Alexander v. Perrill
| Decision Date | 10 October 1990 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-15842,88-15842 |
| Parties | Kent ALEXANDER, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. William PERRILL and Luis Rivera, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Steven McNamee, U.S. Atty., Eugene Bracamonte, Asst. U.S. Atty., Tucson, Ariz., for defendants-appellants.
A. Bates Butler, III, Butler & Stein, P.C., Tucson, Ariz., for plaintiff-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.
Before REINHARDT, BEEZER and KOZINSKI, Circuit Judges.
William Perrill and Luis Rivera, defendants in this Bivens action 1, appeal the denial by the district court of their motion for summary judgment on their defense of qualified immunity. Perrill and Rivera are federal prison officials. They contend that the district court erroneously decided that their failure to consider Alexander's valid claim that he was being incarcerated for a longer period than permitted by law amounted to deliberate indifference to a violation of his clearly established constitutional or statutory rights. We affirm the denial of their summary judgment motion.
On November 4, 1983, Alexander was arrested in the Republic of Germany on local charges. He was due to be released from a German jail on a bail bond on January 5, 1984, but wasn't, because a detainer was issued by the United States on January 3, 1984. Subsequently, he was convicted of the German charges and in August of 1984 began serving a fifteen month prison term.
On October 11, 1984, German authorities notified the United States that Alexander was not required to complete the remainder of his German sentence. The German authorities further indicated that he had been detained for extradition since October 9, 1984, and that the forty-day period for presentation of documents for extradition had begun to run. 2 The United States Embassy formally requested his extradition on October 23, 1984.
On February 5, 1985, Alexander was delivered to American authorities. He was subsequently tried and convicted of fraud and income tax charges. At his sentencing hearing, the district court received evidence that his German conviction had been vacated pursuant to German law. The district court therefore ordered that his presentence investigation report reflect that he had been in the custody of the United States for twenty-one months as of October 21, 1985. The court thus adopted Alexander's position that United States custody had commenced on January 21, 1984. He was then sentenced to a 3 1/2 year prison term.
On June 20, 1986, Alexander was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution, Tucson (FCI-Tucson). At that time, William Perrill was the Warden and Luis Rivera was the Administrative Systems Manager of the institution. Rivera was under Perrill's supervision and was responsible for computation of jail sentences and any applicable jail time credit for inmates at FCI-Tucson.
The Bureau of Prisons' policy requires that jail credit from a foreign jail be verified and monitored by the Central Office, Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C. (Central Office). Bureau of Prisons Program Statement 5880.24. On July 1, 1986, the Department of International Affairs (DIA) contacted the Central Office and argued that, according to German authorities, Alexander was not in custody solely for extradition purposes until October 9, 1984. The DIA requested that Alexander's jail and presentence credits be adjusted to reflect that fact. On July 2, the Central Office sent a memorandum to Rivera advising him that he was authorized to correct the jail time so that Alexander would receive credit only for the period from October 9, 1984.
Alexander was shown the Central Office memorandum on July 9, 1986. He objected to Rivera and Perrill, orally and in writing, regarding the decision to recalculate his sentence and to the summary manner in which it was reached. He requested the prison officials to conduct an investigation. On several instances, Alexander met with Rivera and presented him with certified court documents which Alexander claimed entitled him to the jail and presentence credits. Rivera made no inquiries, conducted no investigation, did not forward the documents to the Central Office, and made no effort to determine whether the Central Office was aware of all of the facts submitted to him by Alexander. Instead, he continued to rely exclusively on the Central Office memorandum and rejected Alexander's claim.
In response to Alexander's requests for an investigation into the Central Office's computation of the jail credits, Perrill checked with Rivera about the calculation of the sentence. Rivera informed Perrill that the calculation was based on the memorandum received by the Central Office. Perrill was satisfied with that response and took no further action; in fact, neither of the two officials made any further inquiry regarding Alexander's claims.
Alexander's first petition for writ of habeas corpus was dismissed on the ground that he had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. He then resumed his efforts to persuade Perrill to act by filing a formal complaint demanding reinstatement of his credits and an investigation into their withdrawal. Perrill and Rivera, again relying exclusively on the Central Office memorandum, denied Alexander's request. Alexander then appealed the decision to the Regional and Central Office of the Bureau of Prisons as provided for by prison regulations. 3 The appeals were unsuccessful.
After exhausting his administrative remedies, Alexander filed a second petition for writ of habeas corpus in district court. Alexander alleged in the petition that the withdrawal of the foreign jail and presentence credits was improper and that he was entitled to immediate release. The district court agreed and ordered the Bureau of Prisons to recompute Alexander's sentence so as to give him credit for the period between January 13, 1984 and October 9, 1984. The court further ordered his release from prison. No appeal from the district court's orders was taken.
Alexander then filed this action seeking declaratory relief and money damages. In his complaint, he alleged that the prison officials' failure to afford him the presentence and jail credits and their failure to investigate his claims that his sentence was incorrectly calculated constituted deliberate indifference to his constitutional and statutory rights. The prison officials moved for summary judgment arguing that they were entitled to qualified immunity because Alexander's rights were not "clearly established" and that, in any event, they acted reasonably in response to his requests to have his credits recomputed.
The district court rejected the prison officials' arguments on the narrow ground that the failure to accede to Alexander's requests for an investigation constituted deliberate indifference to a clearly established right. Accordingly, the Court found that the prison officials were not entitled to qualified immunity and denied their motion for summary judgment. 4 Defendants appeal. 5 We affirm.
Alexander contends that the prison officials were deliberately indifferent to his constitutional and statutory rights when they refused to investigate the claim that his credits had been improperly computed. 6 The prison officials disagree; they also argue that the qualified immunity defense is applicable in any event because Alexander's rights were not "clearly established" when he demanded an investigation. It is only the latter question that we need consider on this appeal. 7 We review de novo a district court's denial of summary judgment based upon a qualified immunity defense. White by White v. Pierce County, 797 F.2d 812, 814 (9th Cir.1986).
Taking the undisputed facts as the district court characterized them, the defendants did nothing to inquire into or investigate Alexander's complaints. 8 Judge Bilby made an observation that would strike a responsive chord in the hearts of most citizens, He then announced that "[i]f you just sit around and don't do anything, you do run a chance of being responsible." We agree, wholeheartedly.
As a general rule, an official is entitled to qualified immunity from damages if his conduct "does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). We must identify the applicable law and determine whether that law was "clearly established" at the time the defendants acted. Todd v. United States, 849 F.2d 365, 368 (9th Cir.1988). We have recently explained the rationale behind this analysis:
Id. at 368-69 (citing Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2738; Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 191, 104 S.Ct. 3012, 3017, 82 L.Ed.2d 139 (1984)).
The allegations in Alexander's complaint give rise to a somewhat different qualified immunity question than we usually are faced with in Bivens cases. Typically, we are required to determine whether the official should have known that his affirmative conduct violated someone's rights. Here, however, Alexander urges that the defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity because they had a duty to protect his rights and the official's failure to act was inconsistent with that duty.
We have previously held that under Sec. 1983 the qualified immunity defense is inapplicable whenever an official "does an...
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