Opinion ID: 596407
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: conclusive determination of the offense severity level

Text: 23 The Parole Commission argues that the district court lacked the power to preclude the Commission from considering new evidence implicating Bridge in the Doubrava bombing. Because this poses a pure question of law, our review is plenary. See United States v. Brown, 862 F.2d 1033, 1036 (3d Cir.1988). We agree with the Commission. 24 Congress invested the Parole Commission with the statutory authority to grant or deny any application for parole, 18 U.S.C. § 4203(b)(1) (1988) 6 , and to modify or revoke an order paroling any eligible prisoner, id. § 4203(b)(3). Indeed, the Parole Commission is the only tribunal that possesses the power to grant or deny a parole. See 18 U.S.C. § 4218(d) (1988) (for purposes of judicial review, Commission's grant or denial of parole is action committed to agency discretion); Iuteri v. Nardoza, 732 F.2d 32, 36 (2d Cir.1984) (Congress has vested the sole power to grant or deny parole in the sound discretion of the Commission.); Juelich v. United States Board of Parole, 437 F.2d 1147, 1148 (7th Cir.1971) ([T]he determination of a parole eligibility date is wholly within the discretion of the Board.). 25 To calculate the parole eligibility date of prisoners, the Commission must consider all relevant and reasonably available information. See 18 U.S.C. § 4207 (1982). Additionally, the Commission's regulations specifically provide that it may reopen a parole decision if it receives new and significant information that could adversely affect the timing of an inmate's release from prison. 28 C.F.R. § 2.28(f) (1992). In such circumstances, the proper procedural route is for the Commission to schedule a special reconsideration hearing at which the new evidence may be presented and refuted. Id. 26 The Commission may reopen a parole decision for consideration of new information at any time prior to a prisoner's release, even if the new information was in existence, but was not considered, when the initial parole decision was made. Schiselman v. United States Parole Comm., 858 F.2d 1232, 1238 (7th Cir.1988); Goble v. Matthews, 814 F.2d 1104, 1108 (6th Cir.1987); Iuteri, 732 F.2d at 36; Fardella v. Garrison, 698 F.2d 208, 211 (4th Cir.1982); McClanahan v. Mulcrome, 636 F.2d 1190, 1191 (10th Cir.1980). The rationale underlying these decisions is that the Commission is not an investigative agency, but reviews information furnished by other government agencies. Fardella, 698 F.2d at 211. Consequently, the Commission may not be faulted or penalized for another agency's failure to provide the Commission with all of the evidence in their possession. 27 In this case, the district court overrode the Commission's power to reopen a case based on new adverse information by permanently barring it from reconsidering additional evidence. A district court, however, may not ordinarily freeze the Parole Commission's record and prevent it from admitting new evidence on remand. The Supreme Court has termed it a guiding principle of administrative law that: 28 an administrative determination in which is embedded a legal question open to judicial review does not impliedly foreclose the administrative agency, after its error has been corrected, from enforcing the legislative policy committed to its charge.... Application of that general principle in this [labor] case best respects the congressional scheme investing the Board and not the courts with broad powers to fashion remedies that will effectuate national labor policy. It also affords the Board the opportunity, through additional evidence or findings, to reframe its order better to effectuate that policy. 29 National Labor Relations Board v. Food Stores Employees Union, Local 347, 417 U.S. 1, 9-10, 94 S.Ct. 2074, 2080, 40 L.Ed.2d 612 (1974) (citations omitted). Thus, legal error in an agency decision does not prevent the agency from expanding its record and rethinking its original order. 30 A corollary to this tenet of administrative law is that the appropriate judicial remedy when an agency exceeds its discretion is a remand to the agency for further proceedings consistent with the court's opinion. See Federal Power Comm. v. Idaho Power Co., 344 U.S. 17, 20, 73 S.Ct. 85, 87, 97 L.Ed. 15 (1952). [T]he function of the reviewing court ends when an error of law is laid bare. At that point the matter once more goes to the Commission for reconsideration. Id. In Idaho Power, the Federal Power Commission granted an applicant a license to build a power plant. The license had certain conditions, which the court of appeals found were illegally imposed. As a remedy for the violation, the court modified the licenses by striking the offensive conditions. The Supreme Court held that the court of appeals usurped an administrative function by specifying the remedy for the legal error instead of remanding that decision to the agency. Id. On remand, the Federal Power Commission could choose to grant the licenses without the illegal conditions or decline to issue the license at all. A district judge, however, may not perform an administrative function. See Horizons Int'l, Inc. v. Baldridge, 811 F.2d 154, 160 (3d Cir.1987) (Article III courts may not perform nonjudicial functions, such as exercising Department of Commerce's power to grant exemptions from the antitrust laws); Berger v. Heckler, 771 F.2d 1556, 1580 (2d Cir.1985) (district court may order an agency to promulgate regulations, but requirement of specific language unnecessarily intrudes into administrative sphere). 31 The Supreme Court's decisions in Food Stores Employees and Idaho Power are equally applicable to all administrative agencies, including the Parole Commission. In Billiteri v. United States Board of Parole, 541 F.2d 938 (2d Cir.1976), the district court remanded a prisoner's case to the Parole Commission for development of the record. On appeal from the remand, finding insufficient evidence to support the Commission's factual determinations, the district court conducted its own parole hearing and resolved the relevant factual disputes necessary for parole sentencing. The court of appeals found this action improper because a district court lacks the power to grant parole or judicially determine eligibility for parole. Id. at 943-44. A federal court may review decisions of the Parole Commission for abuse of discretion, but the relief a court may grant is limited: The only remedy which the court can give is to order the Board to correct the abuses or wrongful conduct within a fixed period of time, after which, in the case of non-compliance, the court can grant the writ of habeas corpus and order the prisoner discharged from custody. Id. at 944; see also Zannino v. Arnold, 531 F.2d 687, 692 (3d Cir.1976) (when some rational basis to deny parole exists, district court may remand to Parole Board for fuller explanation of reasons for denial of parole, but may not grant parole to a prisoner). 32 This court's single decision upholding a district court's conclusive factual finding relating to a parole decision is clearly distinguishable. See Marshall v. Lansing, 839 F.2d 933 (3d Cir.1988). In Marshall, the district court remanded a habeas proceeding to the Parole Commission with instructions to clearly explain the reasoning for their offense categorization. Notwithstanding this court order, the Commission reassigned the same offense severity level without pointing to any evidence supporting their decision. In light of the protracted history of the case and the court's impression that the Commission intentionally had evaded the court's mandate, the court ordered the Commission to reassess the prisoner's parole status under a specific offense severity category. We affirmed this portion of the district court's decision. Id. at 944-45. When a district court remands a case to the Parole Board for failure to adequately explain its decision and, on remand, the Commission again declines to articulate a basis for the identical conclusion, a district court may permanently decide this issue on the record before it. 33 In this case, the Commission was not unwilling to explain the evidentiary basis for or the reasoning behind its conclusions. It simply reconsidered a factual finding, previously found to lack adequate record support, in light of new evidence. Absent the repeated resistance to following court orders present in Marshall, a district court may only remand a parole petition with instructions for the Parole Board to take action consistent with the court's opinion. 34 The district court here usurped an administrative function, Idaho Power, 344 U.S. at 20, 73 S.Ct. at 87, when its second order held that the Commission could not evaluate new evidence implicating Bridge in the Doubrava bombing. Congress vested the authority to grant or deny parole exclusively in the Parole Commission, 18 U.S.C. § 4203(b)(1), and the Commission may reopen a case based on new adverse evidence, 28 C.F.R. § 2.28(f). The district court's decision divested the Commission of its statutory right to make its own factual determinations in light of new evidence. The court's substitution of its discretion for that of the Commission's is error. 35 A beneficent concern motivated the district court to permanently set Bridge's offense level. The court speculated that habeas corpus review would be effectively abolished if the Commission could use the habeas proceeding as a trial run for its evidence, and repeatedly conduct rehearings, adding a modicum of additional evidence to justify the same result. This reasoning rests on the implicit assumption that the Parole Commission will act in bad faith by strategically withholding evidence for presentation at a future hearing. We declined to credit the similar argument that dismissal of a pending habeas proceeding when the Commission reopens the case for reconsideration pendente lite would effectively cut off habeas review. United States ex rel. D'Agostino v. Keohane, 877 F.2d 1167, 1174 n. 12 (3d Cir.1989). In Keohane, we refused to assume that the Commission strategically would reopen cases to prevent prisoners access to the federal courts for habeas review. Id. 36 Just as the presumption that the Commission will reopen cases pendente lite to deny habeas review is unwarranted, so is the district court's presumption that the Commission will repeatedly seek the slightest amount of additional evidence to justify the same result. Government officials are presumed to act in good faith. See Ward v. Rock of Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 811, 109 S.Ct. 2746, 2764, 105 L.Ed.2d 661 (1989); Hoffman v. United States, 894 F.2d 380, 385 (Fed.Cir.1990) (citations omitted). This presumption of good faith extends to Parole Board members. See Zannino, 531 F.2d at 692 n. 22; Paine v. Baker, 595 F.2d 197, 203 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 925, 100 S.Ct. 263, 62 L.Ed.2d 181 (1979). Bridge has made no showing of bad faith on the part of the Commission. 7 Absent an actual demonstration of bad faith, a finding that the Parole Board made a factual determination insufficiently supported by a given record may not preclude the Board from considering new information. The Parole Commission was entitled, indeed was legally required, to fulfill its obligation to consider all relevant and reasonable available evidence, see 18 U.S.C. § 4207, by conducting a rehearing to assess new adverse information and recompute Bridge's parole eligibility date, see 28 C.F.R. § 2.28(f).