Court Opinion

ID: 9428520
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:02.421073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.985888
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
Because the facts of this case are so unusual, it is surprising that the Court considers it appropriate to grant certiorari and address the merits. It is even more surprising that the Court has decided the mootness question by adopting the reasoning that persuaded Justice Brennan, Justice Powell, and me to dissent in Scott v. Kentucky Parole Board, 429 U. S. 60; see also Vitek v. Jones, 436 U. S. 407, 410 (Stevens, J., dissenting). See ante, at 21-22, n. 3. Nevertheless, I am unable to join the Court’s disposition on the merits.
The Court has fashioned a constitutional distinction between the decision to revoke parole and the decision to grant or to deny parole. Arbitrary revocation is prohibited by *24Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, whereas arbitrary denial is permitted by Greenholtz v. Nebraska Penal Inmates, 442 U. S. 1, 9-11.1 Even if one accepts the validity of that dubious distinction,21 believe the Court misapplies it in this case.
In the Court’s view, the grant of parole creates a constitutionally protected interest in liberty that previously did not exist. Under that view, a profound change in the status of an individual occurs when he is paroled; he has greater legal rights after parole than before. The question is what event triggers this change in legal status, the act of walking through the exit gates or the State’s formal decision, conveyed to the prisoner, to grant him his conditional freedom.
For the ordinary litigant, the entry of judgment by the decisionmaker — not the execution of that judgment by the sheriff — determines his legal rights. In my opinion, the interests in orderly decisionmaking that are protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment dictate a similar answer in the context of this case. As the Court has pointed out:
“The parolee is not the only one who has a stake in his conditional liberty. Society has a stake in whatever may be the chance of restoring him to normal and useful life within the law. Society thus has an interest in not having parole revoked because of erroneous information or because of an erroneous evaluation of the need to revoke parole, given the breach of parole conditions. And society has a further interest in treating the parolee with basic fairness: fair treatment in parole revocations will *25enhance the chance of rehabilitation by avoiding reactions to arbitrariness.” Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, at 484 (citation and footnote omitted).
It seems quite clear to me that precisely those interests are implicated by this case.
When the Ohio Adult Parole Authority revoked its decision to grant respondent parole, it acted on the basis of ex parte information which respondent had no opportunity to deny or to explain. Even if that information was entirely accurate in this case, and even if it was sufficiently important to justify the changed decision, the effect of the Court’s holding today is to allow such decisions to stand even if wrong and wholly arbitrary. I am persuaded that such a holding is erroneous.3 *26If the Court had allowed the parties to argue the merits of the issue — instead of acting summarily on the basis of an incomplete presentation — the error might have been avoided. In all events, I respectfully dissent.

 Cf. Connecticut Board of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U. S. 458 (arbitrary denial of an application for commutation of a life sentence is permissible).

 See Greenholtz v. Nebraska Penal Inmates, 442 U. S., at 19-20 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); id., at 25-29 (Marshall, J., dissenting in part). See also Connecticut Board of Pardons v. Dumschat, supra, at 470 (Stevens, J., dissenting).

 It is a federal constitutional question whether, under all the circumstances, including the existence of rights conferred by state statutes and other rules, an individual has such a legitimate claim of entitlement to freedom that due process protections attach. In its answer to that federal question, the Court of Appeals recognized that “[p]arole for Ohio prisoners lies wholly within the discretion of the OAPA. The statutes which provide for parole do not create a protected liberty interest for due process purposes.” 641 F. 2d 411, 414 (CA6 1981). But the Court of Appeals’ holding was based on circumstances other than the state statutes and other rules:
“We do not reach this conclusion on the basis of cases from jurisdictions which have rules or guidelines that establish entitlement to parole or permit rescission under narrowly defined circumstances. There is no evidence that Ohio has such rules or guidelines. Nor do we base our decision on the evidence that less than one percent of Ohio’s parole grants are rescinded. Cf. Dumschat v. Board of Pardons, 618 F. 2d 216 (2d Cir.), cert. granted, [449 U. S. 898] (1980). This evidence related to paroles generally and there was no proof directed specifically to shock parole, the comparatively new Ohio method of release involved in the present case. Rather, the decision is based on the facts of this case which lead ineluctably to the conclusion that acts of the OAPA created a protected'liberty interest in Van Curen.” Id., at 416-417 (citations omitted).
Even if the Court correctly states that “the ‘mutually explicit understandings’ of Sindermann have a far more useful place in determining protected property interests than in determining those liberty interests pro*26tected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” ante, at 20, the question remains whether the act of the State in notifying the respondent that he had been granted parole as of a specific date created such a legitimate expectation of freedom as to trigger due process protections. The Court does not address that question, relying instead on the “concession [of the Court of Appeals] that Ohio law creates no protected ‘liberty’ interest.” Ante, at 21. But even this Court’s narrowest decisions do not limit the due process analysis to an examination of written state laws; nor do they exclude consideration of the decisions and acts of the State directed at a particular individual.