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Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

EDDIE M. NABORS, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

FIL .. _ .. D 

United Sta~ Com t of Ap~l" 'l'enth Circuit 

MAR O 1 1993 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

v. No . 92-3282 

WARDEN, UNITED STATES 

PENITENTIARY; UNITED STATES 

PAROLE COMMISSION; UNITED 

STATES BUREAU OF PRISONS, 

Respondents-Appellees. 

{D . Kan. No . 89-3387-R) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before LOGAN and EBEL, Circuit Judges, and BARR.ET!', Senior Circuit 

Judge . ** 

Petitioner-appellant Eddie M. Nabors appeals the district 

court's denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. 1 

* This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall not 

be cited, or used by any court within the Te nth Circuit, except 

for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of the case, 

res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 36.3. 

** Afte r examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel 

has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially 

assist the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 

34 {a ) ; 10th Cir. R. 34 . 1.9. Therefore, the case is ordered 

submitted without oral argument. 

1 We grant the petitioner permission to proceed in forma 

pauperis for purposes of thi s appeal . 

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Proceeding prose, he contends that he was denied due pro cess when 

the United States Parole Commission [the "Commission"] delayed his 

initial parole hearing for almost one year. As a remedy for this 

delay, Nabors asks us to grant the writ and either release him 

from his sentence of thirty years' imprisonment or reduce the 

remainder of his sentence by 425 days, the length of time that the 

Commission delayed his hearing plus good time credit he has earned 

while incarcerated. Because the Commission has already provided 

Nabors an initial hearing and denied him parole, we hold that 

Nabors has received the only remedy he was due. We therefore 

affirm the district court's denial of the writ of habeas corpus. 

I. PROCEDURAL HISTORY 

Nabors was first entitled to an initial parole hearing in 

January 1989, after serving ten years of an aggregated thirty-year 

federal sentence. 2 See 18 U.S.C. § 4205(a). The Commission 

repeatedly rescheduled Nabors' initial hearing because the 

Commission was waiting to receive information requested from the 

FBI regarding Nabors' involvement in a rape during a bank robbery 

[Doc . 22, Ex. 2, 5, 6] and because the file that the United States 

Bureau of Prisons prepared for the Commission was lost and had t o 

2 All statutory sections relating to the creation and operation 

of the United States Parole Commission were repealed in 1984, 

effective November 1, 1987, with a five-year phaseout ending 

November 1, 1992. See Lewis v. Martin, 880 F.2d 288, 290 (10th 

Cir. 1989) (citing§ 235(b) of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, 

Pub. L. 98-473, § 235(b) (3), 98 Stat. 1837, 2032 (1984)). 

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be reconstructed. [Doc. 22, Ex. 3, 6, Attachment No. 4 

(Declaration of John Trott)] 

Nabors filed his first habeas petition on September 15, 1989. 

Doc. 2. On September 29, 1989, the District Court for the 

District of Kansas denied the petition on the ground that Nabors 

had not exhausted his administrative remedies . Aplt. Br. Ex. 1 . 

On appeal, we vacated the district court's judgment in an order 

dated February 26, 1990, on the ground that Nabors had alleged 

efforts to obtain administrative relief that may have been 

sufficient to satisfy the exhaustion requirement. Finding the 

district court's sua sponte dismissal of the action premature, we 

remanded the matter to the district court to require a response 

from the federal respondents and to "undertake further proceedings 

and disposition as expeditiously as the circumstances permit." 

Aplt. Br. Ex. 4 at 2. 

On December 19, 1989, while we were considering Nabors' first 

appeal, the Conunission finally held Nabors' initial parole 

hearing . At that hearing, the Conunission determined that Nabors 

should not be paroled. Doc. 25 at 2. Nabors later received a 

statutory interim hearing in December 1991, after which the 

Conunission again decided by notice of action dated January 5, 

1992, that Nabors should not be paroled. 

On April 29, 1992, Nabors filed a petition for writ of 

mandamus asking this court to order the district court to comply 

with our order of February 26, 1990, and rule on his habeas 

petition. However, Nabors dismissed this mandamus action 

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voluntarily after the district court responded that it would issue 

its judgment within two weeks. 

On July 14, 1992, the district court entered an order denying 

Nabors' petition for writ of habeas corpus on the ground that 

because Nabors had received his initial hearing in December 1989, 

he had already received the only remedy to which he was entitled 

for the delay in holding the hearing. Nabors now appeals the 

district court's judgment, alleging that because the Commission 

violated his right to due process, he is entitled to one of two 

remedies: (1 ) release from the remainder of his thirty-year term 

of imprisonment and from a parole violator warrant issued by the 

Commission, or (2) reduction of the remainder of his thirty-year 

term of imprisonment by 425 days--the number of days that his 

initial hearing was delayed plus good time credit he has earned 

during his incarceration. Aplt. Br. at 14. 

II. DISCUSSION 

It is undisputed that Nabors did not receive a timely initial 

parole hearing. Under 18 U.S . C. § 4208(a), "whenever feasible" 

the initial hearing for a prisoner eligible for parole under 

§ 4205(a) "shall be held not later than thirty days before the 

date of such eligibility for parole." The Parole Commission 

regulations further restrict the time period for such parole 

hearings: 28 C. F.R. § 2 . 12(a) requires the Commission to hold an 

initial parole hearing at least 90 days before an inmate becomes 

e l igible for parole, "or as soon thereafter as practicable . " 

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Nabors was entitled to an initial parole hearing in January 1989, 

but did not receive the hearing until December 1989. 

Although the Commission erred in delaying Nabors' initial 

hearing for nearly a year, we agree with the district court that 

the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus is not proper in this 

case, as Nabors has already received the only remedy to which he 

is entitled. "When an inmate has not been afforded a timely 

hearing [as required by 28 C.F.R. § 2.12(a)], the proper course is 

to grant him a hearing at the earliest possible date 

United States v. Miller, 599 F.2d 249, 251 (8th Cir. 1979). 

II 

In a 

case even more egregious than Nabors', the Eight Circuit held that 

the petitioner's only remedy for a six-year delay in holding the 

initial hearing was to require the parole board to give the 

petitioner a fair hearing as soon as possible, where the 

petitioner failed to preserve any allegations of prejudice for 

appeal. Jones v. United States Bureau of Prisons, 903 F.2d 1178, 

1181 (8th Cir. 1990); see United States v. Tully, 521 F.Supp. 331, 

337 (D. N.J. 1981) (citing Smith V. United States, 577 F.2d 1025, 

1029 (5th Cir. 1978)). 

Nabors asserts that by denying habeas relief on this ground, 

the district court ignored his claim that the Commission not only 

failed to comply with regulatory and statutory provisions; it 

also violated his right to due process. He contends that it is 

this due process violation that entitles him to habeas relief. 

We disagree. We have previously held that the Commission's 

failure to hold timely hearings in the context of parole 

revocation and dispositional reviews of detainers does not rise to 

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the level of a due process violation unless the petitioner can 

show he was prejudiced by the delay. See Harris v . Day, 649 F.2d 

755, 761-62 (10th Cir. 1981) (dispositional review of detainer) ; 

McNeal v. United States, 533 F.2d 66, 68-69 (10th Cir. 1977) (per 

curiam) (final revocation hearing). Thus, in the absence of 

prejudice to the petitioner, the failure to hold a timely 

dispositional review or parole revocation hearing is a ground for 

a writ of mandamus to compel compliance with the statute, but is 

not a basis for habeas relief. See Harris, 649 F.2d at 761-762; 

McNeal, 533 F.2d at 68-69; Poyner v. United States Parole Comm'n, 

878 F.2d 275, 276 (9th Cir. 1989) (dispositional review and 

revocation hearing); Heath v . United States Parole Comm'n, 788 

F.2d 85, 89-90 (2d Cir. 1986) (dispositional review); Berg v. 

United States Parole Comm'n, 735 F.2d 378, 379 n.3 (9th Cir. 1984) 

(per curiam) (revocation hearing); Sutherland v. McCall, 709 F.2d 

730, 732 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (revocation hearing); Hopper v. United 

States Parole Comm'n, 702 F.2d 842, 845 (9th Cir. 1983) 

(revocation hearing); Carlton v. Keohane, 691 F.2d 992, 993 (11th 

Cir. 1982 ) (per curiam) (dispositional review); Maslaukas v . 

United States Bd. of Parole, 639 F.2d 935, 938 (3rd Cir. 1980) 

(dispositional review) ; Lambert v. Warden, 591 F.2d 4, 7-8 (5th 

Cir. 1979) (per curiam) (dispositional review); Smith v. United 

States, 577 F.2d 1025, 1029 (5th Cir. 1978) (revocation hearing) . 

Cf. Judd v. Baer, 911 F.2d 571, 573-74 (11th Cir. 1990) 

(analogizing to parole revocation cases and holding that the 

failure of the Commission's National Appeals Board to render a 

decision within sixty days of receiving an appeal, as required by 

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18 U.S.C. § 4215(b) , does not entitle the prisoner or parolee to 

habeas relief in the absence of an unreasonable and prejudicial 

lapse of time ) . We believe that the same rule should apply in the 

context of initial hearings. Consequently, because Nabors has 

already had his initial hearing and has shown no prejudice 

stemming from the delay, he has already received the only remedy 

that he is due. 

Our holding today is consistent with the legislative history 

of the Parole Commission and Reorganization Act of 1976, 18 U.S.C. 

§§ 4201 et~ (1976), which indicates that neither the House nor 

the Senate drafters envisioned that release from imprisonment 

would be a remedy for an untimely parole hearing . In recommending 

adoption of the conference committee report on the bill, Senator 

Burdick explained: 

The legislation establishes certain deadlines for 

the Commission's decisionrnaking, but the conferees 

acknowledge that from time to time extraordinary reasons 

may result in delay in making any of the decisions. If 

a legal remedy is necessary i n the absence of good faith 

effort on the part of the Commission, the remedy 

available to the prisoner or parolee is to compel the 

decision, not release from custody. 

122 Cong. Rec. 4862 (1976). Similarly, in advising the House of 

Representatives to adopt the conference committee report, 

Representative Kastenrneier noted: 

[T]here are certain decisionrnaking deadlines 

provided for in H.R. 5727. If the Commission fails to 

act in accordance with these deadlines, the prisoner or 

parolee would not automatically be released from 

confinement, but he could compel the Commission to make 

t heir decision promptly. 

It is expected that the new Commission will be able 

to function under these deadlines. . But if for some 

reason they were unable to meet a time deadline, the 

prisoner or paro lee could solicit the assistance of the 

court under existing section 1361 U.S.C. 82, which is an 

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action in mandamus to compel an employee of the United 

States to perform his duty. I expect these cases would 

be very rare, but the court would review the case and 

determine whether there was any justification for the 

delay. If there is no justification, the court would 

remedy the situation by ordering a hearing immediately. 

Otherwise, the Commission would be held in contempt. 

122 Cong. Rec. 5163 (1976 ) . These statements provide additional 

support for our conclusion that Nabors is not entitled to habeas 

relief. 

Because Nabors received his initial parole hearing, at which 

his request for parole was denied, and because Nabors has shown no 

prejudice stemming from the delay, we AFFIRM the district court's 

denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. 

Entered for the Court 

David M. Ebel 

Circuit Judge 

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