Peralta v. Vasquez

• Decision Date: 17 October 2006
• Docket Number: Docket No. 04-2822-PR.
• Citation: 467 F.3d 98
• Parties: Jose PERALTA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sandra VASQUEZ, Robert A. Jones, Donald Selsky, Defendants-Appellees, Anita R. Florio, Guy James Mangano, Martin H. Brownstein, James Edward Pelzer, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

467 F.3d 98

Jose PERALTA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sandra VASQUEZ, Robert A. Jones, Donald Selsky, Defendants-Appellees, Anita R. Florio, Guy James Mangano, Martin H. Brownstein, James Edward Pelzer, Defendants.

Docket No. 04-2822-PR.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Submitted: June 19, 2006.

Decided: October 17, 2006.

Jose Peralta, Pro Se, Gouverneur, N.Y.

Carol Fisher, Assistant Solicitor General for Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York (Michael S. Belohlavek, Senior Counsel, Department of Appeals & Opinions, of counsel), New York, N.Y., for Defendants-Appellees.

Before MINER, CALABRESI, Circuit Judges, HOLWELL, District Judge.^*

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge.

This appeal presents a new twist on a familiar issue: What requirements must a prisoner meet before he can maintain a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that challenges sanctions imposed pursuant to a prison disciplinary proceeding? The case law is clear that when a prisoner's challenge either to the process or the result of a prison disciplinary proceeding necessarily implies the invalidity of a sanction that affects the duration of his sentence, such as the deprivation of good-time credits, the prisoner may not maintain an action under § 1983 unless he has shown that the sanction (or the procedures that led to it, if the procedural defect at issue was critical to the imposition of the sanction) have been overturned through administrative channels or by a state or federal court. It is also clear that when a prisoner's challenge involves a sanction that affects only his conditions of confinement, this "favorable termination" requirement does not apply and a prisoner may maintain an action under § 1983 without showing that the sanction (or the procedures that led to it) have been previously invalidated.

What is not clear, however, is whether a prisoner who was subject to a single disciplinary proceeding that gave rise to two types of sanctions—one that affected the duration of his custody and the other that affected the conditions of his confinement—can, without needing to satisfy the favorable termination rule, maintain a § 1983 action aimed solely at the second type of sanction. We now resolve this open question and hold that, in "mixed sanctions" cases, a prisoner can, without demonstrating that the challenged disciplinary proceedings or resulting punishments have been invalidated, proceed separately with a § 1983 action aimed at the sanctions or procedures that affected the conditions of his confinement. But we also hold that he may only bring such an action if he agrees to abandon forever any and all claims he has with respect to the sanctions that affected the length of his imprisonment.

FACTS

On May 16, 1998, Jose Peralta, an inmate in the custody of New York State's Department of Correctional Services ("DOCS"), was accused of cutting another inmate several times with a "razor-type weapon." A disciplinary hearing was scheduled to adjudicate the matter. Defendant Sandra Vasquez, a corrections counselor with DOCS, was assigned to assist the appellant in the hearing. Defendant Brian Jones, the assistant superintendent at Fishkill Correctional Facility, where Peralta was being detained at the time of the incident, conducted the hearing on June 12, 1998. Jones found Peralta guilty and imposed a penalty of five years of confinement in the Special Housing Unit ("SHU"), five years loss of packages, commissary, and telephone privileges, and five years loss of good-time credits. The appellant appealed to Donald Selsky, the director of special housing/inmate disciplinary programs, who modified the penalty to twenty-four months of SHU confinement and a twenty-four month loss of packages, commissary, and telephone privileges, in addition to a twenty-four month loss of good-time credits.

Having exhausted his appeals within the prison, Peralta filed an Article 78 petition challenging the decision in New York Supreme Court, see N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 7801 (Consol.2006), which transferred the case to the Appellate Division, Second Department. A judge of the Appellate Division granted Peralta "leave to file as a poor person" but declined to waive the filing fee. When Peralta failed to pay the filing fee, which he stated he could not afford, his case was dismissed. His appeal to the New York Court of Appeals of the decision dismissing his case was denied.

Peralta, proceeding pro se, then filed the instant action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the disciplinary hearing violated his constitutional rights. In his amended complaint, filed at the direction of the district court (Mukasey, J.), Peralta claimed that defendants Vasquez, Jones, and Selsky denied him "adequate assistance, witnesses, and a fair and impartial hearing officer" and, in doing so, deprived him of substantive and procedural due process and protection against cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Fourteenth and Eighth Amendments.¹ These defendants moved to dismiss the case on the ground that Peralta could not prevail on his § 1983 claim without first establishing that the disciplinary hearing or the resulting sanctions had been invalidated in a state or federal proceeding, and that this had not occurred. In response, Peralta argued that, because he sought damages only for those sanctions affecting his conditions of confinement and not for the loss of his good-time credits, he could maintain his claim despite not having demonstrated that the sanctions or hearing had been invalidated.²

The district court (Jones, J.)³ granted the defendants' motion. The district court acknowledged that, unlike many cases in which a prisoner challenges the result of prison disciplinary hearings through a § 1983 action, the plaintiff here sought damages only for his confinement in SHU—and not for the loss of good-time credits. It also noted that neither the Supreme Court nor this Court had "addressed the issue of whether a prisoner may proceed separately with his § 1983 claim as to those portions of his sentence which affected only the conditions of his confinement." Nevertheless, it found "that allowing a plaintiff to `split' his claims under the circumstances in this action would be ill-advised." It therefore held that a prisoner-plaintiff who challenges only the conditions of confinement imposed pursuant to a disciplinary proceeding that also resulted in the loss of good-time credits must, like a plaintiff who challenges both types of sanctions, demonstrate that those sanctions or the disciplinary hearings giving rise to them have been invalidated before he can proceed with any § 1983 claim.⁴

DISCUSSION

I.

We review the district court's dismissal of the complaint de novo, and accept all material factual allegations therein as true. Twombly v. Bell Atl. Corp., 425 F.3d 99, 106 (2d Cir.2005).

II.

This case implicates the overlap between 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the federal habeas corpus statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The intersection of these two statutes, and the prerequisites for bringing a claim under each of them, has given rise to a series of cases in the Supreme Court and in this Court examining when a prisoner challenging the imposition of various types of punishment, and seeking different remedies, may rely on § 1983 to pursue relief.

In the initial case, Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), the Supreme Court established that habeas is the exclusive remedy for a state prisoner seeking an earlier release. There, state prisoners who had been deprived of good-time credits as a result of internal disciplinary proceedings brought an action under § 1983. They sought injunctive relief to compel the prison to restore those credits, and, as a result, gain them immediate release. Id. at 476, 93 S.Ct. 1827. The Court held that the prisoners could not maintain their action under § 1983 because when a prisoner is challenging "the very fact or duration of his physical imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a determination that he is entitled to immediate release or a speedier release from that imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is a writ of habeas corpus." Id. at 500, 93 S.Ct. 1827. Conversely, Preiser concluded that "a § 1983 action is a proper remedy for a state prisoner who is making a constitutional challenge to the conditions of his prison life, but not to the fact or length of his custody." Id. at 499, 93 S.Ct. 1827.

Over twenty years later, in Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), the Court considered when a prisoner, who sought money damages but not an earlier release for an allegedly unconstitutional conviction, could pursue a claim under § 1983. The prisoner-plaintiff in that case claimed that the county prosecutor and state police investigator had obtained his criminal conviction by engaging in unlawful acts. Id. at 478-79, 114 S.Ct. 2364. The Court held that Heck's § 1983 action was not cognizable because although on its face it sought only monetary damages, "the basis for the damages claim necessarily demonstrates the invalidity of the conviction. In that situation, [Heck] can be said to be `attacking ... the fact or length of ... confinement,'. ..." Id. at 481-82, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (quoting Preiser, 411 U.S. at 490, 93 S.Ct. 1827) (alteration in original). Accordingly, it adopted what is known as the "favorable termination rule":

[I]n order to recover damages for allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, or for other harm caused by actions whose unlawfulness would render a conviction or sentence invalid, a § 1983 plaintiff must prove that the conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254.... Thus, when a state prisoner seeks damages in a § 1983 suit, the district court...