White v. Scibana

• Decision Date: 23 April 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-C-581-C.,03-C-581-C.
• Citation: 314 F.Supp.2d 834
• Parties: Yancey L. WHITE, Petitioner, v. Joseph SCIBANA,<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL> Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Wisconsin

314 F.Supp.2d 834

Yancey L. WHITE, Petitioner, v. Joseph SCIBANA,¹ Respondent.

No. 03-C-581-C.

United States District Court, W.D. Wisconsin.

April 23, 2004.

Emily M. Feinstein, Quarles & Brady, Madison, WI, for Petitioner.

Steven P. O'Connor, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Madison, WI, for Respondent.

OPINION AND ORDER

CRABB, Chief Judge.

Under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b), a federal prisoner may earn up to 54 days of good conduct time for every year of his "term of imprisonment." The question presented in this petition for a writ of habeas corpus is one of first impression in this circuit: whether § 3624(b) requires the Bureau of Prisons to calculate an inmate's good conduct time on the basis of the inmate's sentence rather than on the time he has actually served. In an order dated December 22, 2003, I concluded that petitioner Yancey White had raised a substantial question about the bureau's method of calculating good conduct time. I ordered respondent Scibana to show cause why the petition should not be granted.

The parties agree that 28 U.S.C. § 2241 is the proper vehicle for challenging the calculation of good conduct time, Bell v. United States, 48 F.3d 1042 (8th Cir.1995), that petitioner has properly exhausted his administrative remedies, Clemente v. Allen, 120 F.3d 703, 705 (7th Cir.1997), and that this court has jurisdiction to hear the petition. Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court, 410 U.S. 484, 494-96, 93 S.Ct. 1123, 35 L.Ed.2d 443 (1973). After considering respondent's arguments supporting the bureau's interpretation, I conclude that § 3624(b) is unambiguous: "term of imprisonment" means "sentence imposed." Therefore, the bureau must calculate an inmate's good conduct time on the basis of his sentence rather than on the time he has served. In other words, if a prisoner is sentenced to a 10-year term of imprisonment, he may earn up to 540 days of good conduct time in the absence of a disciplinary infraction. The bureau may not limit the application of good conduct time to the amount of time the inmate has already served. Accordingly, I will grant the petition for a writ of habeas corpus and order respondent to recalculate petitioner's good conduct time as § 3624(b) directs.

I find the following facts from the record.

FACTS

Petitioner Yancey White is an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution at Oxford, Wisconsin. In August 1996, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois sentenced petitioner to 120 months in prison after he was convicted of three counts of distributing cocaine base.

In March 2003, petitioner filed a request for an administrative remedy, arguing that under 18 U.S.C. § 3624, he was to receive "54 days [of good conduct time] for every year that [he] was given by the sentencing judge." Petitioner believed his projected release date should be December 2004 rather than February 2005 as the Bureau of Prisons had calculated. The warden denied petitioner's request for an administrative remedy, explaining that

54 days of GCT [good conduct time] may be earned for each full year served on a sentence in excess of one year, with the GCT being prorated for the last partial year. Since you will not be in service of a complete 120 months, you cannot calculate your GCT credits by 120 months by 54 days. Applying this formula, you are entitled to 470 days GCT for a 120-month sentence.

The regional director affirmed the warden's decision, writing that § 3624(b) "mandates GCT be awarded on the amount of time actually served, not on the length of the term imposed." Petitioner appealed to the administrator for national inmate appeals, who affirmed, stating that "the Bureau of Prisons computed your sentence as required by the Program Statement 5880.28, Sentence Computation Manual — CCA and all applicable statutes."

In December 2003, staff at the prison in Oxford prepared an updated computation for petitioner. After subtracting 10 days of good conduct time for a rule violation in April 2003, staff calculated that petitioner's projected release date was March 3, 2005.

DISCUSSION

The issue in this case is whether the Bureau of Prisons' method for calculating good conduct time is consistent with 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b). That section provides:

(b) Credit toward service of sentence for satisfactory behavior. —

(1) Subject to paragraph (2), a prisoner who is serving a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year other than a term of imprisonment for the duration of the prisoner's life, may receive credit toward the service of the prisoner's sentence, beyond the time served, of up to 54 days at the end of each year of the prisoner's term of imprisonment, beginning at the end of the first year of the term .... Subject to paragraph (2), credit for the last year or portion of a year of the term of imprisonment shall be prorated and credited within the last six weeks of the sentence.

18 U.S.C. § 3624(b)(1).

The bureau has promulgated a regulation interpreting this provision as awarding good time credit on the basis of "each year served." 28 C.F.R. § 523.20. In Program Statement 5880.28, the bureau has set forth the formula it uses to calculate good conduct time. Under the bureau's formula, an inmate that receives a sentence of one year and one day can earn up to 47 days of good conduct time rather than 54 days.

When a court reviews an agency's interpretation of a federal statute, the threshold question is whether the interpretation is entitled to deference. The Supreme Court has applied varying levels of deference depending on the context of the interpretation. E.g., Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA, ___ U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 983, 157 L.Ed.2d 967 (2004) (internal guidance memoranda entitled to "respect" but not "dispositive force"); Yellow Transportation, Inc. v. Michigan, 537 U.S. 36, 45, 123 S.Ct. 371, 154 L.Ed.2d 377 (2003) (regulation promulgated after notice and comment entitled to highest level of deference when Congress has expressly authorized agency to promulgate rules). Regardless of the context of the interpretation, the agency is entitled to no deference if Congress has expressed its intent unambiguously in the statute. FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 125-26, 120 S.Ct. 1291, 146 L.Ed.2d 121 (2000). Agencies may fill gaps in ambiguous statutes; they may not contradict a statute's plain language. Further, a court should conclude that a statute is ambiguous and thus open to gap-filling by agencies "only when the devices of judicial construction have been tried and found to yield no clear sense of congressional intent." General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v. Cline, ___ U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 1236, 1248, 157 L.Ed.2d 1094 (2004).

In the December 22, 2003 order, I concluded that the pivotal clause in § 3624(b) is the one stating that an inmate may earn up to 54 days of good conduct time "at the end of each year of the prisoner's term of imprisonment." That clause raised the question whether the phrase "term of imprisonment" means "sentenced imposed" or "time served." If "term of imprisonment" refers to the sentence, an inmate's maximum potential good conduct time could be calculated by multiplying 54 days by the number of years in the sentence. In this case, petitioner would have been eligible to earn up to 540 days against his sentence (54 days x 10 years = 540 days). However, if a term of imprisonment is defined by the inmate's actual time served, the number of good time credits that could be earned would be reduced and a more complicated calculation would be required because an inmate that earns good time will not actually serve his full sentence.

As an initial matter, respondent challenges the conclusion that the case turns on an interpretation of "term of imprisonment." He argues that the phrase establishes only "which federal inmates are eligible to earn good time credits against their sentences in the discretion of the Bureau." Resp.'s Br., dkt. # 15, at 9. Respondent does not develop this argument and I cannot agree with it. It is true that the statute allows good conduct time only for those prisoners serving a term of imprisonment of more than one year. But the statute says also that the inmate may receive 54 days of credit for every "year of the prisoner's term of imprisonment." If "term of imprisonment" means "sentence," an inmate would be eligible to receive good conduct time for each year of his sentence rather than for each year he has served. Thus, I adhere to the conclusion in the December 22 order that the bureau has no authority to calculate credits on the basis of time served if § 3624 unambiguously expresses Congress's intent to define "term of imprisonment" as "sentence imposed."

In isolation, the phrase "term of imprisonment" is arguably ambiguous. See American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 175 (4th ed.2000) (defining "term" to mean both "[a] limited period of time" and "a period of time that is assigned to a person to serve"). However, words in a statute are not to be read in a vacuum; courts must read the statute as a whole to aid in determining the meaning of each of its parts. King v. St. Vincent's Hospital, 502 U.S. 215, 221, 112 S.Ct. 570, 116 L.Ed.2d 578 (1991). A corollary to this rule is that identical words used in different parts of the same statute are presumed to have the same meaning. Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 570, 115 S.Ct. 1061, 131 L.Ed.2d 1 (1995).

The phrase "term of imprisonment" is used several times in § 3624. None of the other uses supports a "time served" interpretation of "term of imprisonment" and respondent does not argue to the contrary. For example, the first sentence of § 3624(a) provides, "A prisoner shall be released by the Bureau of Prisons on the date of the expiration of the prisoner's term of imprisonment, less any time credited ...." This sentence can make sense only if a term of imprisonment is another way of saying the sentence imposed. If ...