In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Nos. 99-3775, 99-3895

Don Campbell a/k/a Donald Lee,

Plaintiff-Appellee/Cross-Appellant,

v.

Howard Peters III, John Groves, and

Charles Williams,

Defendants-Appellants/Cross-Appellees,

and

Michael O’Leary, Michael Lane, and Carol Mills,

Defendants/Cross-Appellees.

Appeals from the United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 92 C 3265--Ann Claire Williams, Judge. 

Argued October 30, 2000--Decided July 10, 2001

 Before Ripple, Diane P. Wood, and Evans,

Circuit Judges.

 Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge. In July of

1990, an Illinois Circuit Court decided

that appellant Donald Campbell was kept

in prison at least a year longer than his

sentence required. Campbell subsequently

sued six prison officials and the

Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC)

alleging violations of his Eighth and

Fourteenth Amendment rights. A jury found

in his favor against three of the

defendants, and those defendants now

appeal that finding, claiming that they

were entitled to qualified immunity.

Campbell cross-appeals the court’s grant

of summary judgment in favor of the other

three defendants. While we affirm the

district court’s decision with respect to

the cross-appeal, we find that the three

remaining defendants were indeed entitled

to judgment as a matter of law based on

the defense of qualified immunity. We

therefore reverse the jury verdict and

remand to the district court to enter

judgment as a matter of law in the

defendants’ favor. 
I

 A. Campbell’s Prison Sentences

 On November 10, 1981, Campbell (who has

also used the monikers "Tony Redfield,"

"Donald Lee," "Donald Shelton," and

"Rodney Lee") was convicted in the state

of Michigan of breaking and entering and

given a prison sentence of one and a half

to 15 years. After serving only about

three months, he escaped from a halfway

house. The governor of Michigan issued an

escape warrant for his arrest, but

Campbell evaded the Michigan police.

 In October of 1983, law enforcement

officials caught up with him in Illinois,

where he was apprehended on charges of

residential burglary. He was convicted of

that offense and sentenced to a prison

term of four and a half years plus a twoyear mandatory supervised release (MSR)

term. Campbell was released from prison

in February 1986 (about 25 months early),

based on good conduct credit that he had

earned, and he began serving the MSR

term. But on July 23, 1986, after serving

only about six months of MSR, he was

arrested yet again for unlawful use of a

weapon by a felon and on December 10,

1986, was sentenced to a two-year prison

term, with credit for time served since

July 23.

 Because of the weapons conviction, the

Prisoner Review Board (Board) revoked

Campbell’s burglary MSR on January 6,

1987. Campbell was ordered to serve the

time remaining on his two-year MSR term

(about 18 months) in prison. This

computation was in accordance with 730

ILCS sec. 5/3-3-9 (West 2000), which

states that for MSR violators,

recommitment "shall be for the total

mandatory supervised release term, less

the time elapsed between the release of

the person and the commission of the

violation for which the mandatory

supervised release is revoked." sec. 5/3-

3-9(a) (3)(i)(B). The statute at that

time also allowed the Board to revoke up

to a year of the good conduct credit

earned during the burglary sentence and

to add another year to the MSR term. Id.

 In apparent keeping with these rules,

Campbell was ordered reincarcerated for

18 months. At that time, the Board did

not order Campbell to serve any of the 25
months that had been deducted from his

sentence on the burglary charge because

of his good conduct credits (although the

statute would have permitted it to add on

another 12 months to the 18 month

sentence).

 Because the new 18 month term was to be

served concurrently with the 24-month

unlawful use sentence, Campbell’s initial

projected release date was July 23, 1988.

This changed, however, in response to a

number of offenses Campbell committed

after his return to prison (including

arson, assaulting an officer and other

inmates, property damage, and possession

of gang-related material). When all was

said and done, the Board revoked all of

the good conduct credits Campbell had

earned earlier while serving the burglary

sentence. The net result was a new

release date of March 29, 1990. 

 Matters became even more complicated

when the Board decided that the four and

a half months Campbell had spent in jail

awaiting sentence on the unlawful use

charge could not be credited against the

original six and a half year burglary

sentence. This had the effect of pushing

his release date back to August 16, 1990.

The Board made this decision in reliance

on 730 ILCS sec. 5/3-3-9(a)(3)(ii), which

states that in computing the sentence of

an MSR violator, the person shall be

given credit against the term of

reconfinement for time spent in custody

subsequent to his parole only if that

time has not been credited against

another sentence. See also Jackson v.

Fairman, 418 N.E.2d 200 (Ill. App. Ct.

1981).

 By March of 1987, Campbell was starting

to wonder when he could expect to be

released. He made a few inquiries, but he

did not receive consistent stories about

his projected release date. At some

point, he wrote or spoke to each of the

following individuals, asking for a

clarification of the calculation of his

sentence. Michael Lane, the IDOC

director, gave him an explanation on at

least two separate occasions. John

Groves, the chief records officer for

IDOC, reviewed the calculations at least

twice. Statesville Warden Michael O’Leary

and Pontiac Correctional Center Warden

Howard Peters III referred him to their

respective records clerks, Carol Mills

and Charles Williams, each of whom
explained the sentence calculations to

Campbell at least twice.

 In the meantime, dissatisfied with the

explanations he was receiving and

suspecting that the prison officials were

not allowed to revoke the previously

earned good conduct credits, Campbell

filed a habeas corpus petition in state

court on April 8, 1988, against

Statesville Warden O’Leary, contending

that his release date should have been no

later than July 23, 1988, and that

O’Leary erred in calculating a projected

discharge date of August 16, 1990. The

Will County Circuit Court dismissed this

petition on September 2, 1988, but on

June 21, 1989, the Illinois Appellate

Court reversed the dismissal. The

Appellate Court held that the record did

not adequately explain why four and a

half months had been added to the six and

a half year burglary sentence, and it

remanded the case to the trial court for

a more detailed hearing. 

 This hearing was continued several

times. Ultimately, Campbell’s petition

was dismissed again by the Circuit Court

on May 31, 1990. On July 11, 1990, the

Illinois Appellate Court asked the

Circuit Court to conduct another hearing

on the petition and ordered Campbell to

be released on bond. On July 30, 1990,

the Circuit Court decided that Campbell’s

burglary sentence should have ended no

later than June 1989 because the statute

allows the Prison Review Board to revoke

only one year’s worth of good conduct

credit. The court then ordered Campbell’s

immediate release from custody.

 Campbell undoubtedly thought that he had

finally prevailed, but that was not to be

the case as a practical matter. When

Williams began to process Campbell’s

release on July 11, he discovered a

successor to the old Michigan escape

warrant for Campbell’s arrest, which had

been issued March 24, 1987. As a result,

Campbell’s Illinois victory did not

result in his actual release, but instead

simply caused him to be transferred to

the Livingston County Sheriff and turned

over to the custody of Michigan in

September. Michigan gave Campbell credit

for time served in Illinois and he was

released by Michigan authorities on April

1, 1991. 
 B. District Court Proceedings

 In May of 1992, Campbell filed a sec.

1983 suit against IDOC and the six

individuals described above: Groves,

Lane, O’Leary, Mills, Peters, and

Williams. Campbell claimed that these

defendants had wrongfully detained him in

violation of his Eighth and Fourteenth

Amendment rights. In particular, he

claimed that he should have been released

from prison on July 23, 1988, but that he

had been held for two extra years because

his good conduct credit was unlawfully

revoked after his recommitment. He sought

$5 million in damages from each

defendant.

 The defendants filed several pre-trial

motions for summary judgment. In

response, the district court took several

actions. It dismissed all of Campbell’s

Fourteenth Amendment due process claims.

Then it granted summary judgment in favor

of Lane, O’Leary, and Mills ("the

Lanedefendants") because the undisputed

facts did not support a finding of an

Eighth Amendment violation. The court

also granted summary judgment for IDOC

based on the state’s Eleventh Amendment

immunity.

 This left the Eighth Amendment case

against Groves, Peters, and Williams

("the Groves defendants"), which went to

a jury trial. At the close of evidence,

the defendants moved for judgment as a

matter of law based on qualified

immunity. The court denied that motion,

and the jury found in Campbell’s favor,

awarding $37,000 in compensatory damages

and $5,000 in punitive damages from each

defendant. The defendants renewed their

motion for judgment as a matter of law

and moved for a new trial. These motions,

too, were denied.

 The Groves defendants appealed the

district court’s refusal to grant them

judgment as a matter of law. Campbell

filed a cross-appeal, challenging the

dismissal of his Fourteenth Amendment

claims and the grant of summary judgment

in favor of the Lane defendants. The two

appeals have been consolidated.

II

 We review a district court’s refusal to
grant a Rule 50 motion for judgment as a

matter of law de novo. Sheehan v. Donlen

Corp., 173 F.3d 1039, 1043 (7th Cir.

1999). Judgment as a matter of law is

proper only if a reasonable person could

not find that the evidence supports a

decision for a party on each essential

element of the case, viewing the evidence

in the light most favorable to the

nonmovant. Jones v. Western & Southern

Life Ins. Co., 91 F.3d 1032, 1036 (7th

Cir. 1996). We also review the district

court’s denial of qualified immunity de

novo, taking the facts in the light most

favorable to Campbell and looking only at

the legal questions. Khuans v. School

Dist. 110, 123 F.3d 1010, 1013 (7th Cir.

1997).

 Qualified immunity shields government

officials performing discretionary

functions from liability for civil

damages unless their conduct violates

clearly established statutory or

constitutional rights of which a

reasonable person would have known.

Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640

(1987). In general, once the defendants

raise the qualified immunity defense, the

plaintiff must show two things: first,

that there has been a violation of one or

more of her federal constitutional

rights, and second, that the

constitutional standards at issue were

clearly established at the time of the

alleged violation. Coady v. Steil, 187

F.3d 727, 731 (7th Cir. 1999).

 To the extent that a court rejects an

immunity claim because the standards were

not clearly established, there is a risk

that the scope of the underlying right

may remain unclear. To ensure that legal

doctrine may continue to evolve, the

Supreme Court has said that courts should

consider the two aspects of the immunity

inquiry in sequential order, looking

first at the question whether the

defendants violated the plaintiff’s

rights, and second at whether a given

right was clearly established. See, e.g.,

Saucier v. Katz, No. 99-1977, 2001 WL

672265, *4 (U.S. June 18, 2001); City of

Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 841

n.5 (1998). In Katz, the Court reaffirmed

that "[a] court required to rule upon the

qualified immunity issue must consider,

then, this threshold question: Taken in

the light most favorable to the party

asserting the injury, do the facts
alleged show the officer’s conduct

violated a constitutional right?" 2001 WL

672265 at *4. Here, the facts are not in

dispute. If the initial interpretation of

the state law that the prison authorities

used had been correct, Campbell would not

have served too much time in prison and

thus would not have been confined without

penological justification; if the later

interpretation was correct, then he

remained behind bars too long. This

reveals that Campbell’s case is really

about the content of Illinois law, not

the federal constitution.

 Nevertheless, Campbell argues, if

through deliberate indifference to the

requirements of state law the

correctional officials kept him

imprisoned too long, his Eighth Amendment

rights were violated even if the

additional time was not very long. Cf.

Glover v. United States, 121 S. Ct. 696,

700 (2001) ("[Supreme Court]

jurisprudence suggests that any amount of

actual jail time has Sixth Amendment sig

nificance."). In that sense, we believe

that he has articulated a constitutional

right that satisfies the first part of

the Katz requirement for qualified

immunity, and thus we must turn to the

question of whether clearly established

law prohibited the defendants’ actions.

We naturally do not second-guess the

jury’s decision to the effect that

Campbell was indeed kept in prison beyond

the release date dictated by state law;

the remaining question is whether the

individual defendants are personally

liable for that violation, or if instead

they are entitled to qualified immunity.

 For a right to be clearly established,

"[t]he contours of that right must be

sufficiently clear that a

reasonableofficial would understand that

what he is doing violates that right."

Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640. Campbell

contends that he has shown that it was

clearly established that incarcerating a

prisoner beyond the termination of his

sentence without penological

justification violates the Eighth

Amendment as cruel and unusual

punishment. At a general level, this

proposition may be true, although the

courts that have recognized this problem

have been careful to note that the

extended incarceration must also be the

product of deliberate indifference before
a constitutional violation, as opposed to

an error of state law, is implicated. See

Moore v. Tartler, 986 F.2d 682, 686 (3d

Cir. 1993); Sample v. Diecks, 885 F.2d

1099, 1108-09 (3d Cir. 1989); Haygood v.

Younger, 769 F.2d 1350, 1354-55 (9th Cir.

1985) (en banc); see also Farmer v.

Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994). But we

do not deal with generalities. Instead,

we must determine whether it was clearly

established that the defendants, in

revoking the good conduct credits and

computing a new release date after the

recommitment, were violating Campbell’s

constitutional rights by requiring him to

serve more time than state law and his

sentence required. See Wilson v. Layne,

526 U.S. 603, 615 (1999) ("[T]he right

allegedly violated must be defined at the

appropriate level of specificity before a

court can determine if it was clearly

established."). As Campbell points out,

it is not necessary for him to point to

a case saying that the revocation, under

the identical circumstances, was

unlawful. Instead, as the Supreme Court

put it in Katz, the law is "clearly

established" if "various courts have

agreed that certain conduct is a

constitutional violation under facts not

distinguishable in a fair way from the

facts presented in the case at hand . .

. ." 2001 WL 672265 at *5 (emphasis

added). 

 At the time of the revocation of

Campbell’s credits, it was not apparent

that this kind of state law mistake rose

to the level of an Eighth Amendment

violation. The record shows that the

prison officials were indeed responding

to Campbell’s inquiries, even if

ultimately in a mistaken way. The

relevant statute, 730 ILCS sec. 5/3-3-9,

does not clearly establish the rules for

computing release times. Section 5/3-3-

9(a) (3)(i)(B) simply states that, at the

time of recommitment, "[t]he Board may

also order that a prisoner serve up to

one year of the sentence imposed by the

court which was not served due to the

accumulation of good conduct credit." The

statute does not expressly prohibit

revocation of credits while the prisoner

is serving the recommitment term. 

 It was not until July 30, 1990 that a

state trial court definitively

interpreted the statute to bar revocation

of good conduct credit after
recommitment. (The appellate court

questioned the Board’s computation of the

sentence in its June 1989 remand order,

but only because it could not ascertain

the Board’s reason for adding the four

and a half months to the six and a half

year sentence. The court did not focus on

or question the propriety of revoking the

good conduct credits.) The trial court’s

decision, which appeared in July of 1990,

has very little bearing on the

reasonableness of the defendants’ actions

prior to its issuance. Furthermore, it is

doubtful whether one unpublished state

trial court decision can "clearly

establish" the law for qualified immunity

purposes. (We have held that a district

court decision does not have such weight,

see Anderson v. Romero, 72 F.3d 518, 525

(7th Cir. 1995), and so by parity of

reasoning it is at least unclear whether

a state trial court decision would carry

such weight.)

 Campbell also points to a January 1991

letter from the Illinois Attorney General

that advised the defendants not to appeal

the Circuit Court’s decision. But again,

this evidence has no relevance to the

state of the law from 1988 through 1990,

which is the time period during which the

plaintiff claims he was illegally

imprisoned. In any event, appeal

recommendations are made for a myriad of

reasons, some resting on the legal

strength of the case, some on the

resources of the office, some on the

likely precedential value of an appellate

decision, and so on. We know of no cases

that hold that such a recommendation from

either a state attorney general or the

Solicitor General creates "clearly

established law." 

 Campbell has therefore not shown that

clearly established law prohibited the

prison officials from revoking Campbell’s

good conduct credits after recommitment.

No statute prohibited the revocation of

the credits; to the contrary, the

defendants were relying upon a reasonable

interpretation of a state statute in

revoking the credits. Although a court

later found that interpretation to be

incorrect, there was no case law or other

controlling authority that required such

a conclusion. Indeed, the defendants’ in

terpretation had actually prevailed twice

in the Circuit Court and was based upon

the state legislature’s grant of wide
discretion to prison officials in

granting and revoking good conduct

credits, see 730 ILCS sec. 5/3-6-3. Under

these circumstances, defendants Groves,

Peters, and Williams did not act in

violation of clearly established law or

with deliberate indifference to its

requirements, and they are entitled to

qualified immunity for the actions

Campbell has challenged.

III

 In his cross-appeal, Campbell challenges

the grant of summary judgment in favor of

Lane, O’Leary, and Mills. We review the

court’s grant of summary judgment de

novo. See Wright v. Illinois Dep’t of

Corrections, 204 F.3d 727, 729 (7th Cir.

2000). 

 The district court dismissed the claims

against this group of defendants because

Campbell failed to provide any evidence

that any of them had knowledge of the

risk of unwarranted detention and either

failed to act or took only ineffectual

action, leading to the unjustified

detention. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 842-

43; Sample, 885 F.2d at 1110. While we

would probably agree with the district

court’s findings, it is also the case

that these defendants were entitled to

qualified immunity for the reasons we

have just given. On that basis, we also

affirm the summary judgment in favor of

Lane, O’Leary, and Mills.

 Campbell’s cross-appeal did not

challenge the district court’s dismissal

of his Fourteenth Amendment due process

claims. Instead, he said only that he

wanted the right to ask the district

court to reconsider that ruling if the

case is remanded for trial on his Eighth

Amendment claims against the Lane

defendants. Even if this was a proper way

to contest the adverse Fourteenth

Amendment ruling, which it is not, no

such remand is being ordered. Thus, we

have no occasion to discuss the merits of

that part of the district court’s

decision.

IV

 For these reasons, we REVERSE the jury

verdict and REMAND the case to the

district court to enter judgment as a

matter of law in favor of Groves, Peters,
and Williams. We Affirm the dismissal of

the claims against Lane, O’Leary, and

Mills.