Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_03-cv-00820/USCOURTS-cand-4_03-cv-00820-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 28:2254 Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus (State)

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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1 Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 25(d), John

Marshall is substituted for Leslie Blanks, whom Marshall

succeeded as Warden after Petitioner filed his complaint.

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

FREDERICK NEWHALL WOODS,

Petitioner,

v.

JOHN MARSHALL, Warden,

Respondent.

 /

No. C 03-0820 CW

ORDER GRANTING

RESPONDENT'S

MOTION FOR

SUMMARY JUDGMENT

AND DENYING

PETITIONER'S

CROSS-MOTION 

Petitioner Frederick Newhall Woods has filed, pursuant to

Title 28 U.S.C. section 2254, a petition for a writ of habeas

corpus based upon alleged constitutional violations stemming

from his September 26, 2000 parole denial by the California

Board of Prison Terms (BPT). On August 25, 2004, this Court

granted Respondent's1 motion for summary judgment on Petitioner's

claims that the parole denial violated his rights to due process

and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. However, the

Court denied without prejudice Respondent's motion for summary

judgment on Petitioner's ex post facto claim and granted

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Petitioner additional discovery. Respondent now renews his

motion for summary judgment on the ex post facto claim. 

Petitioner opposes the motion and cross-moves for summary

judgment. Pursuant to the Court's August 25, 2004 order, the

matter was taken under submission on the papers. Having

considered the parties' papers and the evidence cited therein,

the Court GRANTS Respondent's motion for summary judgment and

DENIES Petitioner's cross-motion.

BACKGROUND

In July, 1976, Petitioner hijacked a school bus, kidnaping

the driver and twenty-six children. At the time of the

kidnaping, sentencing in California was governed by the

Indeterminate Sentencing Law (ISL). In February, 1978,

Petitioner was convicted of twenty-seven counts of violating

California Penal Code section 209 (kidnaping for ransom) and

sentenced to serve a life sentence with the possibility of

parole. Petitioner became eligible for parole on July 29, 1983. 

Since then, the BPT has denied Petitioner parole ten times,

including once on September 26, 2000. In denying Petitioner

parole on that date, Respondent acknowledges that the BPT

applied the Determinate Sentencing Law (DSL), which had been

enacted in 1977 to replace the ISL.

The DSL differs from the ISL in significant ways. Parole

criteria under the ISL were developed during the sixty years of

its application. See In re Stanley, 45 Cal. App. 3d 1030, 1036

(1976). Notably, the ISL recognized, among other things, a

“prisoner’s good conduct in prison, his efforts toward

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rehabilitation, and his readiness to lead a crime-free life in

society.” In re Rodriguez, 14 Cal. 3d 639, 652 (1975)

(superceded by statute). “In short, a discerned and mandatory

objective of [the ISL] is recognition of the inmate’s postconviction history and his potential for safe release as

indispensable considerations in parole setting.” Stanley, 45

Cal. App. 3d at 1038. The ISL also considered, inter alia, the

nature of the prisoner’s offense, the prisoner's age, prior

associates, habits, inclinations and traits of character. Id.

at 1037.

Under the DSL, although its parole-suitability guidelines

require consideration of the same factors as were considered

under ISL, the stated purpose of sentencing is punishment rather

than rehabilitation. Cal. Penal Code § 1170(a)(1). The DSL

seeks to impose uniformity of sentences based upon the severity

of the offense. Id. Moreover, the paramount criterion in

considering whether to release an inmate is now public safety. 

Id.

On March 26, 2003, Petitioner filed a petition for a writ

of habeas corpus challenging the September 26, 2000 parole

denial as a violation of his constitutional rights. Petitioner

claimed that the parole denial violated (1) the ex post facto

clause of Article I, section 10 of the United States

Constitution; (2) the due process clauses of the Fifth and

Fourteenth Amendments; and (3) the Eighth and Fourteenth

Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. 

After the Court's August 25, 2004 order, only Petitioner's

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ex post facto claim remains. Specifically, Petitioner claims

that the BPT violated the ex post facto clause by applying the

DSL at his September 26, 2000 parole hearing. As a result of

the Court's August 25, 2004 order, Petitioner was granted

discovery of (1) his Central Office file, which the BPT

considered in denying his parole, (2) all documents provided to

the BPT between 1977 and 1979 explaining how to apply the newlyenacted DSL, and (3) all decisions denying parole between April

15, 1974 and April 15, 1975.

LEGAL STANDARD

I. Habeas Corpus Review of Parole Eligibility

Because this case involves a federal habeas corpus

challenge to a State parole eligibility decision, the applicable

standard is contained in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death

Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). McQuillion v. Duncan, 306 F.3d

895, 901 (9th Cir. 2002). Under AEDPA, a district court may not

grant habeas relief unless the State court's adjudication of the

claim: "(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or

involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established

Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United

States; or (2) resulted in a decision that was based on an

unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence

presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d);

Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412 (2000). A federal court

must presume the correctness of the State court’s factual

findings. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1).

Petitioner has exhausted his State remedies by filing a

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petition for a writ of habeas corpus in California Supreme

Court. The court denied that petition in a summary opinion. 

Where, as here, the highest State court to reach the merits

issued a summary opinion that does not explain the rationale of

its decision, federal court review under section 2254(d) is of

the last explained State court opinion to reach the merits. 

Bains v. Cambra, 204 F.3d 964, 970-71, 973-78 (9th Cir. 2000). 

In this case, the last explained State court opinion to address

the merits of Petitioner’s claim is the opinion of the BPT.

II. Ex Post Facto

"The ex post facto prohibition forbids the Congress and the

States to enact any law which imposes a punishment for an act

which was not punishable at the time it was committed; or

imposes additional punishment to that then prescribed." Connor

v. Estelle, 981 F.2d 1032, 1033 (9th Cir. 1992) (internal

citations omitted). "In accord with these purposes . . . two

critical elements must be present for a criminal or penal law to

be ex post facto: it must be retrospective, that is, it must

apply to events occurring before its enactment, and it must

disadvantage the offender affected by it." Weaver v. Graham,

450 U.S. 24, 29 (1981). Under the second prong, a retroactively

applied parole rule violates the ex post facto clause if it

"creates a significant risk of prolonging [the prisoner's]

incarceration." Garner v. Jones, 529 U.S. 244, 251 (2000). The

"significant risk" must not be speculative or ambiguous. Scott

v. Baldwin, 225 F.3d 1020, 1023 (9th Cir. 2000).

There are two methods by which a prisoner may attack a

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2 Petitioner also cites several unpublished opinions from

the Third Circuit that follow the ruling in Mickens-Thomas.

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parole decision under the ex post facto clause. First, the

prisoner can make a facial challenge that the new rule, "by its

own terms, [creates] a significant risk" of increasing the

punishment for a crime. Garner, 529 U.S. at 255. 

Alternatively, the prisoner can "demonstrate, by evidence drawn

from the rule's practical implementation by the agency charged

with exercising discretion, that its retroactive application

will result in a longer period of incarceration than under the

earlier rule." Id.

DISCUSSION

Here, Petitioner asserts that the application of the DSL to

his September, 2000 parole hearing created an impermissible and

significant risk of prolonging his incarceration. Specifically,

Petitioner argues that DSL-mandated emphases on the gravity of

the commitment offense and public safety had the practical

effect of lengthening his prison term.

Petitioner relies principally upon the Third Circuit's

ruling in Mickens-Thomas v. Vaughn, 321 F.3d 374 (3rd Cir.

2003).2 Louis Mickens-Thomas was a Pennsylvania prisoner whose

life sentence had been commuted by the Governor. Like

California's ISL, Pennsylvania's old parole law emphasized

rehabilitation. Like California's DSL, Pennsylvania's new law

is primarily concerned with public safety, although it does

mandate consideration of all factors that were considered under

the old law. The petitioner became eligible for parole in 1996,

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but was repeatedly denied parole by the State's parole board. 

The Third Circuit ruled first that the shift in the State's

parole laws did trigger ex post facto analysis because, although

the new parole law considers the same parole-suitability

criteria as the old statute, it does not provide discretion over

those criteria in the same manner, nor does it accord the

various factors the same weight. Mickens-Thomas, 321 F.3d at

386-89. Moving to the second prong of ex post facto analysis,

the court ruled that Mickens-Thomas was entitled to have his

case remanded to the parole board because he had successfully

shown that the new parole guidelines had resulted in a

significant increase in the chance of his prolonged

incarceration. On this point, the court noted, inter alia, that

all 266 inmates granted commuted sentences prior to the 1996 law

change were paroled on their first or second application, and

that, based upon protocol used prior to 1996 that assigned

numerical values to the parole-suitability criteria, MickensThomas would have been recommended for parole under the old

guidelines. Id. at 385, 390. 

This Court acknowledged Mickens-Thomas in its August 25,

2004 order. Moreover, Respondent posits the same argument that

the respondent did unsuccessfully in Mickens-Thomas: that the

first prong of ex post facto analysis is not satisfied because

the DSL requires consideration of the same criteria as were

considered under the ISL. However, although the facts in

Mickens-Thomas as they relate to the history and application of

Pennsylvania's parole laws closely mirror those in this case,

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the Court need not reach the issue of whether it should follow

the Third Circuit's ruling, as Petitioner urges. That is true

because, even if the Court did adopt Mickens-Thomas, Petitioner

has provided no evidence that the application of the DSL to his

September, 2000 parole hearing significantly increased the

likelihood that his particular sentence would be prolonged. See

Garner, 529 U.S. at 255.

Petitioner acknowledges that the evidence he now proffers,

which purportedly supports his argument that BPT's use of the

DSL created a significant risk that his sentence would be

prolonged, is anecdotal. Petitioner cites several cases under

the ISL in which inmates who had committed violent crimes were

granted parole because they exhibited some of the favorable,

rehabilitative characteristics that Petitioner now claims. 

Petitioner also relies upon State-wide statistical evidence,

including evidence that, immediately following the enactment of

the DSL, the annual rate of parole-suitability findings declined

from approximately fifty percent of those eligible to about

seven percent. The rate had declined even further by 2000.

It may be that, under the DSL, the BPT denies parole at a

significantly higher rate than it did under the ISL. Further,

it may be logical to deduce that the current parole rates are a

direct result of the DSL's emphasis on factors, such as the

gravity of the commitment offense and public safety, that were

not so heavily weighted under the ISL. However, Petitioner has

not demonstrated, as Mickens-Thomas successfully did, that the

retroactive application of the DSL created a significant risk of

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a lengthier incarceration in Petitioner's own case. Further, he

has not provided evidence, as Mickens-Thomas did, of similarlysituated prisoners who were paroled under the ISL. In fact,

Petitioner has provided no evidence that he would have been any

more likely, given the circumstances of his crime, to have been

paroled under the ISL than under the current system. At most,

the evidence proffered by Petitioner supports mere speculation

that the application of the DSL at his parole hearing prolonged

his incarceration. In the Ninth Circuit, that is insufficient. 

See Scott, 225 F.3d at 1023. Because Petitioner has failed to

make this critical showing, his ex post facto claim must fail.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, Respondent's motion for summary

judgment on Petitioner's ex post facto claim (Docket No. 51) is

GRANTED, and Petitioner's cross-motion (Docket No. 52) is

DENIED. The petition for a writ of habeas corpus is DENIED. 

The Clerk shall enter judgment and close the file.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: 5/27/05 /s/ CLAUDIA WILKEN 

CLAUDIA WILKEN

United States District Judge

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