Court Opinion

ID: 9488623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:50:31.578366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:59.602684
License: Public Domain

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I read Heck v. Humphrey, — U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), the same way the district court did, ie., as requiring the dismissal of Armento-Bey’s § 1983 complaint. If, as Armento-Bey claims, he was denied procedural due process during his disciplinary hearing, then it necessarily follows that the disciplinary decision, and the resulting loss of good-time credits, are unconstitutional and cannot stand. Ar-mento-Bey’s challenge to the process employed in the hearing is necessarily a challenge to the validity of the disciplinary decision itself. His case therefore is controlled by the holding in Heck (as opposed to dictum in the Heck opinion that the majority here finds persuasive).
Moreover, even if the district court and I have misapprehended Heck, I believe that at the very least this case must be stayed under Offet v. Solem, 823 F.2d 1256 (8th Cir.1987), until Armento-Bey exhausts his state remedies. There is no indication in the record that he has done so. Armento-Bey has launched an “indirect attack on the length of his state confinement,” and such an attack “directly implicates the policies of federal-state comity requiring exhaustion in a direct attack.” Id. at 1257.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.