Harrison v. State

• Citation: 722 F.3d 768
• Decision Date: 10 July 2013
• Docket Number: No. 10–2185.,10–2185.
• Parties: Jessie HARRISON, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. State of MICHIGAN, et al., Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

722 F.3d 768

Jessie HARRISON, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.State of MICHIGAN, et al., Defendants–Appellees.

No. 10–2185.

United States Court of Appeals,Sixth Circuit.

July 10, 2013.

ON BRIEF: Jessie Harrison, Ionia, Michigan, pro se.

Before: DAUGHTREY and ROGERS, Circuit Judges; ZOUHARY, District Judge.^*

DAUGHTREY, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which ZOUHARY, D. J., joined. ROGERS, J. (pp. 776–78), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff Jessie Harrison filed this civil rights action pro se, seeking damages and injunctive relief stemming from his unlawful confinement in the Michigan prison system. In 1986, Harrison was sentenced to consecutive terms of imprisonment following a jury conviction for two crimes that, under state law, were subject to concurrent sentencing only. Harrison was released from prison in 1990, some 18 months after serving the statutory maximum for the offenses of conviction. On collateral review, the Michigan Court of Appeals held that Harrison had been improperly sentenced and ordered that a corrected judgment be issued. People v. Harrison, No. 279123, 2008 WL 4276544 (Mich.Ct.App. Sept. 16, 2008). In 2010, Harrison filed the instant action against the State of Michigan and a number of state defendants, seeking damages and a reduction in a subsequent, unrelated prison sentence that he was still serving at the time this action was filed. The district court dismissed the complaint, holding that some of the defendants were immune from suit under the Eleventh Amendment; that the claims against the remaining defendants were time-barred; and that the claim concerning the failure to commute his 1991 sentence was non-cognizable. Harrison v. Michigan, No. 10–cv–570, 2010 WL 2925992 (W.D.Mich. July 21, 2010). Although we find no error in the district court's rulings on the question of sovereign immunity and on the commutation issue, we conclude that Harrison's claim for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is not time-barred. We therefore reverse the district court's judgment and remand the case for further proceedings.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In 1986, Harrison was charged with second-degree murder and carrying a firearm during the commission of a felony (“felony-firearm”). Following a jury trial, Harrison was convicted of reckless use of a firearm resulting in death—a lesser-included misdemeanor—and felony-firearm. Harrison received consecutive sentences. He notified prison officials that his sentence was too long, but the warden and the parole board ignored his protestations. As a result, he was not released until March 1990. Following his release, Harrison subsequently committed another, unrelated firearm offense in 1991, was found guilty, and returned to prison.

Apparently, incarceration provided Harrison with time to research Michigan law and, in 2003, Harrison filed a motion in state court for relief from the 1986 judgment under Michigan Court Rule 6.502. Harrison asserted that his 1986 sentence was improper because the felony-firearm sentence could not run consecutively to a sentence for a misdemeanor. This error, Harrison argued, resulted in his serving 18 months of illegal imprisonment. The state trial court denied relief but that decision was reversed on appeal. In spite of the fact that he was no longer in prison on the conviction that led to the sentence under challenge and had not raised the issue on direct appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the sentence he received was “invalid” and, as such, constituted “actual prejudice.” With the state's concurrence, the court also excused Harrison's delay in filing the motion for relief from judgment, finding that the delay was caused by ineffective assistance of counsel on the part of his trial and appellate counsel, who had failed to challenge his sentence at trial or on direct appeal. As a result, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the 1986 sentence and ordered the lower court to issue a new judgment. Harrison, 2008 WL 4276544, at *2. The state trial court promptly did so.

Armed with his favorable decision from the state appellate court and the corrected judgment, Harrison petitioned the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) to give him 18 months' credit on the 1991 sentence that he was still serving, but he was told that there was no authority to do so, because the new decision related to his 1986 conviction only. Undeterred, Harrison filed an application for a commutation of the last two years of his 1991 sentence with the Michigan Parole Board and, later, with the Governor, but met with no success.

Harrison then filed this action in 2010, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In his complaint, he alleged that the State of Michigan, the Michigan Parole Board, MDOC, Governor Jennifer Granholm, Wayne County, and a number of MDOC officials violated his constitutional rights by failing to commute his 1991 sentence and sought money damages for the 18 months he served beyond the statutory maximum provided for his 1986 convictions. The district court dismissed the claims against the State, MDOC, and the Parole Board on the basis of sovereign immunity. Harrison, 2010 WL 2925992, at *2. With regard to the claims against the individual defendants, the district court held that they were time-barred, after applying a three-year statute of limitations triggered by Harrison's release from prison in 1990 and citing as support Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 389, 127 S.Ct. 1091, 166 L.Ed.2d 973 (2007). Id. at *3–4. The district court then dismissed the complaint sua sponte for failure to state a claim. It did so without waiting for a response from the state, citing 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c)(1). That statute allows a district court, on its own motion, to dismiss an action filed by a prisoner “if the court is satisfied that the action is frivolous, malicious, fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, or seeks monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such suit.” The district court also relied on 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) in certifying that an appeal could not be taken “in good faith.”

Harrison has, nevertheless, appealed the district court's order of dismissal, asserting, inter alia, that the statute of limitations did not begin running in 1990 when he was released from custody on the sentence in question but, instead, in 2010 when he received a favorable decision from the state court that corrected his 1986 sentence. We granted Harrison the right to proceed in forma pauperis and now review the district court's decision in the absence of an appearance by the defendants, who declined to file a brief in this matter.

ANALYSIS

Standard of Review

In dismissing the complaint for failure to state a claim, the district court was required to accept all well-pleaded facts as true, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Winget, 510 F.3d 577, 581 (6th Cir.2007), and apparently did so. That leaves us with questions of law, which we review de novo. McGore v. Wrigglesworth, 114 F.3d 601, 604 (6th Cir.1997), overruled on other grounds in

LaFountain v. Harry, 716 F.3d 944, 951 (6th Cir.2013).Sovereign Immunity

The district court correctly held that the State, MDOC, and the state parole board were immune from suit under the Eleventh Amendment. “There can be no doubt ... that suit against [a] State and its Board of Corrections is barred by the Eleventh Amendment, unless [the State] has consented to the filing of such a suit,” Alabama v. Pugh, 438 U.S. 781, 782, 98 S.Ct. 3057, 57 L.Ed.2d 1114 (1978), or unless Congress has expressly abrogated Eleventh Amendment immunity. See Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 99, 104 S.Ct. 900, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984). It is well established that § 1983 does not abrogate the Eleventh Amendment, see Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332, 341, 99 S.Ct. 1139, 59 L.Ed.2d 358 (1979), and that Michigan has not consented to the filing of civil rights suits against it in federal court. See Abick v. Michigan, 803 F.2d 874, 877 (6th Cir.1986). We have consistently held that neither MDOC nor the parole board is a “person” that may be sued for money damages under § 1983. See, e.g., Diaz v. Mich. Dep't of Corr., 703 F.3d 956, 962 (6th Cir.2013) (finding MDOC immune from suit on Eleventh Amendment grounds); Carson v. Mich. Parole Bd., 852 F.2d 1287 (6th Cir.1988) (table) (finding the Michigan Parole Board immune from suit under § 1983 on Eleventh Amendment grounds). For these reasons, the district court properly dismissed those defendants from the case.

Commutation of the 1991 Sentence

Harrison has provided no legal basis under Michigan state law for his request to shorten his 1991 sentence to somehow rectify the error made with regard to his 1986 sentence, and we know of none. We therefore hold that the district court did not err in dismissing this claim.

Timeliness of the Complaint

With regard to the statute of limitations, however, the district court was mistaken when it concluded that the controlling authority on the question of timeliness in Harrison's case was Wallace v. Kato, which involved a § 1983 claim for false arrest, rather than for an invalid conviction or sentence. 549 U.S. at 389, 127 S.Ct. 1091. The latter situation, which forms the cause of action here, is instead controlled by the Supreme Court's opinion in Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994). In that case, plaintiff Heck, a state prisoner serving time for voluntary manslaughter, filed a § 1983 action in federal court seeking damages for various constitutional violations that he alleged had occurred during his prosecution. Id. at 479, 114 S.Ct. 2364. The district court dismissed Heck's § 1983 suit “because the issues it raised ‘directly implicate the legality of [petitioner's] confinement,’ ” id. at 479, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (alteration in original), and the Seventh Circuit affirmed. See Heck v. Humphrey, 997 F.2d 355 (7th Cir.1993).

The Supreme Court...