Opinion ID: 520320
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Parole Board-Derived Immunity.

Text: 36 As the majority recognizes, the parole board is an executive body acting in a quasi-judicial capacity when it performs the adjudicative function of determining whether a prisoner should or should not be paroled. But I do not believe that a judge's or prosecutor's provision of information to a parole board derivatively entitles the judge or prosecutor to absolute immunity simply because parole board members are necessarily entitled to absolute immunity in the context of their decisionmaking. Farrish v. Mississippi State Parole Board, 836 F.2d 969, 974 (5th Cir.1988). Consequently, to the extent the majority holds that the defendants are entitled to the immunity enjoyed by the parole board members in their adjudicative capacities, I must respectfully disagree. 37 Parole board members are entitled to absolute immunity in their adjudicative capacities, because of an overriding need, as with the judiciary, to preserve the integrity of their decisionmaking process. This reflects a consensus by those whose decisions hold sway that the social costs of not providing absolute immunity require a subordination of certain meritorious civil claims that a prisoner may have against a parole board or its members in a particular situation. And, in terms of regulating unconstitutional behavior by parole board members, a parole board's decisions, whatever the motive, are subject to corrective process. See, e.g., Sellars v. Procunier, 641 F.2d 1295, 1303 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1102, 102 S.Ct. 678, 70 L.Ed.2d 644 (1981). 38 State actors who simply provide information to the Texas parole board, and who act neither under oath nor subject to cross-examination by a prisoner or his representative, are not subject to sufficient corrective process. Such persons, then, should not enjoy an absolute immunity derived simply from a parole board's members, whose own immunity comes only from the functional need to insulate their decisionmaking process. State actors who provide information to parole board decisionmakers cannot count on such inherent functionalist arguments. They must look elsewhere for protections offered by immunity. 2 39 As my colleagues well-recognize, the Texas legislature has indeed placed a duty on prosecutors and judges, among others, to provide information concerning prisoners upon request of the parole board, and the parole board, indeed, must request such information. Tex.Code Crim.Proc. art. 42.18 Secs. 8(e) & 9 (Vernon supp.1988). This 1987 enactment, however, does not expressly provide protection from suit for those engaged in the provision of information. Forrester, 108 S.Ct. at 542. The Texas courts have not construed these provisions. And in any event, the scope of immunity under Sec. 1983 is determined by federal law, not state law. Robertson v. Wegmann, 436 U.S. 584, 98 S.Ct. 1991, 1998, 56 L.Ed.2d 554 (1978). This is true whether we characterize the immunity determination as federal common law or simply as a gloss on 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. I agree entirely with the majority that the Texas statute should influence our decision to provide absolute immunity to the defendants. But the statute should influence us because it allows us to infer that the Texas legislature has made a pronouncement concerning the value of a judge's and prosecutor's information derived from the decisionmaking process leading to conviction and sentencing. In contrast, the Texas legislature has not stated that individuals providing information to parole boards should be derivatively blanketed by whatever immunity the members of a parole board enjoy. 40 Thus, to the extent the majority opinion holds that because the defendants' acts were intimately connected with ... the quasi-judicial parole-granting process the defendants are entitled to absolute immunity, I cannot agree. The holding sweeps too far. Harlow, 102 S.Ct. at 2734. We grant absolute immunity to parole board members to preserve the integrity of their decisionmaking process, but this functional rationale does not apply to state actors who are not otherwise expressly protected by legislative enactment, and who provide information to the decisionmakers neither under oath nor subject to cross-examination. The undifferentiated extension of absolute 'derivative' immunity ... [can]not be reconciled with the 'functional' approach that has characterized the immunity decisions of [the Supreme] Court. Harlow, 102 S.Ct. at 2734. 41