Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-91-03305/USCOURTS-ca10-91-03305-0/pdf.json

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

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FIL.~V 

United Stat-:-e Court oi'. ApIX,&b '!'!>"".t11 ('i~ ~-1i•. 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR o 3 i992 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

JOHN WEBSTER FLANAGAN, ) 

) 

Petitioner-Appellant, ) 

) 

v. ) No. 91-3305 

) (D.C. No. 88-3456-R} 

WARDEN, U. S. PENITENTIARY, LEAVENWORTH, ) ( D. Kan. ) 

) 

Respondent-Appellee. ) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before EBEL, BARRETT, Circuit Judges, and KANE,** Senior District 

Judge. 

**Honorable John L. Kane, Jr., Senior 

States District Court for the District of 

designation. 

District Judge, United 

Colorado, sitting by 

After 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. 

submitted without oral argument. 

The case is therefore ordered 

Petitioner appeals from a district court order denying his 

petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S . C. § 2241. The 

* This order and 

not be cited, or 

except for purposes 

judgment has no precedential value and shall 

used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, 

of establishing the doctrines of the law of 

(continued on next page) 

Appellate Case: 91-3305 Document: 010110239115 Date Filed: 04/03/1992 Page: 1 
district court held that the original subject matter of the 

petition had become moot and that additional matters subsequently 

raised by Petitioner to keep the action alive were beyond the 

court's jurisdiction. On de nova review, see Slade ex rel. Estate 

of Slade v. United States Postal Serv., 952 F.2d 357, 360 (10th 

Cir. 1991) (subject matter jurisdiction of district court is 

question of law reviewable de nova); Williams v. United States 

Gen. Servs. Admin., 905 F.2d 308, 310 (9th Cir. 1990) (questions of 

mootness are reviewable de nova), we affirm the district court's 

disposition for substantially the reasons expressed in its order 

of dismissal. 

Petitioner initially filed this petition to challenge, on 

various procedural and evidentiary grounds, a prison disciplinary 

proceeding in which he was found guilty of planning an escape from 

the Federal Correctional Institution in Bastrop, Texas. He was 

sanctioned with a forfeiture of statutory good time, an increase 

in security level, and a disciplinary transfer to the United 

States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Although the conduct 

complained of took place in Texas, jurisdiction over the petition 

was properly exercised in the federal district of Kansas, where 

Petitioner was confined at the time of filing. See United states 

v. Scott, 803 F.2d 1095, 1096 (10th Cir. 1986); United States v. 

Mares, 868 F.2d 151, 151-52 (5th Cir. 1989). 

While the instant petition was pending, the Regional Director 

of the Federal Bureau of Prisons reversed the disciplinary finding 

against Petitioner, ordered the record expunged, and directed that 

Petitioner be returned to Bastrop, subject to a fresh disciplinary 

(continued from previous page) 

the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 

2 

10th Cir. R. 

Appellate Case: 91-3305 Document: 010110239115 Date Filed: 04/03/1992 Page: 2 
proceeding should the authorities elect to take the matter up 

again upon his return. Substantial authority supports the 

district court's conclusion that the relief thus afforded 

Petitioner mooted this action. 1 See, e.g., Preiser v. Newkirk, 

422 U.S. 395, 398-99, 401-03 (1975); Durre v. Dempsey, 869 F.2d 

543, 545 (10th Cir. 1989); Flittie v. Erickson, 724 F.2d 80, 81 

(8th Cir. 1983); Bradley v. Coughlin, 671 F.2d 686, 690 n.9 (2d 

Cir. 1982); Willard v. Ciccone, 507 F.2d 1, 3 (8th Cir. 1974). 

Petitioner contends, however, that the reinstitution of 

disciplinary proceedings at Bastrop--leading again to a finding of 

guilt and consequent transfer, this time to the United States 

Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania--served to reanimate the 

controversy pending in the district court. Petitioner apparently 

sees his subsequent loss, in the second disciplinary proceeding, 

of the institutional benefits recovered on his administrative 

appeal from the first, as a mere continuation of the alleged 

constitutional injury inflicted at the original hearing. The 

district court rejected this contention, concluding that it was 

"without power to address the [new] claims, not presented in the 

original petition, which apparently stem from the proceedings held 

in Bastrop and Lewisburg after the present petition was made 

moot.'' District Court Order filed December 5, 1990. We agree. 

(continued from previous page) 

36.3. 

1 We emphasize that the district court's conclusion regarding 

mootness was based upon the reversal of the disciplinary action 

taken against Petitioner, not simply the transfer of Petitioner 

out of the territorial reach of the district court. The latter 

circumstance, in itself, would not have divested the district 

(continued on next page) 

3 

Appellate Case: 91-3305 Document: 010110239115 Date Filed: 04/03/1992 Page: 3 
Whatever the alleged infirmity in Plaintiff's second prosecution 

for the escape, that is a separate matter from the now-mooted 

question regarding the propriety of the first, nullified 

proceeding on the charge. Thus, for the very same reason that 

jurisdiction over the original subject matter of the petition 

properly rested in the federal district encompassing Leavenworth, 

Kansas, jurisdiction over the claims arising subsequent to 

Petitioner's return to Bastrop exists, instead, in the appropriate 

federal district court in Texas or Pennsylvania, depending on the 

locale of Petitioner's incarceration at the time of filing. See 

Scott, 803 F.2d at 1096; Mares, 868 F.2d at 151-52. 

Finally, Petitioner attempts to forestall a finding of 

mootness by invoking the "capable of repetition, yet evading 

review" exception. See generally Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U.S. 

147, 149 (1975). To fall within this exception, the conduct 

underlying the otherwise mooted claims must be "likely to recur 

[and], by nature, so ephemeral as to elude the processes of 

judicial review. " Beattie v. United States, 949 F . 2d 1092, 1094 

n.2 (10th Cir. 1991). Neither of these conjunctive requirements 

is satisfied here. The second disciplinary proceeding ultimately 

did produce another unfavorable outcome for Petitioner, but given 

the administrative corrective applied by the Regional Director 

after the first proceeding, there was no particular reason to 

expect a repetition of the constitutional improprieties, if any, 

involved therein. See Flittie, 724 F.2d at 82 (Weinstein 

exception inapplicable to mooted challenge to parole proceeding 

where, in light of corrective action undertaken since occurrence 

(continued from previous page) 

court of the power to adjudicate the claims originally asserted in 

4 

Appellate Case: 91-3305 Document: 010110239115 Date Filed: 04/03/1992 Page: 4 
complained of, there was no reason to expect same procedural 

problem to recur in future proceedings). Furthermore, there is 

nothing in the record to indicate any impediment to effective 

application of what Beattie termed ''the processes of judicial 

review" to Petitioner's current claims once they are brought in 

the proper district court. 

Petitioner's motion for leave to proceed in f orma pauperis on 

appeal is GRANTED, and the judgment of the United States District 

Court for the District of Kansas is AFFIRMED. 

The mandate shall issue forthwith. 

(continued from previous page) 

Entered for the Court 

James E. Barrett 

Senior Circuit Judge 

the petition. See Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236, 243-44 

(1963); Santillanes v. United States Parole Cornrn'n, 754 F.2d 887, 

888 (10th Cir. 1985). 

5 

Appellate Case: 91-3305 Document: 010110239115 Date Filed: 04/03/1992 Page: 5