Opinion ID: 199347
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Burden on the Exercise of Plaintiffs' Rights

Text: 24 The plaintiffs argue that the denial of parole is a penalty because it forces them to serve a longer prison term than they otherwise would. For example, an inmate with an indeterminate sentence of seven to fifteen years who has no disciplinary infractions would become eligible for parole after serving seven years, but would most likely serve his full sentence if he does not complete the SOP. The defendant counters that parole is not a right but a privilege. He points out that inmates do not have a liberty right to parole under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, see Greenholtz v. Inmates of Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex, 442 U.S. 1, 7 (1979), or under New Hampshire law, see N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann § 651-A:6(I) (providing that a prisoner may be released on parole upon the expiration of the minimum term of his sentence) (emphasis added); Knowles v. Warden, New Hampshire State Prison, 666 A.2d 972, 975 (N.H. 1995); Baker v. Cunningham, 513 A.2d 956, 960 (N.H. 1986). 25 The lack of a liberty interest in parole, however, does not settle the question of whether the denial of parole can constitute a penalty for the purpose of Fifth Amendment compulsion. From Garrity to the recent case Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard, the Supreme Court has evaluated Fifth Amendment self-incrimination claims without reference to a liberty interest analysis. See, e.g., Garrity, 385 U.S. at 496-501; Woodard, 523 U.S.272, 285-88 (1998); compare Lile, 224 F.3d at 1183. 26 The SOP's requirement that offenders disclose uncharged conduct, at the risk that their admissions will be reported to police and prosecutors, presents the plaintiffs with a difficult dilemma. This dilemma undoubtedly imposes some burden on the exercise of their Fifth Amendment rights. The extent of the burden is mitigated, however, by three factors: the kind of burden the plaintiffs face, the voluntary nature of their choice about whether to participate in the SOP, and the fact that the denial of parole does not follow automatically from the refusal to speak. 9 27 First, parole involves relief from a penalty that has already been imposed--the full period of incarceration to which the plaintiffs were sentenced. There is no new or additional penalty for refusing to participate in the SOP. To the extent that such labels are useful, the SOP is a benefit that New Hampshire makes available to sex offenders, and parole is a further benefit that the state may condition on completion of the program. See Greenholtz, 442 U.S. at 11 (That the state holds out the possibility of parole provides no more than a mere hope that the benefit will be obtained.). 10 28 Because the plaintiffs have not yet obtained release, the nature of the penalty they face differs from the one at issue in Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420 (1984). Murphy was required to attend a treatment program for sex offenders as a condition of his probation. When his probation officer questioned him about admissions Murphy made during the course of treatment regarding an uncharged rape and murder, he confessed to those crimes. See id. at 424. His statements were then used to prosecute him. Murphy argued that his statements were compelled because his probation would have been revoked had he refused to answer. See id. at 434. The court agreed that the state could not directly link invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege to revocation of probation, stating: 29 There is thus a substantial basis in our cases for concluding that if the state, either expressly or by implication, asserts that invocation of the privilege would lead to revocation of probation, it would have created the classic penalty situation . . . and the probationer's answers would be deemed compelled and inadmissible in a criminal prosecution. 30 Id. at 435. The Court held, however, that Murphy's confessions were not compelled because there was no suggestion that his probation was conditional on his waiving his Fifth Amendment privilege. Id. at 437. 11 31 While both Murphy and the case at hand involve the issue of prosecution based on criminal admissions made during a sex offender treatment program, Murphy's classic penalty scenario does not apply here. A probationer or parolee has already achieved liberty, and thus has an expectation of retaining it. An inmate who has not been granted parole has no such expectation. See Greenholtz, 442 U.S. at 9 (There is a crucial distinction between being deprived of a liberty one has, as in parole, and being denied a conditional liberty that one desires.). Moreover, the parole board has already weighed the safety risk posed by the probationer or parolee and decided that he or she is fit to rejoin the community. Before release, an inmate has not passed this threshold test. In Greenholtz, the Court viewed these differences as support for its holding that inmates do not have a constitutional due process right to parole, in contrast to already released offenders, who do have due process rights when the state seeks to revoke their parole or probation. See id. at 9. Similarly, a treatment program that conditioned participation on incriminating admissions might violate the Fifth Amendment if that program was in turn a condition of probation or of maintaining parole, but a program that conditioned participation on incriminating admissions as a condition of obtaining release on parole does not. The case law recognizes this distinction. Following Murphy, some courts have found Fifth Amendment violations where sex offenders were required to disclose past misconduct for treatment programs that were a condition of probation or a court-suspended sentence. See Mace v. Amestoy, 765 F.Supp. 847, 850 (D. Vt. 1991); State v. Fuller, 915 P.2d 809, 814 (Mont. 1996); State v. Imlay, 813 P.2d 979, 985 (Mont. 1991); State v. Kaquatosh, 600 N.W.2d 153, 158 (Minn. Ct. App. 1999); cf. United States v. Davis, 242 F.3d 49, 50(1st Cir. 2001) (probationer free to challenge revocation of supervised release as a penalty for exercise of Fifth Amendment privilege should revocation occur); but see Asherman v. Meachum, 957 F.2d 978 (2d Cir. 1992) (en banc). But courts have denied claims where treatment programs were a condition of initial parole eligibility. See Doe v. Sauer, 186 F.3d 903 (8th Cir. 1999); Russell v. Eaves, 722 F. Supp. 558 (E.D. Mo. 1989). 32 The second factor that mitigates the burden imposed by the SOP's disclosure requirement is the relatively voluntary nature of the plaintiffs' decision about whether to participate in the program. The relevant precedent is Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard, 523 U.S. 272 (1998). Woodard, who had been sentenced to death, said that Ohio's clemency process violated his Fifth Amendment rights by forcing him to answer questions at his one guaranteed clemency interview, or, if he remained silent, permitting his silence to be used against him. He argued that the interview unconstitutionally condition[ed] his assertion of the right to pursue clemency on his waiver of the right to remain silent. Id. at 285-86. 33 The Court rejected this argument on the ground that Woodard was not required to attend or speak at his clemency hearing. The Court said: It is difficult to see how a voluntary interview could 'compel' respondent to speak. He merely faces a choice quite similar to the sorts of choices that a criminal defendant must make in the course of criminal proceedings, none of which has ever been held to violate the Fifth Amendment. Id. at 287. The Court recognized that Woodard faced a choice between providing information to the [Parole] Authority--at the risk of damaging his case for clemency or for postconviction relief--or of remaining silent. Id. at 287-88. But that choice, despite its consequences, did not support a claim within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause. The Court said that the pressure to speak in the hope of improving [respondent's] chance of being granted clemency does not make the interview compelled. Id. at 288. 34 Whether the choice that the plaintiffs here face is voluntary in a meaningful sense seems to us a closer question. By making the admissions required by the SOP, the plaintiffs risk not only damaging their cases on appeal, but also exposing themselves to future prosecution. If the plaintiffs refuse to speak, they face the strong possibility of serving more years in prison than they otherwise would. Still, like Woodard, the plaintiffs have a choice about participating in the SOP, despite the consequences that follow from that choice. The plaintiffs' choice about whether to disclose past misconduct is voluntary as Woodard understands the term. 35 The third factor we consider is whether the denial of parole follows automatically from the plaintiffs' refusal to speak. Some of the plaintiffs testified that prison officials told them that they would not be granted parole unless and until they completed the SOP, and the defendant does not dispute that completion of the SOP functions as a de facto requirement of parole for most New Hampshire sex offenders. At the same time, the defendant has shown that a few inmates who have not completed the SOP receive parole each year under special circumstances. 12 These unusual grants of release are possible because New Hampshire's parole statute nowhere states that the board must reject a parole applicant because he has not completed the SOP. As we have noted, New Hampshire's parole statute gives the parole board broad discretion to decide whether an inmate is likely to obey the law and observe the terms of his release. See Baker, 513 A.2d at 960. 36 The distinction between a highly probable de facto requirement and a statutorily mandated one has legal significance. In the early Supreme Court cases that we have discussed, the state imposed automatic penalties on those who refused to waive their right against self-incrimination. The police officers in Gardner and Garrity and the city employees in Uniformed Sanitation Men Association were discharged because they invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify. The lawyer in Spevack was disbarred for the same reason. In Turley and Cunningham, the Court declared unconstitutional New York statutes that automatically stripped government contracts and political party office from anyone who refused to waive his or her immunity. 37 By contrast, Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308 (1976), concerned the question of whether prison officials could draw an adverse inference from an inmate's silence at a disciplinary proceeding. The Court held that the Fifth Amendment did not forbid the state from drawing such an inference, given the civil nature of the disciplinary proceeding. 13 The Court distinguished Baxter from its previous holdings on the ground that the state did not require Palmigiano to waive his privilege, but rather said that his silence could be used against him if he did not waive it. In addition, Palmigiano could not be automatically found guilty as a consequence of his refusal to testify because prison regulations required that substantial evidence support a disciplinary decision. Id. at 317-318. 14 In finding that drawing such an inference was permissible, the Court noted that the state had not insisted or asked that the defendant waive his Fifth Amendment privilege. Id. at 317. Nor was the defendant in consequence of his silence automatically found guilty of the infraction with which he has been charged. Id. On the ground that an inmate's silence in and of itself did not trigger a sanction, the Court distinguished Baxter from earlier cases such as Garrity and Turley. Id. at 317-18. 38 We recently relied on Baxter and its reading of precedent in rejecting an attorney's claim that her testimony before the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners was coerced because she believed that she would be disbarred if she remained silent. See United States v. Stein, 233 F.3d 6 (1st Cir. 2000), petition for cert. filed, (U.S. Feb. 26, 2001) (No. 00-1354). We discussed the automatic penalties faced in Gardner and Garrity, and concluded: 39 Where, however, invocation of the Fifth Amendment does not, by itself, result in forfeiture of the job or license in question, the fact that claiming the Fifth may, as a practical matter, result in damage to one's chances of retaining the privilege at stake does not necessarily establish a constitutional violation. 40 Id. at 15. Three related facts led us to reject the attorney's claim. She was not subject to automatic disbarment for remaining silent; the Board of Bar Examiners was not required to disbar her; and the board had no formal rule or unwritten policy or practice of disbarring attorneys for invoking their Fifth Amendment privilege. See id. at 16. 15 41 Parallel facts are present here. The plaintiffs do not automatically lose parole eligibility because they remain silent, the parole board is not required to deny them parole, and the board has no formal rule denying parole to sex offenders who do not complete the SOP. See, e.g., Lile, 224 F.3d at 1182 (inmates required to admit past misconduct for admission to a sex offender treatment program could not show Fifth Amendment compulsion based on denial of parole because they were not required to complete the treatment program for parole eligibility). According to the plaintiffs, the board does have such an unwritten policy or practice. But the defendant in Stein made a similar argument to no avail, and we see no reason to distinguish this case on that ground. It is entirely permissible for a parole board to take into account an inmate's efforts to rehabilitate himself by participating in a prison program designed to address his prior criminal conduct. But to say that the parole board may consider an inmate's completion of a prison treatment program is not to say that it must make a decision on that basis. That the board often weighs heavily completion of the SOP in deciding whether to parole sex offenders does not change the calculation. See Stein, 233 F.3d at 17 n.6 (fact that defendant could have had good reason to fear disbarment if she did not testify is not the same as being faced with automatic disbarment for failure to testify); United States v. Indorato, 628 F.2d 711, 716 (1st Cir. 1980) (fear of punishment as a result of invoking the Fifth Amendment does not protect against subsequent use of self-incriminating statements at a criminal trial).