Opinion ID: 325716
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the question of justiciability

Text: 16 Childs, the original plaintiff, on May 6, 1971, was ordered released on federal parole to the physical custody of the State of Pennsylvania on detainer. Federal parole supervision of Childs did not expire, however, until August 5, 1973. In the meantime on August 4, 1971, seventeen other federal prisoners moved to intervene as plaintiffs pursuant to Rule 24, F.R.Civ.P. These plaintiffs alleged they had applied for and had been denied parole. 17 On August 13, 1971, while Childs' suit was still pending, the motion of the seventeen prisoners to intervene was granted, 'it appearing (as the order states) that there is no opposition thereto and the court having determined on the basis of the entire record in the case that permissive intervention under Rule 24(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is appropriate. . . .' This action of the court is not contested on the appeal, nor was it in the District Court. 18 The intervenors and Childs filed an amended class action complaint seeking relief similar to that sought by Childs in his complaint. In Count I they prayed for an order granting declaratory relief, and, in Count II, for an injunction in the nature of mandamus. Thereafter the cases of Childs and the intervenors were consolidated by order of the District Court on their motion. 19 Though the Board now states that the case of Childs has been mooted, no suggestion of mootness is addressed to the cases of the intervenors, or to the nearly 80 additional cases of prisoners similarly situated which on motion of the Board were consolidated with the Childs case in which interventions had been allowed by the order of August 13, 1971. 20 Non-justiciability was first raised in appellant's Reply Brief in this court. The Board's argument is limited to the position that there is no case or controversy because plaintiffs made no claim that present Board practices prevented any plaintiff's release from prison--that, as the trial judge explained in denying transfer of the case, 5 '(t)he thrust of the present complaint, as the court understands it, is that plaintiffs, as prospective parolees, have a right not to favorable action in their individual cases, . . . but to some assurance, in the form of standards, that a government agency which has the power of incarceration versus relative liberty over them will not exercise its power in an arbitrary or capricious manner.' 21 We must disagree that the complaints present no justiciable issue. Appellees include federal prisoners who applied for and have been denied parole and who complain that Board procedures in the application process are not consistent with due process of law. The Board would now make the existence of a case or controversy depend upon unrealistic verbiage. Appellees could not allege that their parole applications, processed under standards of due process, would have been successful; but we must accept the position that with due process some might have been. 22 We must also accept the position that if applications must be processed consistently with due process of law, their denial inconsistently with due process impairs a right which appellees are entitled to have vindicated by the judiciary. Resort to the court in such a situation brings there a case or controversy by prisoners who have a 'personal stake in the outcome,' such a stake as to 'assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions'. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962); O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 94 S.Ct. 669, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974). One could not easily find a context in which these conditions of justiciability more clearly appear. 23 In United States ex rel. Johnson v. Chairman, N.Y.St. Bd. of P., 500 F.2d 925 (2d Cir. 1974), judgment vacated as moot, sub nom. Regan v. Johnson, 419 U.S. 1015, 95 S.Ct. 488, 42 L.Ed.2d 289 (1974), the court decided the due process issue on its merits with no suggestion that the court or the parties entertained any doubt as to the justiciability of the issue, in all relevant respects the same as that now before us. See, also, the opinion of Judge Tuttle in Scarpa v. United States Board of Parole, 468 F.2d 31 (5th Cir. 1972), rev'd, 477 F.2d 278 (1973) (en banc). The en banc opinion reversing, however, in no manner suggested non-justiciability of the issue. Reference to that decision in United States Board of Parole v. Merhige, 487 F.2d 25 (4th Cir. 1973), as having affirmed the action of the District Court in dismissing Scarpa's complaint 'for failure to state a justiciable issue upon which relief could be granted,' Id. at 28, is not to be interpreted in light of the history of Scarpa as a ruling that the issue there, and here insofar as it is one of due process, did not amount to a case or controversy under Article III, but as a ruling that the issue as presented entitled Scarpa to no relief. We have found no decided case, whether supporting or not the right to due process accompanying denial of parole, which holds the question when presented by a frustrated applicant does not present a case or controversy under Article III.