convicted of rape and sentenced 
to a term of 10 to 25 years.  The rape in question occurred on December 18, 1983. 
{¶ 4} On December 1 and 2, 2009, Scarberry, while out of prison on 
parole, committed two theft offenses at the same gas station in Lima, Ohio. 
{¶ 5} On January 11, 2010, Parole Officer Philip Rader prepared a 
violation report recommending revocation of Scarberry’s parole.  According to 
Scarberry, the Rader report falsely accused him of raping a gas-station attendant 
at knifepoint during one of the December 2009 petty thefts. 
{¶ 6} On January 7, 2010, Scarberry pled guilty to two misdemeanor 
counts of petty theft for the 2009 offenses.  On February 2, 2010, the OAPA 
found that Scarberry had violated the conditions of his parole.  The report 
containing the OAPA’s findings made no mention of a knife being used or a rape 
being committed during the December 2009 offenses. 
{¶ 7} Scarberry alleges that he first became aware of the Rader violation 
report on May 16, 2011.  Scarberry filed an administrative grievance with the 
OAPA seeking to have his parole revocation readdressed, but an OAPA regional 
administrator rejected the complaint, in part on the grounds that the issues 
complained of were not grievable. 
{¶ 8} On January 25, 2013, upon completion of Scarberry’s 36-month 
reincarceration, the OAPA conducted a parole hearing and denied Scarberry’s 
request for early release. 
Procedural history 
{¶ 9} After his administrative complaint to the OAPA was unsuccessful, 
Scarberry filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Third District Court of 
January Term, 2014 
3 
 
Appeals.  Respondent Neal Turner, warden of the North Central Correctional 
Complex, filed a motion to dismiss on May 22, 2013.  As part of his opposition to 
the motion, Scarberry moved the court for leave to amend his complaint to attach 
his commitment papers, which were omitted from the original complaint. 
{¶ 10} On July 10, 2013, the court of appeals issued a judgment entry 
granting the motion to dismiss on the grounds that Scarberry has no constitutional 
right to early release.  Scarberry filed a timely notice of appeal with this court. 
{¶ 11} The cause is now fully briefed and ripe for adjudication. 
Legal analysis 
{¶ 12} We affirm the appellate court’s dismissal for three reasons. 
{¶ 13} First, a writ of habeas corpus is not the appropriate remedy to 
address Scarberry’s complaint.  The revocation of parole implicates constitutional 
liberty interests, such that the parolee is entitled to certain due process protections, 
among them the right to a hearing.  Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 92 S.Ct. 
2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972).  The remedy for an alleged Morrissey due process 
violation is a new hearing, not immediate release from confinement.  State ex rel. 
Jackson v. McFaul, 73 Ohio St.3d 185, 188, 652 N.E.2d 746 (1995). 
{¶ 14} Consistent with these cases, Scarberry makes clear that the relief 
he seeks is a new parole hearing, not immediate release from incarceration.  
However, habeas corpus lies only if the petitioner is entitled to immediate release 
from confinement.  Keith v. Bobby, 117 Ohio St.3d 470, 2008-Ohio-1443, 884 
N.E.2d 1067, ¶ 12; Pewitt v. Lorain Corr. Inst., 64 Ohio St.3d 470, 472, 597 
N.E.2d 92 (1992).  Except in extreme circumstances involving unreasonable 
delay, which Scarberry has not alleged, habeas is the wrong remedy to challenge 
alleged due process violations at a parole hearing.  Jackson at 188. 
{¶ 15} Second, we affirm because Scarberry has not established a right to 
a new early release hearing. 
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{¶ 16} Scarberry’s complaint concerns two distinct actions by the APA.  
In February 2010, the board revoked his parole.  And on January 25, 2013, the 
board denied him early release.  Scarberry is not asking the court to order a new 
revocation hearing. Scarberry’s prayer for relief asked the court “to order an 
evidentiary hearing and then issue a writ of habeas corpus ordering the 
Defendants to * * * hold another Release Hearing before the Parole Board to 
determine his suitability for release.”1 
{¶ 17} However, there is no legal basis for this court to order a new 
hearing to consider early release.  The decision to grant or deny early release is 
wholly discretionary, and a prisoner has no “expectancy of parole upon which 
[he] can base his due process claims.”  State ex rel. Blake v. Shoemaker, 4 Ohio 
St.3d 42, 43, 446 N.E.2d 169 (1983).  Therefore, Scarberry cannot demonstrate a 
clear legal duty on the part of the APA to conduct a second hearing. 
{¶ 18} Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, we affirm because the 
Rader report does not accuse Scarberry of committing rape in 2009, and therefore 
he cannot establish a due process violation. 
{¶ 19} Scarberry claims that the Rader violation report accuses him of 
using a knife and committing a rape in 2009.  Scarberry objects to the following 
sentence: “Due to the nature of the offender’s underlying offense, in which he 
went into a gas station and robbed it at knife point, and then proceeded to rape the 
cashier, his parole was revoked as a result.” 
{¶ 20} Respondent Turner contends that the sentence refers to the 1983 
rape offense, not to the 2009 offenses.  Scarberry counters that Rader could not 
have been referring to the 1983 incident, because that rape occurred in a Lawson’s 
                                                 
1Any request for a new revocation hearing would be moot.  The revocation order required 
Scarberry to serve 36 months before becoming eligible again for parole in January 2013.  
Scarberry concedes that he has completed that 36-month term.  
January Term, 2014 
5 
 
Food and Deli, not a gas station, and did not involve a knife.  And Rader’s report 
confirms Scarberry’s version of the facts of the 1983 rape. 
{¶ 21} Despite the erroneous details, however, the sentence in the Rader 
violation report could only have been referring to the 1983 rape, not the 2009 
incident.  This is clear from the context in which the sentence appears. 
 
In late June 2007, Officer Daugherty notes that the offender was 
arrested in Bellefontaine, Ohio for attempting and or actually 
taking money from three different gas station locations in and 
around Logan County.  The offender was charged in Logan County 
for these charges.  He was convicted of 1 Ct. Theft, M1, ordered to 
serve 90 day’s jail and given credit for time served.  The remaining 
2 charges of Theft were dismissed along with a driving under a 
suspended license charge.  Due to the nature of the offender’s 
underlying offense, in which he went into a gas station and robbed 
it at knife point, and then proceeded to rape the cashier, his parole 
was revoked as a result. 
 
{¶ 22} Plainly, the report was describing what happened to Scarberry as a 
consequence of his arrest in 2007.  Thus, Scarberry’s interpretation makes no 
sense.  The report could not have been suggesting that Scarberry’s parole was 
revoked in 2007 based on a rape he would not commit until two years later.  
Moreover, the use of the past tense—his parole “was revoked”—underscores the 
fact that the report referred to events prior to 2009, since at the time the report 
was written, Scarberry’s parole had not yet been revoked for the 2009 offenses. 
{¶ 23} Because the statement in the report was factually accurate, there is 
nothing to correct, Scarberry’s rights were not violated, and he has failed to state a 
claim for relief. 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
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{¶ 24} Based on the foregoing, we affirm the judgment of the court of 
appeals. 
Judgment affirmed. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and PFEIFER, LANZINGER, KENNEDY, FRENCH, and 
O’NEILL, JJ., concur. 
O’DONNELL, J., concurs in judgment only. 
____________________ 
Darby Scarberry, pro se. 
Michael DeWine, Attorney General, and Gene D. Park, Assistant Attorney 
General, for appellee. 
_________________________