Opinion ID: 2390124
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Plain Language Conundrum.

Text: Citing, inter alia, Riggs National Bank v. District of Columbia, 581 A.2d 1229, 1235 (D.C.1990), Luck asks us to construe the plain language of the GTCA as supporting his construction of it. The proposition that plain statutory language generally trumps other considerations is hardly subject to challenge. As the Supreme Court recently reminded us, courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there.... When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then this first canon is also the last; judicial inquiry is complete. Connecticut Nat'l Bank v. Germain, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 112 S.Ct. 1146, 1149, 117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). [4] Although the District appears to concede that Luck's plain language contention has at least superficial merit, [5] we find this concession to be an improvident one. The first sentence of § 24-431(a) states that [e]very person shall be given credit ... for time spent ... on parole as a result of the offense for which the sentence was imposed. Read literally and in isolation, this language ostensibly entitles every sentenced prisoner who is incarcerated on or after the effective date of the Act to credit for time served on parole. On its face, the statute does not differentiate between persons whose sentences are recomputed in the normal course after the effective date of the Act and those whose sentences are not so recomputed. In other words, according to the unvarnished meaning of the words of the statute, the DOC would be required to recalculate the eligibility for good time credit for every prisoner who had been on parole in connection with the sentence under consideration, no matter how ancient his or her parole term may be. Evidently recognizing that the legislature could not have intended so drastic a result without saying something loud and clear about it, Luck asks us to read the statute to mean that every person whose sentence is recomputed after the effective date of the Act shall be given credit for [street time]. The italicized limitation, however, is not to be found in the text of the Act. According to the statutory language as written, a prisoner is entitled to credit for any time spent on parole  as a result of the offense for which the sentence was imposed.  A prisoner is textually eligible for good time credits whether or not a post-Act recomputation of his or her sentence would otherwise occur. Luck is thus asking this court to read into § 24-431(a) a qualification that the drafters did not put there, and then to treat the statute (as so embellished) as though it were plain language written by the legislature without embellishment. This we cannot do. As the Supreme Court recently reiterated in West Virginia Univ. Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 111 S.Ct. 1138, 1148, 113 L.Ed.2d 68 (1991), (quoting Iselin v. United States, 270 U.S. 245, 250-51, 46 S.Ct. 248, 250, 70 L.Ed. 566 (1926) (Brandeis, J.)), [w]hat the [appellant] asks is not a construction of a statute but, in effect, an enlargement of it by the court, so that what was omitted, presumably by inadvertence may be included within its scope. To supply omissions transcends the judicial function. Once it has been determined that Luck's plain language argument requires judicial revision of the statute as enacted by the legislature, the force of that argument is necessarily, and in our view fatally, undermined. The same doom awaits Luck's contention that this court should accept his proposed construction of the Act because it would advance the statutory purpose by relieving overcrowding in the District's correctional facilities. An uncompromisingly literal interpretation of the act  that every prisoner became entitled, upon passage of the Act, to credit for time spent on parole as a result of the sentence, no matter how long ago he was on parole  might well require the release of a substantial number of incarcerated individuals, and thus improve conditions for those who remain. Any impact on the prison population which Luck's diluted plain language might accomplish would necessarily, however, be far more modest.