Opinion ID: 490529
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Existence of a Protectable Liberty Interest

Text: 12 The Commission argues that certain Supreme Court decisions, principally that in Greenholtz v. Inmates of Nebraska Penal & Correctional Complex, 442 U.S. 1, 99 S.Ct. 2100, 60 L.Ed.2d 668 (1979) (Greenholtz), and decisions of this Court in the wake of Greenholtz, have in effect overruled Drayton, and that in light of these more recent authorities, we must conclude that a parole grantee has no protectable liberty interest. We disagree. 13 In Drayton, this Court explored the circumstances under which the Commission is permitted to rescind an early release date it has set for a parole grantee. Looking at the Commission's own regulations, we found the Commission's rescission authority limited to two narrowly circumscribed sets of factual circumstances: 14 First, the Commission may reconsider its grant of parole when the grantee has been found guilty of institutional misconduct.... Second, reconsideration is authorized when new information adverse to the prisoner and unrelated to prison misconduct is discovered, 28 C.F.R. Sec. 2.34(b) [1977], such as a prison[er]'s willful concealment or misrepresentation of information. Id. Sec. 2.30 [1977].... 15 584 F.2d at 1215. We concluded that since the Commission, by these regulations, had limited its own rescission authority to these two carefully defined categories, a prisoner who had been granted an early release date had a justifiable expectation of achieving his liberty on that date. We noted that the limitations on the Commission's authority to rescind an early release date distinguished Drayton's case from cases such as Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 96 S.Ct. 2532, 49 L.Ed.2d 451 (1976), and Montanye v. Haymes, 427 U.S. 236, 96 S.Ct. 2543, 49 L.Ed.2d 466 (1976), which had held that state prisoners had no protectable liberty interest in remaining in their original or preferred places of confinement in light of the unbridled discretion of state prison officials, Drayton, 584 F.2d at 1214, to transfer prisoners. Accordingly, we held that a parole grantee has a protectable liberty interest that entitles him to due process in the Commission's parole rescission hearings. 16 Though the regulations in effect when Drayton was decided have since been modified, the pertinent changes have not been substantial. The Commission's rescission authority remains limited, as 28 C.F.R. Sec. 2.34(a) (1986) provides that the Commission may reconsider the parole grantee's early release date if the parole grantee has been found to have violated institutional rules or is alleged to have committed a new criminal act, and 28 C.F.R. Sec. 2.28(f) (1986) authorizes reconsideration when the Commission has received new and significant adverse information. Thus, unless Drayton has been undermined by later cases, its ruling that a parole grantee is entitled to due process in a rescission hearing remains the law of this Circuit. 17 We see nothing in Greenholtz or the other cases relied on by the Commission to undermine Drayton 's liberty interest analysis. Greenholtz dealt with state prisoners who had not been given release dates; thus, the Supreme Court's focus was on (1) those prisoners' rights to have the parole board set parole dates for them, and (2) the procedures to which they were entitled in connection with the board's initial decision. The questions on which the Court granted the certiorari petition of the state parole officials were 18 whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to discretionary parole-release determinations made by the Nebraska Board of Parole, and, if so, whether the procedures the Board currently provides meet constitutional requirements. 19 442 U.S. at 3, 99 S.Ct. at 2102. The question ultimately decided by the Court was whether three new procedures ordered by the Eighth Circuit, which we discuss in Part II.B. below, were constitutionally required. Id. at 14-16 & n. 6, 99 S.Ct. at 2107-08 & n. 6. 20 The Court began by analyzing the nature of the interest at stake. It stated that, in order to have a protectable liberty interest, a prisoner must have more than a hope or a unilateral expectation of release.  'He must, instead, have a legitimate claim of entitlement to it.'  Id. at 7, 99 S.Ct. at 2104 (quoting Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2709, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972)). Comparing the legitimate expectations of the prisoners before it with those of persons already released on parole, the Court found important differences. First, it saw a crucial distinction between being deprived of a liberty one has, as in parole, and being denied a conditional liberty that one desires. Id. at 9, 99 S.Ct. at 2105. Second, it saw an important difference in the nature of the decision that must be made in each case. Noting that  '[t]he first step in a revocation decision ... involves a wholly retrospective factual question,'  id. (quoting Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. at 479, 92 S.Ct. at 2599), it found significant contrast in the initial parole release decision, which is more subtle and depends on an amalgam of elements, some of which are factual but many of which are purely subjective appraisals by the Board members based upon their experience with the difficult and sensitive task of evaluating the advisability of parole release. 442 U.S. at 9-10, 99 S.Ct. at 2105. Thus, the Greenholtz Court viewed the initial decision of whether to set a parole date not as essentially fact-bound but rather as turn[ing] on a 'discretionary assessment of a multiplicity of imponderables, entailing primarily what a man is and what he may become rather than simply what he has done.'  Id. at 10, 99 S.Ct. at 2105 (quoting Kadish, The Advocate and the Expert--Counsel in the Peno-Correctional Process, 45 Minn.L.Rev. 803, 813 (1961)). 21 The Court concluded that to the extent that a prisoner sought to have the parole board establish a parole date, the general interest asserted here is no more substantial than the inmate's hope that he will not be transferred to another prison, a hope which is not protected by due process. 442 U.S. at 11, 99 S.Ct. at 2105 (citing Meachum v. Fano and Montanye v. Haymes ). Nonetheless, the Court accept[ed] the Nebraska prisoners' view that the language and structure of the Nebraska statute gave them a more substantial interest in having a parole date set than would be created by most state statutes. Id. at 12, 99 S.Ct. at 2106. Noting that it had held in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974), that a good-time credit statute created a liberty interest protected by due process against arbitrary loss because the only prerequisite to the earning of such credits was good behavior, the Greenholtz Court accepted the argument that the Nebraska parole statute similarly gave the prisoners a legitimate expectancy in the board's setting a parole date because the statute provided that the board shall order the prisoner's release unless it be of the opinion that his release should be deferred. Though the statute allowed such a deferral for any of a number of discretionary reasons, the Court noted that there had been no interpretation by the Nebraska courts of the scope of the interest the statute was intended to afford the inmates, and it found acceptable the prisoners' contention that the shall ... unless language was sufficient to create a liberty interest that was entitled to some measure of protection. 442 U.S. at 11-12, 99 S.Ct. at 2106. See also Board of Pardons v. Allen, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 2415, 96 L.Ed.2d 303 (1987) (protectable liberty interest created by Montana statute requiring that a prisoner shall be released when certain conditions are met). 22 Given both the factual differences between Greenholtz and Drayton and the Greenholtz Court's analytical framework, we think Greenholtz supports, rather than undermines, Drayton 's conclusion that parole grantees have a protectable liberty interest. First, though the liberty interest of a federal parole grantee is not as substantial as that of a parolee, it is far more substantial than that of the Greenholtz prisoners. We perceive a continuum that includes the liberty interests attributable to, in descending order, the parolee, the parole grantee, and the inmate without a parole date (nongrantee). Since the Greenholtz Court, and more recently the Court in Board of Pardons v. Allen, accepted the proposition that inmates for whom no parole date had been set could have some protectable interest, we are hard pressed to believe that that Court would not also find that a protectable interest is possessed by an inmate whose release date has already been set and is less than six months away. 23 Further, the Greenholtz Court's analysis of the types of factors considered in reaching decisions affecting various levels of parole interest supports Drayton. The nature of the decision to be made with respect to the parole grantee is more similar to a parole revocation decision than to an initial parole decision, for the conditions impeding the parole grantee's achievement of actual liberty are, in the first instance, specific and fact-bound, not, as is true of the nongrantee, dependent on considerations lying principally within the Commission's discretion. Thus, rescission of the already granted early release date may not occur unless the grantee has been found guilty of institutional misconduct, or has committed a new criminal act, or is the subject of new adverse information received by the Commission. Exploration of these potentially impeding conditions involves retrospective determinations of factual matters, unlike most of Greenholtz 's purely subjective appraisals by the Board members based upon their experience with the difficult and sensitive task of evaluating the advisability of parole release. 442 U.S. at 10, 99 S.Ct. at 2105; see also id. at 14, 99 S.Ct. at 2107; id. at 15-16, 99 S.Ct. at 2107-08 (Nebraska board's decision against early release is not like a guilt determination). 24 In sum, both the concreteness of the parole grantee's liberty expectation and the objective nature of the findings that must be made before that expectation may be eliminated are characteristics that, under Greenholtz, must be viewed as supporting the existence of a protectable liberty interest. We conclude, therefore, that Greenholtz does not undermine the liberty interest conclusions of Drayton. 25 We find no greater merit in the Commission's invocation of the Supreme Court's decisions in Jago v. Van Curen, 454 U.S. 14, 102 S.Ct. 31, 70 L.Ed.2d 13 (1981) (per curiam), and Connecticut Board of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U.S. 458, 101 S.Ct. 2460, 69 L.Ed.2d 158 (1981) (Dumschat ), in support of its contention that Drayton has been overtaken. In Jago v. Van Curen, the Court ruled that an Ohio state prisoner who had been granted an early parole date had no protectable liberty interest. But the basis for that ruling was the fact that the Ohio law unambiguously left any early release wholly within the discretion of the Ohio parole authorities and allowed that decision to be exercised at any time until the prisoner's actual release. 454 U.S. at 16, 102 S.Ct. at 33. The wholly discretionary nature of the Ohio parole board's authority to rescind an early parole date can hardly be equated with the quite limited authority of the Commission to rescind an early release date previously granted to a federal prisoner. 26 Dumschat is no more compelling. There, state prisoners argued that, based on the statistical frequency with which the Connecticut Board of Pardons had in the past commuted life sentences, they had a protectable interest in similar treatment. The Dumschat Court rejected this argument, noting that the Connecticut statute had no definitions, no criteria, and no mandated 'shalls'. 452 U.S. at 466, 101 S.Ct. at 2465. The Court refused to establish any sort of unwritten common law that would give rise to a protectable interest. See id. at 465, 101 S.Ct. at 2464. 27 The Second Circuit decisions relied on by the Commission also fail to reveal any basis for disturbing the liberty interest analysis of Drayton. Both Boothe v. Hammock, 605 F.2d 661 (2d Cir.1979), and Berard v. State of Vermont Parole Board, 730 F.2d 71 (2d Cir.1984), involved (1) prisoners who had had no release date set, (2) statutes that did not use the Nebraska shall ... unless structure found persuasive in Greenholtz, and (3) decisions that were wholly discretionary. Pugliese v. Nelson, 617 F.2d 916 (2d Cir.1980), involved the parole board's authority with regard to inmate classification, another wholly discretionary matter. 28 We have considered all of the Commission's arguments in support of its challenge to Drayton 's conclusion that a parole grantee has a liberty interest that is protectable by due process and have found them unpersuasive. Drayton 's liberty interest analysis remains valid in light of the intervening case law. 29 We turn now to the Commission's challenges to Drayton 's conclusions as to what procedures are required for the protection of the parole grantee's liberty interest.