Court Opinion

ID: 9727001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:16:50.987644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:32.749080
License: Public Domain

CONCURRING AND DISSENTING OPINION BY
Judge SMITH-RIBNER.
I concur in part with the Majority’s decision to sustain Respondents’ preliminary objection in the nature of a demurrer to Petitioner Darryl Buck’s complaint in mandamus, treated as a petition for review addressed to the Court’s original jurisdiction. I concur with prior decisions of the Court which hold that the Department has statutory authority to make deductions from inmate accounts to apply toward restitution and court cost orders entered against the inmate. I dissent, however, from the Majority’s dismissal of Petitioner’s complaint as it relates to the Department’s authority to make deductions from monetary gifts or other outside sources credited to an inmate’s prison account, and I would overrule Respondents’ preliminary objection in that regard.
The Majority did not discuss the issue regarding deductions from gifts to inmates or funds from other outside sources, presumably because Petitioner’s brief argues in general the authority of the Department to make any deductions at all from inmate accounts without prior notice and hearing. Petitioner, nevertheless, averred in his pro se complaint that the Department made deductions from his inmate account without statutory authority, and he specifically averred that 20 percent deductions were being made on a monthly basis from his wages and monetary gifts from his family members. Petitioner claimed that he has been denied due process of law by virtue of the deductions from his account. Consequently, this issue is squarely before the Court in this case.
I note that the standards for reviewing preliminary objections are well settled. The Court shall sustain preliminary objections and dismiss a complaint only when it is clear and free from doubt that the law will permit no recovery. Sweatt v. Department of Corrections, 769 A.2d 574 (Pa. Cmwlth.2001); Stone & Edwards Insurance Agency, Inc. v. Department of Insurance, 151 Pa.Cmwlth. 266, 616 A.2d 1060 (1992). When ruling on preliminary objections, the Court must accept as true all well-pleaded material allegations of the complaint and must accept all inferences reasonably deducible from those allegations. Id. A demurrer should not be sustained unless on the face of the complaint it is certain that the law will permit no recovery, and all doubts should be resolved against dismissal. Id.
I believe that the Majority erred in dismissing Petitioner’s complaint as it pertains to the deductions from gifts and other outside sources inasmuch as nothing in the Act of June 18,1998, P.L. 640 (Act 84), in Section 9728(b)(5) of the Sentencing Code, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9728(b)(5), or in Pennsylvania ease law supports.the argument that the Department is statutorily authorized to make such deductions from an inmate’s private personal property without *703prior notice and hearing. The Majority cited a recent decision in Boyd v. Department of Corrections, 831 A.2d 779 (Pa. Cmwlth.2003), which quoted the Department’s Policy DC-ADM 005 (Part VI(C)(4)(a)) pertaining to deductions from inmate accounts and providing in relevant part: “[T]he business office [of the Department] will deduct from an inmate’s account monthly payments of 20% of the preceding months income provided the account balance exceeds $10.00.” Boyd, 831 A.2d at 783 (emphasis added).
At argument in this case before the Court en banc, counsel for Respondents indicated that the policy contemplated deductions from an inmate’s “income,” i.e., earnings from work performed by inmates at their respective places of confinement. In this regard, I note that Act 84 amended Section 8127(a) of the Judicial Code, as amended, 42 Pa.C.S. § 8127(a), by adding paragraph (5), which now provides that an individual’s wages, salaries and commissions are exempt from attachment, execution or other process except upon an action or proceeding “[f]or restitution to crime victims, costs, fines or bail judgments pursuant to an order entered by a court in a criminal proceeding.” Significantly, Section 8127 is entitled “personal earnings exempt from process.” The Department’s policy, however, purports to define income as funds credited to an inmate’s account regardless of the source, but that definition is not authorized by Act 84 or, specifically, by the foregoing amendment. Accordingly, as gifts and other outside sources credited to an inmate’s account are not “personal earnings” contemplated by Act 84, but instead represent private personal property, they cannot be taken away without due process of law. See Reynolds v. Wagner, 128 F.3d 166 (3d Cir.1997); Holloway v. Lehman, 671 A.2d 1179 (Pa.Cmwlth.1996); T.L.C. Services, Inc. v. Ka-min, 162 Pa.Cmwlth. 547, 639 A.2d 926 (1994).
Although the precise issue regarding deductions from inmate gifts or other outside sources has not been decided by Pennsylvania courts, that issue was presented in Walters v. Grossheim, 525 N.W.2d 830 (Iowa 1994), and was decided by the Supreme Court of Iowa. The Supreme Court considered a prison inmate’s challenge to the state department of corrections’ policy authorizing automatic deductions for victim restitution of 20 percent of all sources of funds credited to an inmate’s account, including funds from family members or other outside sources. The court affirmed the lower court’s decision that the inmate’s rights to procedural due process were violated and that he was entitled to a hearing before deductions were made from gifts or other outside sources other than the earnings received by the inmate for his institutional labor in the prison laundry. The inmate received regular cash gifts from his father, which were used to purchase the inmate’s personal sundries and law books. The court noted the department’s acquiescence with the principle that an inmate’s money in prison accounts is protected property under the Constitution, but it nevertheless argued that the statute authorizing the deductions provided the required due process protections under the circumstances.
The Supreme Court concluded in Walters that a department policy that took an inmate’s private resources could not be implemented without granting the inmate an opportunity to protect his private personal property interests from unreasonable deprivation, stressing that the government’s interest in promoting the payment of restitution orders may indeed outweigh the inmate’s interest in applying the funds in his account to some other end. That decision, however, could not be unilaterally *704made by the institution consistent with due process requirements, and the inmate therefore was entitled to a hearing on any objections that he might have to the deprivation of his property. The court disagreed that a hearing was required before each withdrawal, but it held that to comport with due process requirements prison officials must notify inmates of the proposed amendment to their restitution plans, including the assessment against outside sources, allow time for inmates to object and consider the objections in formulating an individual plan for the future. The court was satisfied that to comport with due process, the pre-deprivation hearing need not be any more than an informal, non-adversarial review of the inmate’s objections to the proposed withdrawal of the inmate’s funds, citing Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1988). The critical ruling, however, was that before funds could be deducted from gifts from family members or other sources representing private personal property, due process required that before 20 percent of such funds may be deducted the inmate must be given notice and, at a minimum, an informal hearing and an opportunity to object.
I find additional support for this dissent in Higgins v. Beyer, 293 F.3d 683 (3d Cir.2002), a case in which the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed a New Jersey statute providing for the deduction of funds from inmate accounts for victim restitution purposes. The New Jersey department of corrections is statutorily authorized to collect the assessment during an inmate’s incarceration when ordered by the court and to forward the collected funds to the Victims of Crime Compensation Board. The inmate was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine to the board, and several years later he received a $7,608 check from the United States Treasury representing seven years of Veterans Administration (VA) benefits for the inmate’s partial disability. The department’s employees sought to take a portion of the funds to pay the outstanding fine, and the inmate filed a pro se complaint challenging the authority of the department to make the deduction.
The Third Circuit indicated in Higgins that under federal law the inmate’s benefits were protected from attachment, levy or seizure by the department of corrections. Ultimately, the court invalidated the New Jersey statute allowing the deductions as it conflicted with congressional purposes in enacting the law that prohibited attachment, levy or seizure of VA benefits, which represented private personal property of the inmate and could not be taken away without notice and a hearing to comport with due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the inmate averred sufficient facts to establish his entitlement to predeprivation notice and hearing, the Third Circuit vacated the district court’s decision and remanded the case for further proceedings.
Since under the facts averred in this case the Court cannot state with certainty that Buck is not entitled to relief pertaining to deductions from gifts or other outside sources credited to his prison account, I would overrule Respondents’ demurrer as to this issue and require Respondents to file an appropriate response. The significance of this issue and the need for due process protections under these circumstances would not be understated were the Court to appropriately consider that restitution plans should reflect the inmate’s ability to pay, that inmates are required to pay for sundry items and potentially other obligations during their incarceration and that their institutional earnings are minimal for the services that they perform.