Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_15-cv-01288/USCOURTS-cand-3_15-cv-01288-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
R. Davis
Respondent
Jimmie Earl Stephen
Petitioner

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

JIMMIE EARL STEPHEN,

Petitioner,

v.

R. DAVIS,

Respondent.

Case No. 15-cv-01288-SI (pr)

ORDER OF DISMISSAL

Re: Dkt. No. 8

INTRODUCTION

Jimmie Stephen, a prisoner formerly incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison and now at 

the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, has filed a pro se petition for writ of habeas corpus 

pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 to challenge a disciplinary decision. Respondent has moved to 

dismiss the action for lack of habeas jurisdiction and for mootness. Plaintiff filed a statement of 

non-objection to a dismissal without prejudice. For the reasons discussed below, the court will 

dismiss the action for lack of habeas jurisdiction.

BACKGROUND

A rule violation report was issued on November 6, 2014, charging Stephen with 

"possession of a controlled substance (THC)” based upon the discovery of marijuana in his cell 

during a search on October 3, 2014. Dkt. No. 8-1 at 18. A disciplinary hearing was held on 

December 15, 2014, at which Stephen was found guilty and assessed a 150-day loss of good 

conduct time credits. Id. at 20-21. Stephen filed an inmate appeal about the disciplinary hearing 

and prevailed; the associate warden vacated the disciplinary hearing and ordered the rule violation 

report re-issued and a new hearing held on the charge. Id. at 25. A new disciplinary hearing was 

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held on February 17, 2015, at which Stephen again was found guilty of possession of a controlled 

substance and was assessed a 150-day loss of good conduct time credits. Id. at 25-34.

In his federal petition for writ of habeas corpus, Stephen alleged that he filed an 

unsuccessful challenge to the disciplinary decision in the California Supreme Court in 2015 before 

filing his federal petition. This court construed the federal petition to assert a due process claim 

based on the denial of a staff assistant and the failure to call a witness at the disciplinary hearing. 

Stephen is currently incarcerated serving a sentence of 35 years to life in prison. Dkt. No. 

8-1 at 2. That sentence was imposed in 1991, after he was convicted of second degree murder and 

sentence enhancement allegations were found true. See id. He has not been found suitable for 

parole. See id.at 7, 14.

DISCUSSION

This court may entertain a petition for writ of habeas corpus “in behalf of a person in 

custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court only on the ground that he is in custody in 

violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). 

Habeas jurisdiction is an “implicit exception” from the “otherwise broad scope” of 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983.1 Nettles v. Grounds, 788 F.3d 992, 999 (9th Cir. 2015) (quoting Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 

U.S. 74, 79 (2005)). 

Nettles attempted to resolve some ambiguities as to when claims must be brought in a 

habeas action under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and when claims must be brought in a civil rights action 

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. "[R]elief is available to a prisoner under the federal habeas statute only if 

success on the claim would 'necessarily spell speedier release' from custody, which Skinner

suggested would include termination of custody, acceleration of the future date of release from 

custody, or reduction of the level of custody." Nettles, 788 F.3d at 1001 (citing Skinner v. Switzer, 

562 U.S. 521, 533-34 & n.13 (2011)). Earlier Ninth Circuit cases indicating "that the writ of 

 

1

"Every person who, under color of [state law] . . . subjects, or causes to be subjected, any 

citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any 

rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party 

injured." 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

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habeas corpus may extend to claims that, if successful, would merely be likely to or have the 

potential to lead to a speedier release" were "superceded by the Supreme Court's rulings." Id. 

Nettles stands for the proposition that, to be cognizable in habeas, a claim has to necessarily 

accelerate release – not just likely or merely potentially accelerate release – from confinement if 

successful. See id. at 1000-01. 

Nettles applied its necessarily-spells-speedier-release rule to an indeterminately-sentenced 

life prisoner who sought restoration of 30 days of lost time credits and expungement of the rule 

violation report that led to the loss of time credits. See id. at 1002. Nettles determined that habeas 

jurisdiction was not established because neither form of relief would necessarily accelerate the 

prisoner's release from prison, or terminate his custody, or reduce his level of custody. See id. at 

1002-04. Significantly, one could not determine that the restoration of time credits would 

necessarily affect the duration of the prisoner's confinement because the prisoner had not yet been 

found suitable for parole and it was unknown what his term would be if he was at some future date 

found suitable for parole. Id. at 1003. "Without knowing how many years Nettles will serve 

before the Board finds him suitable for parole or the length of his base term, we cannot conclude 

that restoration of the lost good-time credits would necessarily affect the duration of Nettles's 

confinement if and when the Board finds him suitable for parole." Id. at 1004. The court also 

rejected the argument that habeas jurisdiction existed because the expungement of the rule 

violation report would remove "roadblocks to parole" suitability; although the rule violation report 

"will likely have some effect on the Board's consideration, there is no basis for concluding that the 

expungement of this report from the record will 'necessarily spell speeder release'" or reduce his 

level of custody. Id. at 1003.2

 

2 Nettles also considered the case of a prisoner who was attempting to challenge a gang 

validation decision and concluded that challenge could go forward in a habeas action. This was so

because the Ninth Circuit panel in Nettles was “bound by the determination” of an earlier panel in 

Bostic v. Carlson, 884 F.2d 1267, 1269 (9th Cir 1989), that “a prisoner can seek expungement of 

an incident from his disciplinary record when that would lead to speedier release from disciplinary 

segregation.” Nettles, 998 F.3d at 1005. Bostic had held that “[h]abeas corpus jurisdiction is also 

available for a prisoner’s claims that he has been subjected to greater restrictions of his liberty, 

such as disciplinary segregation, without due process of law.” Bostic, 884 F.2d at 1269. This 

portion of Nettles is not relevant to Stephen’s case, because it does not appear that he currently is 

in disciplinary segregation or otherwise subjected to a greater restriction of his liberty as a result of 

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Turning to the case at hand, the 150-day loss of credits imposed on Stephen in the 

disciplinary decision will not necessarily affect the duration of his confinement. Stephen is in the 

same situation as the Nettles plaintiff: he is an indeterminately sentenced prisoner not yet found 

suitable for parole and for whom a base term has not yet been set. It cannot be said that the 

removal of the rule violation report or the restoration of time credits will necessarily result in an 

earlier release date for Stephen. Habeas jurisdiction therefore is absent under the reasoning of 

Nettles. Accord Hardney v. Virga, 2015 WL 3648697 (E. D. Cal. June 10, 2015) (applying Nettles

and recommending dismissal of habeas petition from life inmate challenging a loss of credits). 

In theory, it should be possible for Stephen to file a civil rights action to challenge the 

prison disciplinary decision. There are some obstacles to such an action, which he should bear in 

mind in determining whether to spend the money to file a new civil rights action. First, efforts to 

exhaust state court remedies may preclude a prisoner from litigating the same claims in a civil 

rights action because state habeas proceedings can have issue or claim preclusive effects on later 

civil rights actions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 actions under certain circumstances. See Silverton v. 

Dep't of Treasury, 644 F.2d 1341, 1347 (9th Cir. 1981) (state habeas proceeding precludes 

identical issue from being relitigated in subsequent § 1983 action if state habeas court afforded full 

and fair opportunity for issue to be heard); Gonzalez v. CDC, 739 F.3d 1226, 1230 (9th Cir. 2014) 

(extending rule of Silverton to cover claim preclusion as well as issue preclusion). Second, 

Stephen almost certainly will have to pay the full $400.00 fee ($350.00 filing fee plus $50.00 

administrative fee) if he files a civil rights action to challenge the disciplinary decision because he 

is subject to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g)'s restriction on filings by prisoners who have had three or more 

prior cases dismissed on the grounds that they were malicious, frivolous, or failed to state a claim.

Although a district court may construe a habeas petition by a prisoner attacking the 

conditions of his confinement as pleading civil rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Wilwording 

v. Swenson, 404 U.S. 249, 251 (1971), the court declines to do so here. The difficulty with 

construing a habeas petition as a civil rights complaint is that the two forms used by most 

 

the disciplinary decision.

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prisoners request different information and much of the information necessary for a civil rights 

complaint is not included in the habeas petition filed here. Examples of the potential problems 

created by using the habeas petition form rather than the civil rights complaint form include the 

potential omission of intended defendants, potential failure to link each defendant to the claims, 

and potential absence of an adequate prayer for relief. Additionally, there is doubt whether the 

prisoner is willing to pay the civil action filing fee of $ 350.00 (plus a $50.00 administrative fee) 

rather than the $5.00 habeas filing fee to pursue his claims. The habeas versus civil rights 

distinction is not just a matter of using different pleading forms. A habeas action differs in many 

ways from a civil rights action: (1) a habeas petitioner has no right to a jury trial on his claims, (2) 

the court may be able to make credibility determinations based on the written submissions of the 

parties in a habeas action, (3) state court (rather than administrative) remedies must be exhausted 

for the claims in a habeas action, (4) the proper respondent in a habeas action is the warden in 

charge of the prison, but he or she might not be able to provide the desired relief when the prisoner 

is complaining about a condition of confinement, and (5) damages cannot be awarded in a habeas 

action. While a prisoner may think he has found a loophole that allows him to save hundreds of 

dollars – by filing a habeas petition with a $5.00 fee rather than the usual $350.00 filing fee (plus 

$50.00 administrative fee) for a civil action – the loophole proves unhelpful because he ultimately 

cannot proceed in habeas and will be charged the regular civil action filing fee to challenge 

conditions of confinement. It is not in the interest of judicial economy to allow prisoners to file 

civil rights actions on habeas forms because virtually every such case, including this one, will be 

defective and require additional court resources to deal with the problems created by the different 

filing fees and the absence of information on the habeas form. 

Finally, Stephen’s non-objection to respondent’s motion asked that this action be 

dismissed without prejudice due to non-exhaustion of administrative remedies under Ngo v. 

Woodford, 548 U.S 81 (2006). Stephen may be confusing exhaustion of administrative and 

judicial remedies, or perhaps confusing requirements for habeas and civil rights actions. Although 

this action is being dismissed, the dismissal is not pursuant to Ngo. Ngo does not concern 

exhaustion of judicial remedies and does not apply to a habeas action. Instead, Ngo pertains to the 

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requirement in 42 U.S.C. § 1997e that administrative remedies be exhausted before a civil rights 

action is filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. If Stephen chooses to file a civil rights action, he must 

exhaust administrative remedies before filing that civil rights action.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, respondent’s motion to dismiss is GRANTED. Dkt. No. 8. 

This action for a writ of habeas corpus is DISMISSED for lack of jurisdiction. The dismissal is 

without prejudice to petitioner filing a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, preferably using 

the court's civil rights complaint form. The clerk shall close the file. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: October 16, 2015

______________________________________

SUSAN ILLSTON

United States District Judge

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