Opinion ID: 4211918
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Constitutionally sufficient process

Text: The more challenging task for petitioner is to establish that a right to judicial review with the assistance of adequate counsel is among the procedural protections that the Due Process Clause demands when a liberty interest in parole is at stake. The nature of the procedural protections that due process requires to vindicate a liberty interest depends upon the nature of the liberty interest at issue. See Swarthout, 562 US at 220. The United State Supreme Court has already determined that, when the liberty interest at issue is a state-created opportunity for parole, the Due Process Clause guarantees no more than “minimal” process, which is limited to an opportunity to be heard and a statement of the reasons why parole was denied. Id. (citing Greenholtz, 442 US at 16). 9 The parole “release date” referred to in Janowski is not a date on which release is guaranteed, but it is a scheduled release date that may be postponed for only three statutorily prescribed reasons. 349 Or at 457 (citing ORS 144.125(2) (1985)). Cite as 362 Or 15 (2017) 29 As petitioner acknowledges, Swarthout means that a state satisfies the requirements of the Due Process Clause without providing either a right to the assistance of counsel in the murder-review process or a right to judicial review of the board’s decision. Yet petitioner views the “minimal” process that Swarthout prescribes for parole decisions as essentially only a floor. According to petitioner, by enacting statutes that grant the additional protection of judicial review with the assistance of counsel, Oregon has made a “meaningful opportunity” to pursue judicial review part of the process to which petitioner is entitled under the Due Process Clause. As support for his theory that a state statute can expand the “minimal” protections that the Due Process Clause otherwise requires when a state denies parole, petitioner cites only the well established principle that a statute can create the kind of interest in liberty (or property) to which due process protections will apply. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 US 539, 557, 94 S Ct 2963, 41 L Ed 2d 935 (1974) (explaining that statute granting prisoners a right to “good time” that could be forfeited only for serious misbehavior created an “interest” that “is sufficiently embraced within Fourteenth Amendment ‘liberty’ to entitle [prisoners] to those minimum procedures appropriate under the circumstances and required by the Due Process Clause”); see also Stogsdill, 342 Or at 336 (Oregon statutes directing parole board to set release date for prisoner “created a protected liberty interest, which required the board to provide him with some process.”). But whether a statute can create an interest in liberty or property that is protected by the Due Process Clause is a separate inquiry from whether a statutory process for protecting that interest becomes part of the procedures that the Due Process Clause requires in order to protect the interest. See Swarthout, 562 US at 219 (describing the two-stage inquiry under the Due Process Clause). Nevertheless, petitioner’s theory is reminiscent of the reasoning that led the United States Supreme Court to conclude in Evitts that, if a state grants a right to appeal criminal convictions, then the Due Process Clause precludes the state from denying that right on the basis of appointed counsel’s failure to meet a deadline. 469 US at 396. The 30 Haynes v. Board of Parole defendant in Evitts appealed his criminal conviction, but the appeal was dismissed when his retained lawyer failed to file a required “statement of appeal.” The defendant then sought federal habeas corpus relief, contending that the dismissal of his appeal for an omission that was entirely due to his lawyer’s ineffective representation violated his constitutional right to due process. The state argued that, because states are under no constitutional imperative to provide a right to appeal criminal convictions,10 “whatever a state does or does not do on appeal—whether or not to have an appeal and if so, how to operate it—is of no due process concern to the Constitution.” Id. at 400. The Court rejected the state’s argument, explaining that, although the defendant’s right to an appeal process was purely a statutory right, once a state creates a right to appeal that is “an integral part of the    system for finally adjudicating the guilt or innocence of a defendant,” it must decide those appeals using procedures that comport with the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 393 (quoting Griffin, 351 US at 18-20). The Court then held that those constitutionally required procedures included “the effective assistance of an attorney” to assist on direct appeal. Evitts, 469 US at 396. Applying that rule, the Court concluded that the state could not deny the defendant’s appeal based on what was, in effect, a violation of his due process right to the effective assistance of counsel on direct appeal. Id. at 400. At first glance, Evitts could be taken to support petitioner’s theory that, for any statutory grant of the right to appeal a decision affecting criminal defendants, there is a due process right to pursue that process with the assistance of counsel. Other decisions clarify, however, that the Evitts rule reaches no further than the circumstances of Evitts—a direct appeal process that is an integral part of the state’s system for adjudicating guilt or innocence. For example, although a state may also allow a discretionary appeal to the highest court, in addition to an appeal as of right to challenge a conviction, there is no due process right to pursue that 10 As the court explained in Evitts, it had long ago “held that the Constitution does not require States to grant appeals as of right to criminal defendants seeking to review alleged trial court errors.” 469 US at 393 (citing McKane v. Durston, 153 US 684, 14 S Ct 913, 38 L Ed 867 (1894)). Cite as 362 Or 15 (2017) 31 discretionary appeal with the assistance of counsel. Ross v. Moffitt, 417 US 600, 610, 94 S Ct 2437, 41 L Ed 2d 341 (1974). Applying that rule in a later case, Wainwright v. Torna, 455 US 586, 587-88, 102 S Ct 1300, 71 L Ed 2d 475 (1982), the Court held that a criminal defendant whose retained lawyer failed to file a timely petition for discretionary review in the state’s highest court had no due process right to pursue review with the assistance of counsel and, thus, no due process right to a delayed opportunity for review. Similarly, in Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 US 551, 555, 107 S Ct 1990, 95 L Ed 2d 539 (1987), the Court held that, although a state may allow a process for collateral challenges to a conviction (such as a post-conviction relief act), the defendant has no constitutional right to pursue that process with the assistance of counsel. As the Court explained in Finley, “[s]tates have no obligation to provide this avenue of relief, and when they do, the fundamental fairness mandated by the Due Process Clause does not require that the State supply a lawyer as well.” Id. at 557 (internal citation omitted). As already emphasized, states have no constitu- tional obligation to provide for judicial review of parole decisions. See Swarthout, 562 US at 220-21. Thus, when a state provides a statutory process for judicial review of a parole decision, inmates have no due process right to be assisted by adequate counsel before the petition for review is denied. See Finley, 481 US at 555; Wainright, 455 US at 587-88. That answer is not changed by Oregon’s adoption of a statutory right to counsel to assist with judicial review, in addition to a statutory process for judicial review. Finley provides the most pertinent guidance on this point. In Finley, a prisoner whose murder conviction had been affirmed on direct appeal sought relief under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Hearing Act, which afforded a statutory right to appointed counsel to assist with the process. Instead of pursuing the prisoner’s claim, his appointed counsel advised the court that he saw no merit to the claim, and the postconviction court dismissed the case. On review, the state appellate court held that the attorney’s performance failed to satisfy the standard that the Due Process Clause demands when counsel is appointed to assist with a direct criminal appeal and, therefore, that the dismissal of the prisoner’s 32 Haynes v. Board of Parole case violated his constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel.11 481 US at 553-54. In the Supreme Court, the prisoner relied on Evitts for the proposition that a statutory right to counsel must be equivalent to the due process right to counsel, but the Court disagreed. 481 US at 557-58. As the Court explained: “the fact that the defendant has been afforded assistance of counsel in some form does not end the inquiry for federal constitutional purposes. Rather, it is the source of that right to a lawyer’s assistance, combined with the nature of the proceedings, that controls the constitutional question.” Id. at 556. The Court emphasized that the nature of the proceeding—a collateral challenge to a criminal conviction— is “not part of the criminal proceeding itself,” that “[s]tates have no obligation to provide this avenue of relief, and [that] when they do, the fundamental fairness mandated by the Due Process Clause does not require that the State supply a lawyer as well.” Id. at 557 (internal citation omitted). Given the nature of the proceedings, the Court concluded that the only source of the right to counsel in Finley was state law and, accordingly, it rejected the state court’s conclusion that dismissing the prisoner’s case would violate his rights under the Due Process Clause. Id. at 559. Here, too, the proceeding—judicial review of a board decision regarding the possibility of parole—is not part of the criminal proceeding itself, is not an avenue of relief that the state has a constitutional obligation to provide, and is not a proceeding for which, when the state provides it, the Due Process Clause requires the state to provide a lawyer as well. Thus, the source of petitioner’s right to counsel is purely the state’s decision to supply petitioner with a lawyer. Given that source of the right to counsel, and the nature of the judicial review proceeding at issue, we conclude that petitioner has no due process right to be assisted by adequate counsel before his petition for review is denied. 11 The lawyer in Finley had failed to comply with procedures that the Supreme Court prescribed to assure that, when a criminal defendant’s appointed counsel concludes there is no merit to the direct appeal, the defendant’s constitutional right to counsel on direct appeal is, nevertheless, protected. See Anders v. California, 386 US 738, 87 S Ct 1396, 18 L Ed 2d 493 (1967). Cite as 362 Or 15 (2017) 33