Opinion ID: 471749
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusivity of Habeas Corpus

Text: 14 Pearson, we repeat, seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, contending that a 1983 parole guideline violates the Parole Commission and Reorganization Act and is unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to him. On the same theory, he has also applied for a writ of habeas corpus. 40 Jurisdiction over a habeas corpus application, however, is dependent upon the court's authority over the petitioner's custodian, 41 and only recently we rejected the notion, which Pearson 42 and the District Court 43 share, that the Commission may properly be viewed as the custodian of one in Pearson's situation. 44 Rather, we held, for purposes of challenging a Parole Commission action on the sentence a prisoner is currently serving in a federal penal facility, the warden of that facility is the prisoner's custodian within the meaning of the federal habeas corpus statute. 45 It follows that, if habeas corpus is Pearson's exclusive remedy, as the Commission insists, declaratory and injunctive relief would for that reason be unavailable to him, and the District Court would be unable to consider his claims in a habeas corpus proceeding because it lacks jurisdiction over his custodian. 15 --(1) The Preiser Decision 16 Addressing, then, the question whether Pearson is restricted to habeas corpus in his quest for a judicial ruling on the validity of the guideline under attack, our starting point is the Supreme Court's decision in Preiser v. Rodriguez. 46 There, three inmates of state prisons instituted Section 1983 actions, 47 joined with applications for writs of habeas corpus, challenging the deprivation of goodtime credits in prison disciplinary proceedings allegedly violative of their rights to due process and equal protection of the laws. The sole relief requested was an injunction restoring the credits, which in each case would have resulted in immediate release from prison because the conditional-release dates for all three had passed. 48 17 After analyzing the history and function of the Great Writ, the Court noted that the essence of habeas corpus is an attack by a person in custody upon the legality of that custody, and ... the traditional function of the writ is to secure release from illegal custody. 49 Challenges to the fact or length of imprisonment coupled with prayers for earlier or immediate release therefrom, the Court held, were at the core 50 and heart 51 of habeas corpus, and assertable only in habeas corpus proceedings: 18 [W]hen a state prisoner is challenging the very fact or duration of his physical imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a determination that he is entitled to immediate or speedier release from that imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is a writ of habeas corpus. 52 19 The inmates' attack on the deprivation of their good-time credits fell within the established scope of habeas corpus because withholding the credits was causing or would cause them to be in illegal physical confinement ... once their conditional-release date had passed. 53 20 Under Preiser, then, habeas corpus is the exclusive remedy for a prisoner attacking the fact or duration of confinement and demanding immediate or speedier release from custody. The Court gave some indication, however, of the parameters of Preiser's holding by distinguishing situations outside the ambit of habeas corpus in which a prisoner could obtain relief of another character. A prisoner suing for damages, the Court declared, cannot resort to habeas corpus, 54 nor is it necessary that litigation over the conditions of prison life proceed in habeas corpus. 55 Thus the Preiser Court contemplated that habeas corpus would be a prisoner's single remedy in some situations, but an alternative or unavailable remedy in others. 21 Just a year after Preiser, the Court shed further light upon the reach of that decision. In Wolff v. McDonnell, 56 an inmate of a state prison brought a Section 1983 class action alleging, among other things, that the prison's disciplinary regime, which had led to cancellation of some of the inmate's good-time credits, did not comport with due process. As relief, the action sought restoration of the credits, a plan for a due process hearing procedure in connection with withholding and forfeiture of such credits, and damages for denial of civil rights resulting from use of the existing disciplinary procedure. 57 Addressing [a]t the threshold ... the issue whether under Preiser ... the validity of the procedures for depriving prisoners of good-time credits may be considered in a Section 1983 suit, 58 the Court noted that, while Preiser foreclosed any actual restoration of credits in a nonhabeas action, 59 it also established the impropriety of using habeas corpus as a remedy for damages. 60 Consequently, the Court said, the inmate's damages claim was properly presented in his Section 1983 action and, in turn, required determination of the validity of the procedures employed for imposing sanctions, including loss of good time, for flagrant or serious misconduct, 61 and therefore [s]uch a declaratory judgment as a predicate to a damages award would not be barred by Preiser. 62 The Court went further to explain that because under [Preiser ] only an injunction restoring good time improperly taken is foreclosed, neither would it preclude a litigant with standing from obtaining by way of ancillary relief an otherwise proper injunction enjoining the prospective enforcement of invalid prison regulations. 63 Accordingly, the Court conclude[d] that it was proper ... to determine the validity of the procedures for revoking good-time credits and to fashion appropriate remedies for any constitutional violations ascertained, short of ordering the actual restoration of good time already canceled. 64 22 As we read Wolff, the Court did not restrict this endorsement of injunctive relief to cases in which damages are sought. Of course, since damages claims are outside the purview of habeas corpus, Preiser presents no impediment to a declaration of invalidity of disciplinary procedures as the basis for an award of damages. But the limited injunction that the Court sanctioned was wholly unrelated to such an award; rather, it was an additional and completely different method of redressing the allegedly unconstitutional disciplinary procedures, and obviously an unavailable remedy had it been intercepted by the holding in Preiser. The only explanation for the Court's approval of injunctive relief from the procedures was, as the Court stated, that Preiser forebade only an injunction restoring good time improperly taken. 65 It followed, then, that the declaration underpinning an award of damages for the use of those procedures could also serve as the foundation of an injunction restraining further resort to them. 66 23 Even more fundamentally, Preiser did not rule that every claim that could be pressed in a habeas corpus proceeding can be advanced only in such a proceeding. 67 On the contrary, Preiser's holding is limited explicitly to cases that are of the essence, or at the core or heart, of habeas corpus 68 --cases challenging the very fact or duration of [a prisoner's] physical imprisonment and seeking a determination that he is entitled to immediate release or a speedier release from that imprisonment. 69 An action for declaratory or injunctive relief from a continuing violation of a prisoner's rights is not invariably of that nature, and the action before us definitely is not. Pearson's suit focuses on the guideline pursuant to which his offense was upgraded to a higher level of severity for purposes of parole eligibility. One of its requests is for an order declaring the guideline invalid and an injunction restraining its enforcement. In this aspect, the suit does not go[] directly to the constitutionality of his physical confinement itself, 70 nor does it ask for a determination that he is entitled to immediate release or a speedier release from ... imprisonment. 71 24 Success in this much of Pearson's endeavor would not automatically hasten his departure from prison. It would, of course, necessitate a redetermination of his parole-eligibility date, but an earlier date would by no means be assured. Should the current guideline be invalidated, the Commission would not inexorably be required to resort to the older guideline; it could promulgate a new guideline, or it could exercise its discretion without the benefit of any guideline at all. It could review Pearson's case and leave his present parole-eligibility date undisturbed simply by acting outside the guidelines. 72 Thus, neither a determination that the guideline in question is invalid nor an order barring its future application would usurp the traditional function of the writ [of habeas corpus] ... to secure release from illegal custody. 73 25 (2) The Circuit Decisions 26 Our analysis of Preiser is in complete accord with its earlier treatments by this court, and is strongly supported by an impressive array of decisions in other circuits. We have approved a mandamus action as an appropriate proceeding by an inmate of a distant federal prison who sought a ruling on federal parole eligibility policies applicable throughout the country. 74 The inmate, we said, 27 did not challenge the fact or duration of his confinement. Rather, he asked for earlier eligibility for parole consideration. Consequently, he was not required to bring his claim as a habeas action. 75 28 We have also permitted a suit for an injunction compelling compliance with statutorily required procedures in parole rulemaking, 76 and an action seeking disclosure of parole documents. 77 In neither of the latter two cases did we deem it necessary even to mention Preiser. 78 29 A number of our sister circuits have similarly concluded that a federal prisoner is not restricted to habeas corpus when his claim is that parole action violates constitutional or statutory standards and the ruling thereon will not automatically effect a release from incarceration. The First Circuit has held that habeas corpus is not the exclusive avenue to relief when the plaintiff [does] not seek release from detention but simply an order mandating a probable cause hearing. 79 The Second Circuit distinguishes challenges to denials of parole from challenges to the way in which they are reached, declaring that the manner of parole decision-making, not its outcome ... does not present a complaint of the sort in Preiser v. Rodriguez ... for which habeas corpus would be appropriate. 80 Thus, a prisoner's allegations that the United States Parole Board, the Commission's predecessor, failed to comply with its own regulations, employed constitutionally deficient procedures, and reached arbitrary and unlawful conclusions would, if proven, support issuance of a writ of mandamus. 81 The court has explained: 30 A petition challenging parole procedures but not demanding release or the granting of parole differs from the petitions before the Court in Preiser v. Rodriguez in an important respect. Although the relief sought by petitioner may improve his chances for parole, the question of his release and of the length of his confinement still lies within the sound discretion of the board, unlike Preiser where the restoration of good-conduct-time-credits would have resulted automatically in the shortening of the prisoner's confinement. 82 31 The Third Circuit, analyzing Preiser in light of Wolff, has held that Preiser does not preclude a class representative from obtaining a judgment declaratory of the invalidity of parole guidelines and an injunction against their application to prisoners' parole applications. 83 The class was not restricted to habeas corpus, the court said, because [t]he class does not demand that its members be released on parole, but only that the Parole Board not utilize the guidelines in evaluating future parole applications. 84 The Fourth Circuit has held that due process objections to parole-eligibility proceedings could be litigated under Section 1983, 85 explaining that the plaintiffs disclaim that the purpose of their suits is to effect their release or to shorten the duration of their confinement and consequently that we do not deem this is a case where the suits were close to the core of habeas corpus. 86 The Fifth Circuit has at least twice held that attacks on the validity of parole procedures can be made in non-habeas suits, 87 and the Seventh Circuit has found Preiser inapplicable to a prisoner's suit for his trial transcript and damages on the ground that its connection with the prospect of release through a successful appeal was too tenuous. 88 32 These decisions furnish solid support for our interpretation of Preiser and our conclusion that it does not bar Pearson's bid for a judgment declaring the guideline in question invalid and an injunction compelling the Commission to disregard it in resetting his parole-eligibility date. This would accomplish no more than an eventual redetermination of his parole-eligibility date in conformity with constitutional and statutory requirements. Pearson's challenge thus is to the manner in which the decision on his eligibility date was reached, and a successful outcome would not automatically terminate or shorten the period of his confinement. Pearson's prospects for earlier parole may brighten if he prevails, but the time at which he would actually become eligible for parole consideration would remain subject to the Commission's discretion. Our sister circuits would agree that Pearson is not restricted to habeas corpus, but may proceed with his action for declaratory and injunctive relief.