Opinion ID: 184596
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Merits of Blair-Bey's Action

Text: 47 In one of the companion cases, Crowell v. Walsh, No. 97-7192, we conclude that cases filed before the AEDPA was enacted are governed by the preexisting certificate of probable cause requirement, not by the new certificate of appealability requirement. Blair-Bey's action was filed before the AEDPA was enacted; thus, we will consider whether he is entitled to a certificate of probable cause under our pre-AEDPA standards. 48 Blair-Bey makes claims under the Due Process Clause and under the Ex Post Facto Clause. Blair-Bey is not entitled to a certificate of probable cause as to his due process claim, because it is painfully clear that he cannot make any successful claim of Fifth Amendment violation. As to his ex post facto claim, however, we grant the certificate of probable cause, and remand to permit Blair-Bey to develop his claim further.
49 Blair-Bey cannot make out a due process claim because he cannot point to a constitutionally protected liberty interest of which he has been deprived without due process. Liberty interests are of two types: those issuing directly from the Constitution and those created by state law. Blair-Bey does not, of course, have a direct constitutional liberty interest in parole. Greenholtz v. Inmates of Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex, 442 U.S. 1, 99 S.Ct. 2100, 60 L.Ed.2d 668 (1979). As to liberty interests created by state law, mandatory language in applicable state laws and regulations may suffice to create a liberty interest. See, e.g., Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 471-72, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983). 9 But Blair-Bey cannot point to any such mandatory language here; the applicable D.C. parole regulations say only that reconsideration shall ordinarily occur within twelve (12) months. D.C. Mun. Regs. tit. 28, § 104.2, 35 D.C.Reg. 455 (1988) (emphasis added), and add that [n]otwithstanding any other provision of this section, the Board may order a parole reconsideration date it determines to be appropriate. Id., § 104.11. The D.C. Court of Appeals has found the applicable regulations not to create a liberty interest, see Stevens v. Quick, 678 A.2d 28, 31-32 (D.C.1996) (a case also involving a five-year setoff), and we agree. 50 Blair-Bey does point to a set of guidelines established by the Parole Board to guide its set-off decisions. The guidelines do not appear in the record; they are, however, quoted extensively in the D.C. Court of Appeals's Hall v. Henderson opinion, 672 A.2d 1047 (1996), which also involved a challenge by a D.C. inmate to a five-year set-off. 10 The guidelines list a series of aggravating and mitigating factors for the Board to consider in making set-off decisions. The D.C. Court of Appeals observed that the guidelines do require the DCBOP to have some basis for deviating from the normal set-off period. Nevertheless, the court found that the guidelines [331 U.S.App.D.C. 374] do not create a liberty interest, because they do not limit which factors the DCBOP can consider, or how to weigh them. Id. at 1054. We agree that so discretionary and open-ended a document cannot be construed to give rise to a liberty interest. 11
51 Blair-Bey has a more substantial claim that the rules governing the District's parole system were made stricter after he committed his crimes, and that the present rules as applied to his case amount to a prohibited ex post facto law. D.C. law provides: 52 Whenever it shall appear to the Board of Parole that there is a reasonable probability that a prisoner will live and remain at liberty without violating the law, that his release is not incompatible with the welfare of society, and that he has served the minimum sentence imposed or the prescribed portion of his sentence, as the case may be, the Board may authorize his release on parole upon such terms and conditions as the Board shall from time to time prescribe. 53 D.C.Code § 24-204 (1981). Before 1987, the DCBOP's implementing regulations simply mirrored this provision, requiring only that in exercising its discretion the Board consider a list of factors, including the inmate's offense, prior history of criminality, personal and social history, physical and emotional health, institutional experience, and availability of community resources. 9 D.C.R.R. § 105.1(a)-(f) (1981). 54 In 1987, the Board of Parole promulgated new regulations that provided for the use of salient factor scores in making parole determinations. This scheme takes into account factors much like those considered under the preexisting regulations, but provides a scoring system for weighing those factors. Once a score has been calculated for a particular inmate, the new regulations indicate whether parole should ordinarily be granted or denied. D.C. Mun. Regs., tit. 28, § 204.1, 204.4-204.18. Under the regulations, the Board still retains discretion in making individualized parole determinations; the scoring system is intended to guide the Board in making the decision whether to grant or deny parole. Davis v. Henderson, 652 A.2d 634, 635 (D.C.1995) (describing the transition from the old to the new parole system). 55 Blair-Bey contends that under the new salient factor scoring system his criminal history will always produce a score that invokes a presumptive denial of parole, irrespective of any rehabilitation he may undergo in prison. He asserts that he would have fared better under the more open-ended parole system that was in effect in 1975 and 1980 (when he committed the two murders that led to his incarceration): under the earlier regulations he would not have been subject to any presumptive denial of parole. He says that subjecting him to the post-1987 parole rules amounts to imposing an ex post facto law in his case, in violation of Article I, § 10 of the Constitution (No State shall ... pass any ... ex post facto Law ...). 56 The constitutional bar on the enactment of ex post facto laws means that [l]egislatures may not retroactively alter the definition of crimes or increase the punishment for criminal acts. Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U.S. 37, 43, 110 S.Ct. 2715, 111 L.Ed.2d 30 (1990). Blair-Bey argues that the 1987 adjustment to the District of Columbia's parole system increases the punishment attached to his crime. 57 The circuit caselaw poses something of a problem for Blair-Bey. In Warren v. United States Parole Commission, 659 F.2d 183 [331 U.S.App.D.C. 375] (D.C.Cir.1981), we rejected a claim by a prison inmate that the 1976 revision of the federal parole system was an ex post facto law. Before 1976, the federal parole system had also been highly discretionary; the 1976 revision established a salient factor score system that structured this exercise of discretion. The 1976 revision thus effected a change much like (but, as we observe below, not necessarily exactly like) the 1987 revision in the D.C. parole system that Blair-Bey protests. Warren concluded that the 1976 revision could not be said to increase the punishment of prospective parolees, and hence was not an ex post facto law. Warren reasoned that the Parole Commission retained discretion to ignore its own guidelines; that the guidelines had been based on a statistical survey of past parole practice, so that in the aggregate they embody what may well have been the Board's practice anyway, id. at 193 (emphasis omitted); that under the old system it would always be difficult to predict how any particular inmate would have been treated; and finally that, at most, the new parole system reduced the likelihood that an inmate would be paroled either much earlier or much later than average, a change that could not be characterized as worsen[ing] the inmate's position. Id. at 193-94. See also Miller v. Florida, 482 U.S. 423, 434, 107 S.Ct. 2446, 96 L.Ed.2d 351 (1987) (in the course of deciding another case, seemingly assuming that Warren and similar cases in other courts of appeals upholding the 1976 revisions in the parole system were correctly decided). 58 Because the district court dismissed Blair-Bey's petition sua sponte, Blair-Bey had no opportunity to develop arguments and present evidence below. It is therefore impossible to determine whether or not his claim falls under the Warrenrationale. In particular, we do not know what evidence Blair-Bey and the DCBOP might present as to the purpose and effect of the 1987 revision of the D.C. parole system. If the 1987 revision undertook to codify past parole practices, in the way that the 1976 federal revision did, and if the DCBOP in practice retains discretion to ignore the guidelines, then his case will fall under Warren. But Blair-Bey may be able to present evidence distinguishing his case from Warren, in any of three ways. First, he may be able to show that the revisions to the DCBOP scheme impose a sufficiently great risk of disadvantaging a particular category of inmates as to violate the ex post facto clause. See California Department of Corrections v. Morales, 514 U.S. 499, 509, 115 S.Ct. 1597, 131 L.Ed.2d 588 (1995) (declining to decide what degree of risk is sufficient, but finding that the speculative and attenuated risk of harm in the case at bar did not suffice). Second, if he can show that the 1987 revision was motivated by a punitive desire to extend the incarceration of a particular category of inmates, see Miller, 482 U.S. at 433-34, 107 S.Ct. 2446 (finding that a statute whose sole reason was to punish sex offenders more heavily violated the ex post facto clause), his case will be strengthened. And third, if the DCBOP does not in practice ever ignore its own guidelines, this too may lead to the conclusion that the broad discretion relied upon in Warren is absent here. Cf. Warren, 659 F.2d at 197 n. 57 (leaving open the question of whether evidence that the Board generally engaged in a mechanical administrative application of the Guidelines ... could implicate the ex post facto clause). One of these factors, or a combination of them, could suffice to establish that Blair-Bey has been deprived of his entitlement to have [the Parole Board's] discretion exercised, id. at 196; we need not decide now what kind of showing would suffice. 12 59 The D.C. Court of Appeals has already rejected an ex post facto challenge to the 1987 revisions to the D.C. parole system. See Davis, 652 A.2d at 636. Davis found no ex post facto violation because [t]he new District of Columbia parole guidelines ... [331 U.S.App.D.C. 376] merely formalize the manner in which the Board exercises the discretion conferred upon it by the governing provision in effect when Davis was sentenced. Id. We are bound to follow interpretations of D.C. law by the D.C. Court of Appeals, and hence must defer to that court's ruling to the extent that it interprets D.C. law; for instance, we defer to the ruling that the D.C. parole guidelines merely formalize the manner in which the Board exercises its discretion. But we are not bound to follow the D.C. Court of Appeals's analysis of federal law, and so need not defer to Davis's reading of what the ex post facto clause requires on the facts of a particular case. Moreover, it appears that the plaintiff in Davis did not raise any of the grounds that we have identified as potentially distinguishing this case from Warren. Thus, should Blair-Bey present evidence on any of these points, the specific holding of Davis would not necessarily control even the district court's interpretation of D.C. law (although Davis's methodology would of course guide its analysis).