Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/519/728/85521/
Timestamp: 2019-07-23 08:59:51
Document Index: 128789646

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1983', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 2254', '§ 1983', '§ 1983']

Howard E. Bradford, Individually and on Behalf of All Otherssimilarly Situated, Appellant, v. Robert Weinstein et al., Appellees.levi Jenkins, on Behalf of Himself and All Others Similarlysituated,appellant, v. Walter D. Tyler et al., Appellees, 519 F.2d 728 (4th Cir. 1975) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Fourth Circuit › 1975 › Howard E. Bradford, Individually and on Behalf of All Otherssimilarly Situated, Appellant, v. Robert...
Howard E. Bradford, Individually and on Behalf of All Otherssimilarly Situated, Appellant, v. Robert Weinstein et al., Appellees.levi Jenkins, on Behalf of Himself and All Others Similarlysituated,appellant, v. Walter D. Tyler et al., Appellees, 519 F.2d 728 (4th Cir. 1975)
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit - 519 F.2d 728 (4th Cir. 1975)
Argued Feb. 4, 1974. Decided Nov. 22, 1974. Certiorari Granted June 2, 1975. See 95 S. Ct. 2394
In No. 73-1921, plaintiff, an inmate of a South Carolina prison, sued for himself and others similarly situated under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that he had become eligible for parole under South Carolina law but that parole was denied him. The proceedings were constitutionally defective, according to him, because of (1) the character of the evidence on which the parole board relied, (2) its failure to grant him a "full" and impartial hearing with advance notice of adverse information, (3) its failure to establish in advance of judgment the criteria of judgment, and (4) its failure to state reasons for denial of parole. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to exhaust available state remedies. It was of the view that Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S. Ct. 1827, 36 L. Ed. 2d 439 (1974), was applicable since plaintiffs' ultimate goal was release on parole, and therefore plaintiffs' exclusive remedy was to seek a writ of habeas corpus to which the exhaustion requirement of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b) applied. We again reverse and remand for further proceedings.
As Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 569-70, 92 S. Ct. 2701, 2705, 33 L. Ed. 2d 548 (1970), teaches:
Both Roth and its companion case, Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S. Ct. 2694, 33 L. Ed. 2d 570 (1970), were concerned with the discharge of teachers employed by state-owned-and-operated educational institutions. Both cases turned primarily on whether the teachers concerned had a "property" interest in their employment, although Roth contained instructive dicta about when a public-employed teacher's "liberty" might be limited, as, for example, where he was discharged for a reason which impugned his good name, reputation, honor or integrity. 408 U.S. 573-74, 92 S. Ct. 2701. As a consequence, Roth and Sindermann did little to provide a definitive definition of "liberty" which we could easily apply and which would be dispositive of these appeals. Roth did say that "liberty" protected by due process extends "beyond the sort of formal constraints imposed by the criminal process" and that the term is "not confined to mere freedom from bodily restraint" (quoting Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 499, 74 S. Ct. 693, 694, 98 L. Ed. 884 (1954)). 408 U.S. at 572, 92 S. Ct. at 2706.
We are of the view that plaintiffs' right to consideration for parole eligibility is, at least, an aspect of liberty to which the protection of the due process clause extends. Indeed, in North Carolina, which guarantees to each prisoner with respect to parole "a review and consideration of his case upon its merits," the right may be one of "property." This conclusion stems from three of the latest cases to consider the myriad of situations in which the due process clause is applicable: Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 92 S. Ct. 2593, 33 L. Ed. 2d 484 (1972); Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778 (1973); and Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S. Ct. 2963, 41 L. Ed. 2d 935 (1974). All were cases in which "liberty" was at stake. In Morrissey, the due process clause was held applicable to proceedings having the potential of revocation of parole; in Gagnon, the proceedings having the potential of revocation of probation; and in Wolff, to disciplinary proceedings within a correctional institution. It is true that in Morrissey and Gagnon the continued actual liberty of the subject of the proceeding was at stake, but in Wolff, what was at stake was discipline usually more onerous conditions of servitude of one already confined.
In the instant cases, there is no present liberty at stake. There is only the right to be considered for parole and the inchoate privilege of some earlier future release if the parole board, in its discretion, concludes to grant it. The case is really the converse of Wolff. There, one who was confined was subjected to the risk of durance more vile; here, one who is confined is afforded the right of consideration of partial release from restraint and the privilege of partial release. The first is a right not to be restrained; the second, the privilege of release from restraint. The distinction is without a difference, because the historical dichotomy of protection, depending upon whether something is a right or a privilege, has now been eradicated. Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 374, 91 S. Ct. 1848, 29 L. Ed. 2d 534 (1971); Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. at 481, 92 S. Ct. 2593; Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. at 571, 92 S. Ct. 2701. Instead, the test of "(w)hether any procedural protections are due depends on the extent to which an individual will be 'condemned to suffer grievous loss.' Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 168, 71 S. Ct. 624, 95 L. Ed. 817 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) . . . ." We think it would be a grievous loss for a prisoner by reason of a completely ex parte proceeding, and the resulting increased opportunity for committing error, to be denied parole and required to serve more of his term because the attention of the parole board was not called to data tending to indicate that parole should be granted, or for a prisoner whose incarceration has as its ultimate objective the prisoner's rehabilitation to fail to know, let alone understand, why parole is denied him and hence what changes in attitudes, habits, and the like will be required if he is ever to be successful in obtaining parole, unless, of course, there is found to be some compelling state interest in why he should not be advised. In the case of the latter, absent proof to the contrary, we would presume prejudice also in the fact that a denial of parole carries with it an adverse innuendo probably making a successive application for parole more difficult to sustain. It follows that since procedural due process was required to be afforded in Wolff, it must be afforded here.3
In sum, we think that the due process clause has application to parole eligibility proceedings. Our views are in accord with those expressed in Childs v. United States Board of Parole, 371 F. Supp. 1246 (D.D.C. 1973); and United States ex. rel. Johnson v. Chairman of New York State Board of Parole, 500 F.2d 925 (2 Cir. 1974), vacated as moot, 419 U.S. 1015, 95 S. Ct. 488, 42 L. Ed. 2d 289. We are not persuaded by those cases which have indicated a contrary conclusion. See, e. g., Menechino v. Oswald, 430 F.2d 403 (2 Cir. 1970), cert. den., 400 U.S. 1023, 91 S. Ct. 588, 27 L. Ed. 2d 635 (1971); Walker v. Oswald, 449 F.2d 481 (2 Cir. 1971); Scarpa v. United States Board of Parole, 477 F.2d 278 (5 Cir. 1973), vacated on other grounds, 414 U.S. 809, 94 S. Ct. 79, 38 L. Ed. 2d 44 (1973); Buchanan v. Clark, 446 F.2d 1379 (5 Cir. 1971); Barnes v. United States, 8 Cir., 445 F.2d 260; Schawartzberg v. United States Board of Parole, 399 F.2d 297 (10 Cir. 1968). It should be noted that each, except Scarpa, was decided before Morrissey, Gagnon and Wolff, from which we take our cue. In Scarpa, what was the correct reading of Morrissey was identified in the main opinions of the in banc court as one of the principal points over which the division occurred. We think that in the light of Gagnon and Wolff, Morrissey should receive the reading placed on it by Judges Tuttle, Wisdom and Goldberg, in dissent, in Scarpa.
Of course, to conclude that the due process clause has application to parole eligibility proceedings is only the beginning of the inquiry, because immediately and inevitably the next question is how much process is "due." On this, we express no view. In these records, plaintiffs' allegations have not been proved. More importantly, defendants' practices and procedures with respect to parole eligibility proceedings have not been shown. Nor have defendants' interests in preserving the practices and procedures currently followed been developed. All of these must be known because "due process" is a flexible concept and the due process clause, where it is applicable, does not carry with it a fixed panoply of rights or a fixed mode of procedure. "(C) onsideration of what procedures due process may require under any given set of circumstances must begin with a determination of the precise nature of the government function involved as well as of the private interest that has been affected by governmental action." Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U.S. 886, 895, 81 S. Ct. 1743, 1748, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1230 (1961); Morrissey, 408 U.S. at 471; Wolff, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S. Ct. 2963, 41 L. Ed. 2d 935. This is so because the due process clause only requires a "balance" between what may be conflicting interests to arrive at what is substantially fair and just. Wolff, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S. Ct. 2963, 41 L. Ed. 2d 935. Hence, we leave to the district courts in the first instance the determination of what the due process clause requires in the instant cases after the district courts have conducted the requisite full evidentiary exploration.
In Preiser, the Supreme Court held that 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b), which requires an applicant for federal habeas first to exhaust "the remedies available in the courts of the State," superseded the unqualified right to sue under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to redress a state denial of a federal constitutional right where the substance of the suit is a challenge that is "just as close to the core of habeas corpus as an attack on the prisoner's conviction." The Court further explained that a suit is close to the "core of habeas corpus" if it challenges "directly to the constitutionality of (the prisoner's) physical confinement itself and seeks either immediate release from that confinement or the shortening of its duration." 411 U.S. at 489, 93 S. Ct. at 1836. In Preiser, the prisoners had alleged that they had been deprived of good-time credits as a disciplinary measure in administrative proceedings that were conducted with a lack of procedural due process. The specific relief sought was restoration of such credits. By the time their complaints were filed in the district court, such relief would have resulted in their immediate release. Accordingly, these suits were held to be within the core of habeas corpus. The Court carefully indicated, however, that the result would have been the same had the practical effect of a grant of the requested relief been merely a shortening of the duration of the sentence rather than immediate release. The Court articulated as a rationale for its ruling the policy of avoiding needless friction in federal-state relationships caused by premature intervention by the federal courts in matters of intimate state concern.
Notwithstanding the apparent inapplicability of Preiser, in the instant cases the defendants argue that the policy of federal-state comity is broad enough to apply to suits seeking redetermination of parole suitability under court mandated procedures affording procedural due process. It is true that the Supreme Court spoke of the interest of a state in having an initial opportunity to correct difficulties and disputes which arise in the course of its relationship with its prisoners, and that the language employed was broad enough to cover any dispute between the state and its prisoners concerning the manner in which the state's parole system was administered. See 411 U.S. at 475, 93 S. Ct. 1827. However, the Supreme Court also took pains to reaffirm its holdings in a series of prior cases that 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was a proper vehicle for challenge of certain kinds of prison conditions. See, e. g., Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U.S. 639, 88 S. Ct. 2119, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1319 (1968). See also Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 94 S. Ct. 1800, 40 L. Ed. 2d 224 (1974) (decided after Preiser) . Thus, it appears that the exhaustion requirement under the habeas statute does not apply to all suits by prisoners seeking to challenge the manner in which the state penal system is administered. Only such suits as challenge the "constitutionality of . . . physical confinement itself and (seek) either immediate release from that confinement or the shortening of its duration" are subject to the exhaustion requirement.
Our view that these are not cases which fall within the Preiser doctrine finds support in the construction placed on the holding in Preiser in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S. Ct. 2963, 41 L. Ed. 2d 935 (June 26, 1974). In Wolff, an inmate in a Nebraska prison brought a class action asserting that prison disciplinary proceedings violated due process. The relief sought was threefold: (1) the restoration of good time, (2) that a plan be submitted by the prison authorities for a hearing procedure in connection with withholding and forfeiture of good time which comported with due process, and (3) damages for the deprivation of civil rights resulting from unconstitutional procedures. The claim was made that under Preiser the validity of the procedures for depriving prisoners of good-time credits could not be considered in a suit brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. That claim was rejected, however, in the following language:
The complaint in this case sought restoration of good-time credits, and the Court of Appeals correctly held this relief foreclosed under Preiser. But the complaint also sought damages; and Preiser expressly contemplated that claims properly brought under § 1983 could go forward while actual restoration of good-time credits is sought in state proceedings. 411 U.S., at 499, n. 14, 93 S. Ct. 1827. Respondent's damage claim was therefore properly before the District Court and required determination of the validity of the procedures employed for imposing sanctions, including loss of good time, for flagrant or serious misconduct. Such a declaratory judgment as a predicate to a damage award would not be barred by Preiser ; and because under that case, only an injunction restoring good time improperly taken is foreclosed, neither would it preclude a litigant with standing from obtaining by way of ancillary relief an otherwise proper injunction enjoining the prospective enforcement of invalid prison regulations.
We therefore conclude that it was proper for the Court of Appeals and the District Court to determine the validity of the procedures for revoking good-time credits and to fashion appropriate remedies for any constitutional violations ascertained, short of ordering the actual restoration of good time already cancelled. (Emphasis added; footnote eliminated) 418 U.S. at 554, 94 S. Ct. at 2974.
The appellants flout the precept of Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S. Ct. 1827, 36 L. Ed. 2d 439 (1973) avowing the policy and mandate of Congress, as announced in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)2 , to be that complaints like the present ones must first be taken to the State courts. The majority would escape Preiser on the premise that the instant suits were saved from its constriction by Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S. Ct. 2963, 41 L. Ed. 2d 935 (1974). Dissection of the two decisions will, I think, reveal the conclusion untenable.
"So, even if restoration of respondents' good-time credits had merely shortened the length of their confinement, rather than required immediate discharge from that confinement, their suits would still have been within the core of habeas corpus in attacking the very duration of their physical confinement itself. It is beyond doubt, then, that the respondents could have sought and obtained fully effective relief through federal habeas corpus proceedings." (Accent added.) Preiser v. Rodriguez, supra, 411 U.S. at 487-488, 93 S. Ct. at 1835.
"In short, Congress has determined that habeas corpus is the appropriate remedy for state prisoners attacking the validity of the fact or length of their confinement, and that specific determination must override the general terms of § 1983." Id. at 490, 93 S. Ct. at 1837. (Accent added.)
"It is difficult to imagine an activity in which a State has a stronger interest, or one that is more intricately bound up with state laws, regulations, and procedures, than the administration of its prisons. . . . The strong considerations of comity that require giving a state court system that has convicted a defendant the first opportunity to correct its own errors thus also require giving the States the first opportunity to correct the errors made in the internal administration of their prisons." Id. at 491, 93 S. Ct. at 1837. (Accent added.)
"The answer to this contention (res judicata as to damages) is that the respondents here sought no damages, but only equitable relief restoration of their good-time credits and our holding today is limited to that situation. If a state prisoner is seeking damages, he is attacking something other than the fact or length of his confinement, and he is seeking something other than immediate or more speedy release the traditional purpose of habeas corpus. In the case of a damages claim, habeas corpus is not an appropriate or available federal remedy. Accordingly, as petitioners themselves concede, a damages action by a state prisoner could be brought under the Civil Rights Act in federal court without any requirement of prior exhaustion of state remedies." 411 U.S. at 494, 93 S. Ct. at 1838. (Accent added.)
"The complaint in this case sought restoration of good-time credits, and the Court of Appeals correctly held this relief foreclosed under Preiser. But the complaint also sought damages ; and Preiser expressly contemplated that claims properly brought under § 1983 could go forward while actual restoration of good-time credits is sought in state proceedings. 411 U.S., at 499, n. 14, 93 S. Ct. (1827) at 1841. Respondent's damage claim was therefore properly before the District Court and required determination of the validity of the procedures employed for imposing sanctions, including loss of good time, for flagrant or serious misconduct. Such a declaratory judgment as a predicate to a damage award would not be barred by Preiser ; and because under that case, only an injunction restoring good time improperly taken is foreclosed, neither would it preclude a litigant with standing from obtaining by way of ancillary relief an otherwise proper injunction enjoining the prospective enforcement of invalid prison regulations." (Accent added.) Wolff v. McDonnell, supra, 418 U.S. at 554, 94 S. Ct. at 2974.
Other authorities support our conclusion that present enjoyment of a protectable interest is not a prerequisite of due process. See Goldsmith v. Bd. of Tax Appeals, 270 U.S. 117, 46 S. Ct. 215, 70 L. Ed. 494 (1926) (right of C.P.A. to practice before the Board of Tax Appeals); Willner v. Committee on Character and Fitness, 373 U.S. 96, 83 S. Ct. 1175, 10 L. Ed. 2d 224 (1963), and Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 77 S. Ct. 752, 1 L. Ed. 2d 796 (1957) (admission to the bar); Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 78 S. Ct. 1332, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1460 (1958) (right to a tax exemption)