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Parties Involved:
Joseph Anthony Bennett
Appellee
United States Parole Commission
Appellant

Document Text:

PUBLISH 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

JOSEPH ANTHONY BENNETT, · ) 

) 

) 

) 

) 

) 

) 

v. 

Petitioner-Appellant/ 

Cross-Appellee, 

UNITED STATES PAROLE COMMISSION, ) 

Respondent-Appellee/ 

Cross-Appellant. 

) 

) 

) 

Appeals from the United States District Court 

for the District of Colorado 

(D.C. No. 93-F-1731) 

Submitted on the briefs: 

UDitedftaJ L E D &esc0 urt Tenth c· ot AppM·~ lrCuit ~ 

APR 3 0 7996 

PAnuc'l?. ~FIS1iRn 

Nos. 94-14.16 

& 94-1496 

ler'· ~ ' •• 

Michael G. Katz, Federal Public Defender, and James P. Moran, Assistant Federal Public 

Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Petitioner-Appellant/Cross-Appellee. 

Henry L. Solano, United States Attorney, and Charlotte J. Mapes, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Denver, Colorado, for Respondent-Appellee/Cross-Appellant. 

Appellate Case: 94-1496 Document: 01019279372 Date Filed: 04/30/1996 Page: 1 
Before PORFILIO and LOGAN, Circuit Judges, and O'CONNOR,* District Judge. 

LOGAN, Circuit Judge. 

Petitioner Joseph A. Bennett is a United States citizen who pleaded guilty in 

Mexico in 1989 to charges of transporting cocaine. The Mexican court sentenced him to 

a nine-year prison term. Soon thereafter he was transferred to the United States Federal 

Correction Institute (FCI) in La Tuna, Texas, under a treaty with Mexico. Treaty on 

Execution of Penal Sentences, Nov. 25, 1976, U.S.-Mex., 28 U.S.T. 7399. During 

petitioner's incarceration there the United States Parole Commission (Commission) held a 

hearing as required by 28 U.S.C. § 4106A(b)(1)(A) to "determine a release date and a 

period and conditions of supervised release ... as though the offender were convicted in a 

United States district court of a similar offense." Finding that his Mexican convicti~n 

most resem]?led a violation 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(D), the Commission calculated an 

offense level and criminal history category resulting in a guideline range of 120 to 150 

months, followed by a three to five year period of supervised release. It then ruled as 

follows: "[I]t is ordered the transferee be released on upon [sic] expiration of the 9 year 

Republic of Mexico sentence .... It is further ordered the transferee, immediately upon 

• The Honorable Earl E. O'Connor, Senior United States District Judge, United 

States District Court for the District of Kansas, sitting by designation. 

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Appellate Case: 94-1496 Document: 01019279372 Date Filed: 04/30/1996 Page: 2 
discharge from the period of incarceration, serve a term of supervised release until 

expiration ofFull Term." I R. doc. 13 ex. A. Petitioner appealed this order to the Fifth 

Circuit, challenging only his criminal history calculation. That court affirmed without 

opinion. ld:. doc. 13 ex. C; Bennett v. U.S. Parole Comro'n, 924 F.2d 1055 (5th Cir. 

1991) (Table).' 

Petitioner was later transferred to FCI Florence, Colorado, where he filed the 

instant 28 U.S. C.§ 2241 habeas petition contending his sentence was imposed in an 

illegal manner. The district court treated as supplemental his amended petition charging 

that the Commission "Improperly Characterized it's actions in such a way as to foreclose 

application of Service Credits to the Petitioner's Sentence." I R. doc. 21. The district 

court ruled that it had no jurisdiction to overturn the Fifth Circuit's decision affirming the 

Commission's setting of a nine-year expiration period on the Mexican sentence. The 

district court found jurisdiction, however, to the extent the Commission order attempted 

to preclude application of earned credits toward his sentence and imposed a temi of 

supervised release. l.d.. doc. 40 at 4. It ordered that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) could 

not add a supervised release term to petitioner's sentence, kl.. doc. 42, and ordered the 

BOP and the warden at FCI Florence to "give credit of up to fifty-four days per year on 

1 After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined 

unanimously to grant the parties' request for a decision on the briefs without oral 

argument. ~Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); lOth Cir. R. 34.1.9. The cases are therefore ordered 

submitted without oral argument. 

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Appellate Case: 94-1496 Document: 01019279372 Date Filed: 04/30/1996 Page: 3 
his term of imprisonment and sentence, when satisfactory behavior service is granted by 

the BOP." hi.. doc. 40 at 5. This disposition was unsatisfactory to both petitioner and the 

Commission, each of whom has appealed. Both raise jurisdictional arguments: petitioner 

that the district court had jurisdiction to review the Commission's sentence determination; 

the Commission that the district court had no jurisdiction to set aside the Commission's 

supervised release term or to order the service credits. 

Everyone concerned construes the Commission order, correctly we believe, to 

direct that petitioner be incarcerated for a total of 108 months (nine years) less ~y credits 

earned during his incarceration in Mexico or earned as an inmate in the U.S. federal 

prison system. They agree that this will likely result in petitioner's release from 

confinement, ifthe Commission's order is upheld, after approximately eighty-nine 

months, leaving about nineteen months to be served under supervised release. The 

combination of prison time and supervised release would total the 1 08-month Mexican 

sentence. 

We understand petitioner's argument to be that the Commission was required, 

under the applicable guidelines, to order a supervised release term of at least three years. 

Thus, the Commission should have set the release date to be at the end of six years 

incarceration, with the remaining three years on supervised release. Petitioner further 

contends that he is entitled to a reduction from the six years imprisonment for the credits 

he has earned and will earn, and any reduction cannot increase his supervised release time 

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Appellate Case: 94-1496 Document: 01019279372 Date Filed: 04/30/1996 Page: 4 
beyond the three years. Therefore, with earned good time credits he should be free of 

prison and supervised release before the end of 108 months. The way the Commission 

framed its order, however, earned credits would simply secure petitioner's release from 

prison but would not shorten his term below 108 months because of the order's 

requirement he be under supervised release until the end of the "Full Term." 

If the instant case were a direct appeal of the Commission's order properly before 

this court, petitioner might be entitled to some relief. ~Trevino-Casares y. U.S. Parole 

Comm'n, 992 F.2d 1068 (lOth Cir. 1993). But this is a collateral attack on an order that 

has already been affirmed in the Fifth Circuit, the court to which it was properly 

appealed. ~ 18 U.S.C. § 4601A(b)(2)(A) (Commission's determinations "may be 

appealed to the United States court of appeals for the circuit in which the offender is 

imprisoned at the time of the determination of such Commission"). The Commission 

asserts that only the Fifth Circuit has jurisdiction to consider petitioner's claims, and that 

even then principles of claim preclusion forbid revisiting the order. Although petitioner 

did not raise in his direct appeal the issues he asserts in his current action, the 

Commission argues that he is barred from raising the new issues on collateral attack 

unless he can show cause for procedural default,~ United States y. Allen, 16 F.3d 377, 

378 (lOth Cir. 1994); and petitioner makes no attempt to establish cause for that 

procedural default. 

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Appellate Case: 94-1496 Document: 01019279372 Date Filed: 04/30/1996 Page: 5 
Petitioner makes various arguments that this court has jurisdiction to consider his 

claims. First, he contends that the Commission imposed an illegal sentence and illegal 

sentences are subject to collateral attack under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Of course, that section 

requires attacks on federal sentences be made in the sentencing jurisdiction, here the Fifth 

Circuit. Petitioner argues that he is not challenging a sentence imposed by a district court 

but one of the Parole Commission, whose release decisions are challenged through habeas 

proceedings in the jurisdiction in which the prisoner is incarcerated. ~Dunn v. U.S. 

Parole Comm'n, 818 F.2d 742,744 (lOth Cir. 1987). Although that is true for the 

ordinary case--because the custodian warden is the proper named defendant--the instant 

situation is different. Here the Commission acts "as though the offender were convicted 

in a United States district court," 18 U.S.C. § 4106A(b)(1)(A). We recognized in 

Trevino-Casares that under § 41 06A the Commission translates the foreign sentence into 

what is in reality a "sentence" comparable to that for a domestic offender convicted of a 

similar offense. 

Accordingly, even though the statute speaks of the Commission's 

determination as the specification of "a release date and a period and 

conditions of supervised release,"§ 4106A(b)(1)(A), it is in procedure, 

substance, and effect tantamount to the imposition of a federal sentence, 

and it should, for all practical purposes, be treated as such. 

992 F.2d at 1069 (footnote omitted). 

Of course, 28 U.S.C. § 2255 contemplates filing a motion to correct sentence in 

"the court" that imposed the sentence. Here the Commission, not a court, imposed the 

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Appellate Case: 94-1496 Document: 01019279372 Date Filed: 04/30/1996 Page: 6 
"sentence." The Commission, however, has procedures for reopening and reconsidering 

its orders. ~ 28 C.F.R. § 2.62(k). Thus, we hold that the district court correctly held it 

lacked jurisdiction over petitioner's collateral attack on the Commission's order. 

Petitioner's second argument is that he is not challenging his sentence as such but 

the denial of the credits he earned or will earn toward the calculation of his sentence, and 

this is not part of the Commission's § 41 06A determination. He argues that a transfer 

treaty prisoner can challenge the calculation of these credits in a habeas action in the 

jurisdiction in which he is confined. That is true if petitioner's characterization ofthe 

dispute is correct. Trevino-Casares, 992 F.2d at 1070; Ajala y. U.S. Parole Conun'n, 997 

F.2d 651,655-56 (9th Cir. 1993). In the event of a dispute over the calculation or 

application of credits by the BOP, the district court has jurisdiction to review that 

determination if petitioner has exhausted administrative remedies. 

The problem here is that the Fifth Circuit, where the Commission's order was 

reviewed, requires the Commission to make the determinations at issue in the instant case 

as part of its initial order under§ 4106A. Cannon v. U.S. Dep't ofJustice, 973 F.2d 

1190, 1195-96 (5th Cir. 1992), ~denied, 508 U.S. 915 (1993). This is a different 

approach from that of the Tenth and Ninth Circuits as Trevino-Casares, 992 F.2d at 1073, 

and AliDa, 997 F.2d at 655, expressly recognized. Further, there are Fifth Circuit cases 

directly in point on each of petitioner's contentions. Molano-Garza v. U.S. Parole 

Comro'n, 965 F.2d 20,25 (5th Cir. 1992), ~denied, 506 U.S. 1065 (1993), held 

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Appellate Case: 94-1496 Document: 01019279372 Date Filed: 04/30/1996 Page: 7 
specifically that the Commission does not have to impose the statutory minimum period 

of supervised release found in 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C). Thowe y. U.S. Parole Comm'n, 

902 F.2d 291,292 (5th Cir.), ~.denied, 498 U.S. 868 (1990), upheld a Commission 

order substantially identical to that involved here, rejecting a contention that the order 

would require the prisoner to lose the use of good time credits to reduce his sentence. ~ 

al.s.Q Lara y. U.S. Parole Comm'n, 990 F.2d 839, 840 (5th Cir. 1993) (upholding without 

discussion a Commission order essentially identical to that here). Under Fifth Circuit law 

these supervised release and sentence credit determinations were part of the "sentence." 

It also does not matter how this circuit might decide these same issues. Under one 

view we have no jurisdiction because this is a collateral attack on the Commission's order 

and we are not the proper forum, for the reasons already discussed. Under another view 

we are bound to accept the Fifth Circuit's approval of the order by the principles of res 

judicata--claim preclusion--because the issues petitioner raises could and should have 

been raised ·in his direct appeal. It is, of course, no wonder the public defender who 

represented petitioner in his direct appeal did not raise the issues asserted in the instant 

case, because Fifth Circuit case law frrmly established their lack of merit. 

Our analysis subsumes petitioner's arguments that somehow the Commission's 

decision violated provisions of the transfer treaty, federal law, and the agreement between 

petitioner and the government. Petitioner's good time and other credits are relevant only 

to his prison discharge date before beginning supervised release. But there does not 

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Appellate Case: 94-1496 Document: 01019279372 Date Filed: 04/30/1996 Page: 8 
appear to be any disagreement between the parties on that matter; and if disagreement 

develops petitioner must ftrst exhaust his administrative remedies before going to the 

district court to review the BOP's calculations. ~United States y. Wilson, 503 U.S. 

329, 335-36 (1992). 

We thus hold that the Commission's order is not subject to collateral attack in this 

jurisdiction, and that the district court erred in ordering presumptive good time credits 

and eliminating the period of supervised release the Commission imposed on petitioner. 

AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART. 

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