Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_05-cv-03286/USCOURTS-cand-4_05-cv-03286-15/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Prisoner Civil Rights

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

TODD LEWIS ASHKER and DANNY TROXELL,

Plaintiffs,

v.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, et al.,

Defendants.

 /

No. C 05-3286 CW

ORDER GRANTING IN

PART AND DENYING IN

PART PLAINTIFFS'

MOTION FOR

RECONSIDERATION

Plaintiffs Todd Ashker and Danny Troxell, prisoners of the

State of California who are incarcerated in the Security Housing

Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP), move for leave to

file a motion for reconsideration (Docket # 149) of the Court's

June 14, 2007 Order Granting in Part Defendants' Motion to Dismiss

and Denying it in Part and Denying in Part Plaintiffs' Motion to

Amend Complaint (June 14 Order) (Docket # 140). Defendants oppose

the motion for reconsideration. Because Plaintiffs' motion for

leave is very detailed and because Defendants have filed an

opposition to it, the Court considers it a motion for

reconsideration. Having considered all the papers filed by the

parties, the Court GRANTS in part and DENIES in part Plaintiffs'

motion for reconsideration. 

BACKGROUND

In their motion to dismiss, Defendants moved to dismiss the

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first, third, fourth and fifth claims in Plaintiffs' first amended

complaint (FAC): (1) violation of First Amendment freedom to

associate; (3) violation of Fifth Amendment freedom against selfincrimination arising from the CDCR's debriefing requirement and

Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment right to procedural and substantive

due process of law; (4) violation of Eighth Amendment prohibition

of cruel and unusual punishment, also arising from the debriefing

requirement; and (5) (a) violation of the Ex Post Facto clause of

the United States Constitution for retention in the SHU on

indeterminate status based upon gang association, (b) violation of

the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment due to their SHU

status and lack of access to prison programs, which prevent them

from being granted parole, (c) violation of the Equal Protection

Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because of different treatment

of white SHU inmates, (d) violation of procedural and substantive

due process under the Fourteenth Amendment based on the deprivation

of their liberty interest in being paroled, and (e) violation of

their procedural and substantive due process rights by denying them

release from the SHU based on their inactive status in the Aryan

Brotherhood gang (AB), when no reliable evidence was presented to

demonstrate their participation in illegal gang activity.

Primarily, Defendants argued that these claims must be

dismissed because Plaintiffs had failed to exhaust their

administrative remedies. The Court first undertook an extensive

analysis of the evidence and argument submitted by both parties

regarding whether each of Plaintiffs' appeals had been exhausted. 

Because Plaintiffs' administrative appeals used different language

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from the claims presented to the Court, the Court then analyzed

whether the claims presented in the FAC had been sufficiently

stated in those appeals that had been fully exhausted to have put

Defendants on notice of the rights Plaintiffs alleged Defendants

had violated. The Court concluded that four claims in the

complaint had been fully exhausted: (1) Plaintiffs' second cause of

action for a First Amendment violation premised on denial of access

to certain magazines; (2) Plaintiffs' due process claim based on

Defendants' procedure for determining whether Plaintiffs are active

or inactive gang members; (3) Plaintiffs' sixth cause of action for

negligence; and (4) Plaintiffs' seventh cause of action for an

intentional tort. 

Plaintiffs request reconsideration of the dismissal of the

following claims: (1) claims against the Board of Prison Hearings

(BPH) in the fifth cause of action; (2) claims based on selfincrimination and refusal to debrief in the third cause of action;

and (3) the claim based on cruel and unusual punishment in the

fourth cause of action.

LEGAL STANDARD

Motions for reconsideration are not a substitute for appeal or

a means of attacking some perceived error of the court. Twentieth

Century-Fox Film Corp. v. Dunnahoo, 637 F.2d 1338, 1341 (9th Cir.

1980). Jurisdictional defects and frivolous or meritless claims

cannot be remedied by merely moving for reconsideration. United

States v. Hetrick, 644 F.2d 752, 756 (9th Cir. 1980). "`[T]he

major grounds that justify reconsideration involve an intervening

change of controlling law, the availability of new evidence, or the

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need to correct a clear error or prevent manifest injustice.'" 

Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Indians v. Hodel, 882 F.2d 364, 369

n.5 (9th Cir. 1989) (quoting United States v. Desert Gold Mining

Co., 433 F.2d 713, 715 (9th Cir. 1970)).

DISCUSSION

I. Claims Against BPH

Plaintiffs brought two claims against the BPH: (1) violation

of the ex post facto clause of the Constitution and (2) violation

of their liberty interests in parole. In the June 14 Order, the

Court found that Troxell had not exhausted his claims against the

BPH but that Ashker had. The Court, citing Docken v. Chase, 393

F.3d 1024, 2038 (9th Cir. 2004), dismissed Ashker's claims without

prejudice to filing them in a petition for writ of habeas corpus

because it appeared from his complaint that the claims sought an

earlier release date. In his motion for reconsideration, Ashker,

citing Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 U.S. 74 (2005) and Osborne v.

District Attorney's Office, 423 F.3d 1050 (9th Cir. 2005),

clarifies that he seeks only prospective injunctive relief and that

it will not necessarily affect the fact or duration of his sentence

if he is successful. Defendants argue that the Court should not

reconsider its ruling on this claim because, in his FAC, Ashker

requests compensatory damages from each defendant in excess of

$1,000,000 as well as punitive and exemplary damages and Ashker's

pleadings allege that the only reason he has not been granted a

parole date is PBSP's gang validation policy and BPH's no-parole

policy. Defs' Opp. at 4. 

In Docken, the Ninth Circuit held that "when prison inmates

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seek only equitable relief in challenging aspects of their parole

review that, so long as they prevail, could potentially affect the

duration of their confinement, such relief is available under the

federal habeas statute. Whether such relief is also available

under § 1983 depends on the application of [Heck v. Humphrey's]

favorable termination rule in this case, an issue not before us

. . . " Docken, 393 F.3d at 1031 (citing Heck v. Humphrey, 512

U.S. 477 (1994)). 

Therefore, Docken did not warrant dismissal of Ashker's claims

against the BPH based upon the grounds that they could only have

been brought in a habeas petition.

In Heck, the inmate sought only damages, not injunctive relief

or release from custody, for alleged constitutional violations

committed during his arrest and confinement. Id. at 479. Heck

held that a damages action is not cognizable under § 1983 if a

judgment in the plaintiff's favor would imply the invalidity of the

conviction or sentence unless the conviction or sentence has

already been invalidated. Id. at 487. 

However, in Wilkinson, the Supreme Court further explained its

ruling in Heck. The Supreme Court explained that "§ 1983 remains

available for procedural challenges where success in the action

would not necessarily spell immediate or speedier release for the

prisoner." Wilkinson, 544 U.S. at 82. In other words, "a state

prisoner's § 1983 action is barred . . . no matter the relief

sought (damages or equitable relief), no matter the target of the

prisoner's suit (state conduct leading to conviction or internal

prison proceedings), if success in that action would necessarily

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demonstrate the invalidity of confinement or its duration." Id.

The Court applied these principles to the two consolidated cases

before it in which two inmates brought § 1983 actions claiming that

the application by the parole board of the harsher parole

guidelines that were enacted after the date of their convictions

was unconstitutional. Id. The Court concluded that the claims

were cognizable under § 1983 because the inmates only sought

prospective injunctive relief seeking new parole hearings in which

the parole board would apply the guidelines in effect at the time

they were convicted. Id. The Court concluded that the connection

between the use of the proper parole guidelines and the prisoners'

release from confinement was too tenuous to require that the claim

be brought only in a habeas petition. Id. at 78. The Court

explained that the prisoners were not challenging the fact or

duration of their confinement but were seeking a declaration that

the parole proceedings were invalid and an injunction against the

prospective enforcement of allegedly invalid parole guidelines. 

Id. at 80-82. The Court distinguished the case before it from

Preiser v. Rodriquez, 411 U.S. 475, 476 (1973) in which prisoners

were seeking reinstatement of good-time credits of which they

allegedly been unconstitutionally deprived at a prison disciplinary

proceeding. Id. at 78. The Court explained that because

restoration of good-time credits would necessarily result in

immediate release or a shorter period of detention, the case fell

within the core of habeas corpus and could not be prosecuted in a 

§ 1983 proceeding. Id. at 79. The Court cited Wolff v. McDonnell,

418 U.S. 475 (1973), which also held that an action for restoration

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of good-time credits improperly taken in an unconstitutional

proceeding must be brought in a habeas proceeding. Id. However,

in Wolff, the Court noted that the inmates could use § 1983 to

obtain a declaration that the disciplinary procedures were invalid

as a predicate to their requested damages award, and they could

also seek an injunction enjoining the prospective enforcement of

invalid prison regulations. Id. (citing Wolff, 418 U.S. at 553). 

The Court explained that success in the two § 1983 actions in

Wilkinson would not result in immediate release or a shorter period

of incarceration because the prisoners attacked only the wrong

procedures, not the wrong result. Id. at 80.

Osborne addressed a prisoner § 1983 action seeking to compel

the district attorney to release certain biological evidence that

was used to convict the petitioner of kidnaping and sexual assault. 

Osborne, 423 F.3d at 1051. The district court dismissed the § 1983

action as barred by Heck because the petitioner sought to set the

stage for an attack on his underlying conviction. Id. The Ninth

Circuit reversed on the ground that success in obtaining the

evidence would not necessarily demonstrate the invalidity of his

incarceration or its duration. Id. at 1054. The court explained

that because success would yield only access to the evidence and

that DNA analysis of the evidence might prove exculpatory,

inculpatory or inconclusive, there was a significant chance that

the results would confirm or have no significant effect on the

validity of the prisoner's conviction. Id. 

Defendants rely on Butterfield v. Bail, 120 F.3d 1024 (9th

Cir. 1997). In that case, the district court had dismissed a

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prisoner's § 1983 action alleging that the defendants had violated

his due process rights because they relied on false information to

find him ineligible for parole. Id. at 1024. The Ninth Circuit

affirmed the dismissal on the ground that "a challenge to the

procedures used in the denial of parole necessarily implicates the

validity of the denial of parole and, therefore, the prisoner's

continuing confinement. . . . Few things implicate the validity of

continued confinement more directly than the allegedly improper

denial of parole. This is true whether that denial is alleged to

be improper based upon procedural defects in the parole hearing or

upon allegations that parole was improperly denied on the merits." 

Id. Furthermore, the fact that the prisoner only asked for money

damages rather than an injunction did not remedy the fact that he

was not challenging the length of his confinement, because his

damages could only be measured by that confinement. Id. at 1025. 

However, the Ninth Circuit did not have the benefit of the

reasoning in Wilkinson when it decided Butterfield.

Ashker clarifies that, like the inmates in Wilkinson, he seeks

only prospective injunctive relief enjoining the BPH from using

allegedly unconstitutional guidelines at his next hearing. Unlike

the inmates in Preiser and Wolff, he is not requesting monetary

damages or that the Court take any action that would directly

result in his immediate release or a shorter period of confinement. 

Thus, Ashker's claims do not lie at the core of habeas corpus, and

they may be brought under § 1983. Therefore, the Court reconsiders

its previous order relating to Ashker's claims against the BPH and

DENIES Defendants' motion to dismiss them.

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II. Exhaustion of Other Claims

The Court has reviewed Plaintiffs' arguments and declarations 

supporting their contention that the other claims cited in their

motion for reconsideration have been exhausted. However, the Court

thoroughly reviewed all the evidence and arguments submitted by the

parties on this issue in ruling on Defendants' motion to dismiss. 

Plaintiffs fail to present any intervening change in law or new

evidence that was unavailable at the time they filed their

opposition to the motion to dismiss. Therefore, reconsideration of

this part of the Court's June 14 Order is not warranted.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs' motion

for reconsideration in part and DENIES it in part (Docket # 149). 

The June 14, 2007 Order is amended in regard to Ashker's

constitutional claims against the BPH which are not dismissed. All

other parts of the June 14, 2007 Order remain in effect.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: 9/20/07 

CLAUDIA WILKEN

United States District Judge

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE 

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

ASHKER ET AL et al,

Plaintiff,

 v.

SCHWARZENEGGER ET AL et al,

Defendant. /

Case Number: CV05-03286 CW 

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I, the undersigned, hereby certify that I am an employee in the Office of the Clerk, U.S. District Court,

Northern District of California.

That on September 20, 2007, I SERVED a true and correct copy(ies) of the attached, by placing said

copy(ies) in a postage paid envelope addressed to the person(s) hereinafter listed, by depositing said

envelope in the U.S. Mail, or by placing said copy(ies) into an inter-office delivery receptacle located

in the Clerk's office.

Danny Troxell B-76578

Pelican Bay State Prison

P.O. Box 7500, C-8-101

Crescent City, CA 95531

J. Randall Andrada

Andrada & Associates

180 Grand Avenue

Suite 925

Oakland, CA 94612

Todd Ashker C-58191

Pelican Bay State Prison

P.O. Box 7500, D1-119

Crescent City, CA 95531

Dated: September 20, 2007

Richard W. Wieking, Clerk

By: Sheilah Cahill, Deputy Clerk

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