Opinion ID: 48709
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: De Minimis Loss

Text: 32 Despite acknowledging in Malchi the existence of a protected liberty interest in good-time credits, we there mused in dicta that a delay in an inmate's mandatory supervised release might be so insignificant ( de minimis ) that depriving him of his recognized protected liberty interest need not comply with the requirement of due process. 50 Four years later, in Richards v. Dretke, we touched on the de minimis concept, again in dicta. 51 In footnote 5 of our Richards opinion, we speculated that: 33 A 30-day delay of a mandatory supervision release might be de minimis and therefore not give rise to a due process claim. The Malchi court held that while a few days might be de minimis, six months was not. That issue, however, is not before us as it has not been raised. . . . 52 34 Since Richards, numerous district courts have assumed that, in the context of good-time deprivation, Malchi and Richards constitute precedent for the de minimis exception to the due process entitlement and have proceeded to address what quantum of good-time credit loss is de minimis. 53 Now is the time for us to disabuse the courts of this circuit of the belief that entitlement to due process is subject to a de minimis floor in the context of disciplinary loss of good-time credit. In so doing, we reject out of hand the concept of a de minimis loss for good-time credit (and thus any exception to entitlement to due process protection) that has seeped interstitially into our lexicon, presumably from treating our dicta on the subject as precedent. Acknowledging that Texas inmates have long had protected liberty interests in any amount of previously-earned good-time credit, we hold today that none may be taken away by an administrative tribunal without affording the inmate due process, regardless of the absolute number of days forfeited or the percentage of the sentence (or the remaining balance thereof) represented by the number of days lost. 35 As we have implied, the de minimis concept is a creature of spurious conception. In Malchi, we neither cited to nor relied on any authority for the existence of the de minimis principle. 54 In Richards, we relied solely on Malchi for the existence of the de minimis exception, but merely hypothesized whether thirty days was de minimis. 55 We offered no jurisprudential or analytical buttress for our un-adoption of the de minimis concept. It appears instead that the concept was simply spawned parthenogenetically and slipped into our storehouse of obiter dicta. It is wholly unclear where the concept originated or why, but it is time to cast this troublemaker from our jurisprudence in the context of the issues before us. Today we exorcize the exception for de minimis deprivation of the liberty interest and hold that, when a state has created such a liberty interest, no amount of good-time credit, however slight, may be stripped from an inmate without affording him the protection of due process. 36 In Sandin v. Conner, the Supreme Court held that state created liberty interests are generally limited to freedoms from the restraints that impose atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. 56 In particular, the Court concluded that an inmate is not entitled to due process protection before the imposition of thirty days solitary confinement, because this punishment was not an atypical or significant hardship. 57 37 In justifying its decision, the Court noted, [n]or does [the petitioner's] situation present a case where the State's action will inevitably affect the duration of his sentence.  58 In contrast, Teague's situation, and that of any other Texas inmate who is deprived of previously earned good-time credits, is one in which the State's action inevitably will affect the duration of his sentence. 38 Under Texas law, once an inmate's good-time credits are forfeited, they can never be restored. 59 Thus, once Teague's thirty days of good-time credit are taken away without due process protection, his sentence inevitably will be thirty days longer, as proscribed by the Court in Sandin. 39 Neither is the possibility that Teague may gain or lose additional good-time credits in the future of any relevance. Whatever additional good-time credit Teague may eventually gain or lose will not affect his previously forfeited time. For instance, if Teague should subsequently forfeit an additional thirty days of previously earned good-time credit, these additional thirty days would be cumulated with the thirty days that he previously lost, making Teague's total loss sixty days. It would be a consecutive loss, not a concurrent one. Conversely, awards of new good-time credit would be subtracted from the previously lost thirty days. Neither future awards nor future forfeitures have relevance to a present forfeiture. 40 In addition to conflicting with Supreme Court precedent, legitimizing the de minimis exception would work serious practical and equitable problems. As indicated earlier, two methods could be used in determining whether a loss of good-time credit is de minimis. The first is a comparative or percentile approach, similar to that employed by the district court here. Under this method, the number of forfeited days is divided by the total number of days to which the inmate was actually sentenced to produce a fraction or percentage of loss. Depending on the court's subjective view of whether the resulting quotient is de minimis, the inmate might or might not be entitled to due process. 41 The other potential method is the absolute approach, which was employed in Malchi. Under this approach, some number of days is arbitrarily selected by the court, the deprivation of less than which is deemed de minimis and thus not subject to due process protection; deprivation of that or any greater number of days would be sufficient to warrant due process protection. 42 Problems inhere in the application of both methods. For instance, how and why would we draw the line at a particular fraction or any particular number of days? What would be the justification and reasoning to label, say, .18% de minimis, but not .25%; or to label thirty days or less de minimis, but thirty-one days or more not de minimis? 43 Difficulties with uniformity and equity in both methods exist as well. An inmate sentenced to five years who commits a trafficking offense could receive due process protection if deprived of thirty days (thirty days is approximately 1.7% of five years), but an inmate sentenced to forty-five years who commits the same offense and loses the same thirty days would be entitled to no due process protection, as thirty days is but .18% of forty-five years. 60 It impresses us as patently unfair to afford one inmate due process, but not another, when all factors are the same except the length of their initial sentence or the balance remaining to be served. 44 Interestingly, application of the relative approach could implicitly overturn Malchi. There, we concluded that six months, in and of itself, is more than de minimis.  61 Under a percentage or relative approach, however, even six months could be considered de minimis. For example, if an inmate were sentenced to sixty years incarceration, the forfeiture of six months good-time credit would be less than one percent of his sentence. We would have to ask whether six months, equaling less than one percent of the actual sentence, should nevertheless be considered de minimis. If so, how could this example comport with our holding under Malchi 's absolute approach that six months is more than de minimis?  For Teague, the question would be whether the deprivation of thirty days—regardless of the length of his actual sentence—is always going to be de minimis. 45 As the de minimis concept is contrary to Supreme Court precedent and is a Pandora's Box, the opening of which would let loose myriad difficulties and inequities, we today hold that no amount of previously earned good-time credit, however slight, can ever be deemed de minimis and, more importantly, that any loss of such credits that extends the inmate's expectation of release is never subject to a test for de minimis in the context of procedural due process. The TDCJ-CID must afford its inmates procedural due process before depriving them of any good-time credit. If, as argued by counsel for the TDCJ-CID, this would open the floodgates of disciplinary appeals, the prisons of Texas can either use any of the innumerable alternative punishments that do not offend due process or see to it that their inmates receive the process that is due before taking away any good-time credits.