Court Opinion

ID: 9496052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:17:00.779326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:20.893992
License: Public Domain

GILMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I believe that the majority opinion has adopted an overly broad “earlier release” test that conflates the distinct factual issues presented by these two appeals, thereby confusing the already complicated area of law at the intersection of habeas corpus and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 579, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974) (“[T]he demarcation line between civil rights actions and habeas petitions is not always clear.”). *473Heck’s basic test of “whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of [the prisoner’s] conviction or sentence,” Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 487, 114 S.Ct. 2864, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), suggests that prisoner § 1983 actions must be examined on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether the plaintiff has a cognizable claim. The Heck test was further refined by Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641, 117 S.Ct. 1584, 137 L.Ed.2d 906 (1997), which addresses “the possibility, clearly envisioned by Heck, that the nature of the challenge to the procedures could be such as necessarily to imply the invalidity of the judgment.” Id. at 645, 117 S.Ct. 1584.
In its holding, the majority opinion focuses on whether a § 1983 claim will necessarily shorten a prisoner’s time in jail. The majority thus glosses over what I believe is the Supreme Court’s actual rule — that it is the judgment of the administrative body (in this case, the parole board) whose validity may not be questioned by a § 1983 action, regardless of the judgment’s effect on the length of the prisoner’s underlying conviction or sentence. Because Ohio’s parole system is discretionary, the majority opinion reasons, no § 1983 claim resulting in a new hearing will necessarily imply the invalidity of the underlying conviction or sentence. (Maj. Op. at 470-471)
The majority opinion’s “earlier release” test, in my opinion, fails to properly distinguish between the distinct natures of Dotson’s and Johnson’s challenges to Ohio’s parole procedures. I believe that Dotson’s claim may proceed under § 1983, but that Johnson’s claim may not. Set forth below is my analysis of how I believe the test developed by the Supreme Court from Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), through Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1, 118 S.Ct. 978, 140 L.Ed.2d 43 (1998), should be applied to their respective claims.
I. DOTSON’S CLAIM
A. Factual and procedural background
Dotson challenges the retroactive application of Ohio’s parole-eligibility guidelines to his sentence. He was sentenced in July of 1981 to life imprisonment for aggravated murder. Dotson alleges that, at the time of his conviction, Ohio Revised Code § 2967.13(B) provided that prisoners serving a life sentence were eligible for parole after 15 years. Pursuant to the parole-eligibility statute and regulations, Dotson received his first parole hearing in 1995. He was denied parole, and the Board scheduled a second hearing for June of 2005, with a halfway review in March of 2000. On March 1, 1998, the Ohio Parole Board adopted new guidelines to assist the Board in determining whether to grant or deny parole in future hearings. The new guidelines weigh the seriousness of the offense committed, as well as the inmate’s criminal history and risk to society, to provide a range of months that must be served before the inmate becomes eligible for parole release.
Dotson alleges that, at his halfway review in March of 2000, the Parole Board retroactively applied the new guidelines to determine his parole eligibility. As a result, the Parole Board noted that Dotson would still be seven years short of parole eligibility under the new guidelines at the time of his next scheduled hearing in 2005.
B. Analysis
1. Heck and Edwards forbid § 1983 actions that question the validity of a state judgment determining whether a prisoner should be released on parole
In its analysis of both Dotson’s and Johnson’s claims, the majority opinion *474adopts an “earlier release” test in holding that all attacks on parole procedures in Ohio are cognizable under § 1988 as long as they do not necessarily imply the invalidity of a prisoner’s conviction or confinement by inevitably or automatically resulting in earlier release. (Maj. Op. at 471) I believe that the majority opinion’s test is contrary to the holdings of Heck and Edwards. In Heck, the Supreme Court held that “if the district court determines that the plaintiffs action, even if successful, will not demonstrate the invalidity of any outstanding criminal judgment against the plaintiff, the action should be allowed to proceed_” Heck, 512 U.S. at 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (second emphasis added). The Court was suggesting that the real problem was not that the prisoner’s § 1983 action would necessarily get him out of jail sooner, but rather that the federal courts must not allow the use of § 1983 to imply the invalidity of any state criminal judgments relating to the length of a prisoner’s incarceration.
In Edwards, the Supreme Court extended this principle when outlining the effect of correcting the procedural defect in question. The Court stated: “This is an obvious procedural defect, and state and federal courts have reinstated good-time credits (absent a new hearing) when it is established.” Edwards, 520 U.S. at 647, 117 S.Ct. 1584 (emphasis added). In other words, it is the implied invalidity of the administrative hearing itself — that can be corrected only by a new hearing — that is an impermissible result of a § 1983 claim.
Finally, the Court’s statement in Spencer that a § 1983 action might lie if the “procedural defect did not necessarily imply the invalidity of the [parole] revocation....” Spencer, 523 U.S. at 17, 118 S.Ct. 978 (internal quotation marks omitted), is not inconsistent with the holdings in Edwards and Heck. The Court gave no indication of any departure from its earlier cases to the effect that a decision to revoke parole, whether or not procedurally defective, must not be rendered invalid by the federal courts.
In attempting to avoid the rationale of the Heck and Edwards decisions, the majority opinion places great weight on the discretionary nature of Ohio’s parole system. ' Because “the impact the new hearings would have on Dotson and Johnson’s parole or release is indeterminate,” the majority contends that the validity of the administrative judgment has not been questioned. (Maj. Op. at 13) A similar argument, however, was advanced by the petitioner in Edwards to the effect that a ruling in Edwards’s favor on his § 1983 procedural attack would not necessarily imply the invalidity of the loss of his good-time credits because the Washington courts could still uphold the administrative determination once the procedural errors were corrected. Edwards, 520 U.S. at 647, 117 S.Ct. 1584. But the Court clearly rejected this argument in Edwards. Id. at 648, 117 S.Ct. 1584. Simply because the administrative body might reach the same result the second time around, therefore, does not save a § 1983 procedural attack. Furthermore, the majority believes that the Supreme Court’s use of the word “ ‘judgment’ properly refers only to the decision of a convicting court.” (Maj. Op. at 470, n. 2) I disagree, however, because Edwards itself was dealing with the judgment of an administrative body. Edwards, 520 U.S. at 645,117 S.Ct. 1584.

2. The 2000 halfway review did not grant or deny parole

The place to begin analyzing the nature of Dotson’s claim and its legal implications is to look at the kind of proceeding that he challenges. At issue in his complaint are the actions taken at his halfway review in *475March of 2000. This proceeding did not result in Dotson being either granted or denied parole. Without removing his scheduled 2005 parole-determination hearing from the calendar, the Parole Board instead decided to retroactively apply Ohio’s new eligibility guidelines to Dotson. Dotson’s complaint does nothing more than challenge this interim action. Although the Supreme Court has never dealt with this parole-ehgibility/parole-determi-nation distinction, both the Ninth and District of Columbia Circuits have.

3. The Ninth and D.C. Circuit decisions on parole eligibility

In erroneously lumping together both Johnson’s and Dotson’s claims under the broad rubric of a challenge to “parole procedures,” I believe that the majority has adopted a broad-based rule that was rejected by the Supreme Court in Edwards. A more narrow reading of Anyanwutaku v. Moore, 151 F.3d 1053 (D.C.Cir.1998), analyzed in conjunction with two earlier Ninth Circuit cases, leads to what I believe is the proper rule in determining which parole challenges are cognizable in § 1983 actions.
One of these cases is Neal v. Shimoda, 131 F.3d 818 (9th Cir.1997), where the Ninth Circuit held that parole-eligibility determinations are decisions that can be challenged in a § 1983 claim without running afoul of Heck and Edwards. Analogous to the case before us, Neal dealt with the retroactive application of a sex-offender statute that established new parole-eligibility guidelines after parole eligibility had already been determined for the two inmates in question. Following their convictions on charges of kidnapping, sexual assault, and attempted rape, Hawaii enacted the Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP). The program requires inmates categorized as sex offenders to participate in the program as a precondition to becoming eligible for parole. Because Neal’s and Martinez’s convictions took place before SOTP was instituted, the date of their parole eligibility had already been determined under older guidelines. Id. at 821-23.
The Ninth Circuit held that their action was cognizable under § 1983, employing the language quoted by both the majority opinion here and the D.C. Circuit in Any-anwutaku: “The only benefit that a victory in this case would provide Neal and Martinez, besides the possibility of monetary damages, is a ticket to get in the door of the parole board, thus only making them eligible for parole consideration according to the terms of their sentences.” Id. at 824 (emphasis in original). In other words, there was no determination to be unwound by the Parole Board in Neal because there had never been a decision on how much of the two inmates’ sentences would be served. Deciding that a parole-eligibility statute should not be retroactively applied to them “would not alter the calculus for the review of parole requests in any way.” Id. The decision in Neal did not necessarily imply the invalidity of any prior judgment because no parole decision was thrown out or altered by the court.
In reaching the decision in Neal, the Ninth Circuit distinguished one of its earlier cases that had applied the Heck/Edwards test. The earlier case was Butter-field v. Bail, 120 F.3d 1023 (9th Cir.1997), which held that a prisoner’s due process challenge under § 1983, attacking the procedures used by the Parole Board in denying him parole, was not sustainable. But-terfield closely tracked the reasoning of Edwards and held that “a challenge to the procedures used in the denial of parole necessarily implicates the validity of the denial of parole and, therefore, the prisoner’s continuing confinement.” Id. at 1024.
*476The differing outcomes in Neal and But-terfield, based upon the nature of the claims presented, is important because it parallels the distinction between the two cases at hand. Johnson, whose claim is discussed in Part II below, has challenged the procedures used in a hearing that denied him parole. Although he seeks to characterize his claim as one requesting that a future hearing by the Parole Board be untainted by procedural defects, he is necessarily implying the invalidity of the challenged hearing. Dotson, in contrast, does not challenge the procedures used in a hearing that denied him parole. Rather, like the plaintiffs in Neal, he challenges the retroactive application of parole-eligibility guidelines to himself. I find this distinction as articulated by the Ninth Circuit to be persuasive.
Anyanwutaku also addresses a parole-eligibility situation and employs the reasoning of Neal. In Anyanwutaku, the D.C. Circuit held that the alleged miscalculation of a parole-eligibility date presented a cognizable § 1983 claim. The opinion, however, does not differentiate between a challenge to the procedures used in a particular parole hearing to deny parole versus the misapplication or retroactive application of generally applicable parole-eligibility guidelines. Anyan-wutaku is instead based, like the majority opinion, on the rationale that a § 1983 claim is sustainable so long as the claim does not necessarily imply or automatically result in a speedier release from prison. Anyanwutaku, 151 F.3d at 1056.
Because Anyanwutaku dealt with the alleged misapplication of parole-eligibility guidelines, however, I do not disagree with the result reached in that case, even though I disagree with its rationale. I also believe that the Ninth Circuit’s treatment of the issue is more instructive than that of Anyanwutaku because the Neal and Butterfield decisions explicate the key difference between a parole-eligibility challenge that attacks a generally applicable prison regulation versus an attempt to “set aside” or “reverse” the denial of parole in an individual case.
4. Parole-eligibility actions under § 1983 meet the Heck/Edwards test
I believe that the principles set forth in Heck and Edwards, as applied by the Ninth Circuit in Neal and Butterfield, provide a reasonable framework for analyzing Dotson’s claim. The nature of Dotson’s claim — an attack on the retroactive applicability of Ohio’s statutory parole-eligibility scheme — does not necessarily imply the invalidity of any judgment by an administrative body that he is or is not entitled to parole. In order to reach this conclusion, one simply needs to consider what will happen if Dotson’s action is successful. Heck, 512 U.S. at 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (noting that “if the district court determines that the plaintiffs action, even if successful, will not demonstrate the invalidity of any outstanding criminal judgment against the plaintiff, the action should be allowed to proceed”) (emphasis omitted). His scheduled 2005 parole hearing would proceed as planned, and nothing about the Parole Board’s 1995 denial of his parole would change. A successful outcome would simply dictate that the 2005 hearing actually function as a real parole hearing, rather than as a rubberstamp denial rooted in the retroactive application of the current eligibility guidelines.
I believe that this is what is meant by the language “a ticket to get in the door of the parole board.” Neal, 131 F.3d at 824. The Supreme Court has never addressed a situation like the one presented here, but its cases clearly indicate that there are some attacks on parole procedures that *477remain cognizable under § 1988. After all, the Court was very careful in Heck to distinguish Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974), a § 1983 class-action suit brought by prisoners challenging several of a Nebraska prison’s administrative rules, practices, and procedures, on the following grounds:
[W]e think [Wolff] recognized a § 1983 claim for using the wrong procedures, not for reaching the wrong result (ie., denying good-time credits). Nor is there any indication in the opinion, or any reason to believe, that using the wrong procedures necessarily vitiated the denial of good-time credits. Thus, the claim at issue in Wolff did not call into question the lawfulness of the plaintiffs continuing confinement.
Heck, 512 U.S. at 482-83, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (emphasis in original).
Similarly, there is no indication that Dotson’s claim, if allowed to proceed, would vitiate the earlier denial of parole. His appeal is a classic “claim for using the wrong procedures, not for reaching the wrong result.” Id. Further support for this conclusion comes from the fact that Dotson’s lawsuit could just as easily have been cast as a class-action claim challenging the retroactive applicability of Ohio’s parole-eligibility guidelines. This would have placed the case in the same posture as that presented in Wolff, requesting prospective injunctive relief that seems clearly permissible under the Supreme Court’s rule.
Dotson’s claim also brings to mind the examples of hypothetical Parole Board decisions rhetorically used by Johnson’s lawyers in their Reply Brief to point out the need for the availability of § 1983 actions:
Can the Ohio Parole Board determine that all white males who are eligible for parole release will have their release granted, while no one else can? Can the Board deny parole to all Hispanic inmates as a matter of policy? Can the Board flip a coin to determine who gets parole?
I think the answer to these questions is clearly no, with the examples illustrating why all § 1983 actions attacking a state’s parole scheme are not subject to the ha-beas-corpus-exhaustion-of-state-remedies requirement. See Preiser, 411 U.S. at 494, 93 S.Ct. 1827 (barring claims that sought the restoration of good-time credits under § 1983, but acknowledging a possible situation — an action for damages only — that “could be brought under the Civil Rights Act in federal court without any requirement of prior exhaustion of state remedies”). These actions would have no necessary bearing on a particular past judgment with regard to a prisoner, but they would ensure that the states are not violating prisoners’ basic federal rights.
5. A proper application of the Heck/Edwards test coincides with the majority’s decision on Dotson’s claim
The majority opinion purports to apply the Heck/Edwards test by simply giving Dotson and Johnson a “ticket to get in the door of the parole board.” However, the opinion overreaches when it suggests that, because Johnson’s and Dotson’s procedural challenges will result in nothing more than a new hearing, their claims must be allowed to proceed. (Maj. Op. at 471-472) This ruling is overbroad in light of the Supreme Court’s holding in Edwards, which rejected the Ninth Circuit’s decision based on that circuit’s “precedent to the effect that a claim challenging only the procedures employed in a disciplinary hearing is always cognizable under § 1983.” Edwards, 520 U.S. at 645, 117 S.Ct. 1584. “That principle is incorrect, *478since it disregards the possibility, clearly envisioned by Heck, that the nature of the challenge to the procedures could be such as necessarily to imply the invalidity of the judgment.” Id. In light of Edwards, I believe that the majority has erred in ruling that all attacks on parole procedures in Ohio that require a new hearing to correct are cognizable under § 1983.
That being said, I believe that the majority has reached the correct conclusion in allowing Dotson’s claim to proceed under § 1988. I therefore concur in the result only.
II. JOHNSON’S CLAIM
A. Factual and procedural background
As indicated above, Johnson’s claim involves very different facts from Dotson’s. In Ohio, on or about the date of parole eligibility, the Parole Board must hold a hearing to determine whether the prisoner should be paroled. Ohio Admin. Code § 5120:1-1-10. Recommendations for or against release can be made by “a panel consisting of one or more members of the Parole Board and one or more Parole Board hearing officers.” Id. § 5120:1-1-11(C). At the hearing, the Parole Board (or the recommending panel) shall consider, among other things, “[wjritten or oral statements by the inmate, other than grievances filed under rule 5120-9-31 of the Administrative Code.” Id. § 5120:1-1-07(B)(7).
Johnson alleges that these procedures were not followed at his April 9, 1999 parole hearing when he was denied parole. He alleges that, in violation of Ohio Administrative Code § 5120:1-1-11(0), his hearing panel consisted of only one Parole Board hearing officer, rather than a panel consisting of at least one member of the Parole Board and at least one Parole Board hearing officer. Secondly, he alleges that, in violation of Ohio Administrative Code § 5120:1-1-07(B)(7), he was not allowed to speak on his own behalf or ask any questions. Finally, Johnson contends that the hearing panel’s decision incorrectly relied upon two alleged convictions in his record for aggravated arson in deciding to deny his parole.
That last phrase — “deciding to deny his parole” — immediately indicates why Johnson’s claim is different from Dotson’s, and why it must be analyzed differently under Heck and Edwards. Johnson’s § 1983 action was dismissed by the district court for failing to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. His counsel now argues on appeal that his claim is not barred by Heck because he “challenges only the procedures that were used at his parole hearing and seeks to have the hearing redone in a way that complies with the safeguards afforded him.”
B. Analysis
In holding that Johnson can pursue his claim under § 1983, the majority opinion employs its “earlier-release” test to create a broad rule that allows § 1983 attacks on all discretionary Parole Board hearing procedures. As discussed above, this is impermissible under Edwards. Only if Johnson’s claim were analogous to that in Wolff should he be allowed to pursue his action under § 1983.
Wolff was a class action that challenged the rules, practices, and procedures at a Nebraska prison complex. The plaintiffs, in their suit for damages, alleged that the policies of the prison administration were flawed as a whole, not as applied to any one inmate. Wolff, 418 U.S. at 553-54, 94 S.Ct. 2963. This action was held to be a cognizable § 1983 action and was later distinguished by the Supreme Court in Heck on the grounds quoted in the discussion of Dotson’s claim under Part I above. Fur*479thermore, the injunctive relief sought in Wolff was strictly prospective, and thus did not affect the validity of any judgment that had already occurred, even though the procedural changes sought by the plaintiffs would have clearly implied that past adjudications did not pass constitutional muster. Id. at 573, 94 S.Ct. 2963.
If Johnson’s complaint could be construed as a broadly conceived attack on the practices, policies, and procedures used by the Ohio parole authorities, then a plausible argument could be made that his claim, too, should proceed under § 1983. If Johnson had sought prospective relief only and did not necessarily suggest that the irregularities in his parole hearing were unique to him, then his action would not affect the validity of any judgment that had already occurred, even though the procedural changes sought would imply that the past adjudication did not pass constitutional muster.
But this characterization is not a valid one for Johnson’s claim. Although Johnson’s pro se complaint itself is ambiguous, his attorneys on appeal have clearly stated that he wants to have his hearing “redone.” In other words, he seeks to have this court throw out the previous Parole Board’s determination that denied him parole. Johnson cannot possibly be making a Wolff-type claim based on the relief he seeks. Furthermore, the procedural irregularities that he complains about are not problems with the practices of the Ohio Parole Board as a whole; they are deviations from the Administrative Code that allegedly took place in Johnson’s hearing. For these reasons, there is no way to characterize the nature of Johnson’s challenge as anything other than a claim that necessarily implies the invalidity of a prior state judgment. As discussed above, it is not the fact of the prisoner’s incarceration that is the concern, it is the very judgment of the state — administrative or judicial— whose invalidity may not be implied by a § 1983 claim.
I thus conclude that the majority has reached the wrong result in Johnson’s appeal. It has done so by allowing § 1983 to be used as a vehicle for all procedural attacks on Parole Board proceedings that result in a new hearing, a result that is contrary to Supreme Court precedent. I therefore respectfully dissent from the result reached on Johnson’s claim.
III. CONCLUSION
I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that a “successful challenge will only ‘necessarily imply’ the invalidity of a prisoner’s conviction or confinement if it will inevitably or automatically result in earlier release.” (Maj. Op. at 471) Rather, the issue is whether the nature of the claims of the individual prisoners necessarily implies the invalidity of their underlying convictions or sentences. Because Dotson presents what amounts to a prospective attack on the retroactive applicability of Ohio’s parole-eligibility guidelines, I believe that he has a cognizable § 1983 claim. Johnson, on the other hand, attacks the procedures used in a previous hearing that denied him parole, and asks that his hearing be “redone.” Vacating the old hearing and ordering the Ohio Parole Board to provide Johnson with a new error-free hearing is the very type of attack on an underlying sentence that Heck and Edwards expressly prohibit. Johnson’s challenge instead requires the exhaustion of state remedies and, if necessary, a petition for habeas corpus relief. Heck, 512 U.S. at 481, 114 S.Ct. 2364. I therefore concur in the result reached on Dotson’s claim and respectfully dissent with regard to Johnson’s.