Anyanwutaku v. Moore

• Decision Date: 24 July 1998
• Docket Number: No. 96-7259,96-7259
• Citation: 151 F.3d 1053
• Parties: Kingsley ANYANWUTAKU, Appellant, v. Margaret MOORE, Director, District of Columbia Department of Corrections, et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 1053

151 F.3d 1053

331 U.S.App.D.C. 379

Kingsley ANYANWUTAKU, Appellant, v. Margaret MOORE, Director, District of Columbia Department of Corrections, et al., Appellees.

No. 96-7259.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued May 11, 1998.

Decided July 24, 1998.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 96cv02198).

Trevor J. Welch, student counsel, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs were Steven H. Goldblatt, Washington, DC, appointed by the court, and Kimberly J. McGraw, student counsel.

Mary L. Wilson, Assistant Corporation Counsel, argued the cause for the District of Columbia appellees. With her on the brief were John Ferren, Corporation Counsel, and Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corporation Counsel. Jo Anne Robinson, Principal Deputy Corporation Counsel, entered an appearance.

Before: WALD, WILLIAMS and TATEL, Circuit Judges.

TATEL, Circuit Judge:

A former District of Columbia prisoner appeals the district court's sua sponte dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint. Claiming due process and equal protection violations by prison officials who had allegedly miscalculated his parole eligibility date, misclassified him as a felon, and barred him from participating in certain prison programs, the prisoner sought damages as well as injunctive relief. Appellees argue that he should have brought his parole eligibility claims in habeas corpus, but since those claims, if successful, would not have automatically resulted in his speedier release, we conclude that he properly brought them pursuant to section 1983. Because we also find that the prisoner's pro se claim that he was denied access to prison programs on the basis of his race or ethnicity was sufficient to survive sua sponte dismissal, we remand that claim for further proceedings. We affirm the district court's dismissal of his other claims.

I

Appellant Kingsley Anyanwutaku, a landlord operating in the District of Columbia, pleaded guilty to numerous misdemeanor violations of D.C.'s housing, building, zoning, licensing, and tax codes. The D.C. Superior Court sentenced him to multiple consecutive sentences totaling over six years.

While in the custody of the D.C. Department of Corrections, Anyanwutaku filed a confusing pro se complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Department and various Department officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1994). Seeking correction of his parole eligibility records, compensatory and punitive damages, and prospective injunctive relief, his complaint alleges that he was "entitled to a timely parole classification date within 60 days of incarceration or at least much sooner than 10/25/97 as recorded and maintained by the record office." Compl. at 6-7. The complaint also claims that the Department's refusal to correct his "parole classification date" deprived him of due process and equal protection. Id. at 7-8. In five inmate grievance forms and one informal written grievance attached to his complaint, Anyanwutaku alleges that he was denied a timely parole eligibility hearing; in two of these documents, he claims prison officials denied him access to educational, religious, and other prison programs. Id. at 13-20.

Anyanwutaku sought to proceed in forma pauperis, but the district court never ruled on his application. Instead, on the same day Anyanwutaku filed his complaint, the district court, finding no constitutional right to parole, sua sponte dismissed it under "28 U.S.C. § 1915(d)"; we assume the district court meant section 1915(e), 28 U.S.C.A. § 1915(e) (Supp.1998), with which the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, Pub.L. No. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321 (1996), replaced former section 1915(d). Anyanwutaku then filed a motion for reconsideration, later filing an "addendum" to the motion. Together, these documents clarify Anyanwutaku's original complaint as alleging two primary claims: that prison officials denied him due process by miscalculating his parole eligibility date, by misclassifying him as a felon, and by failing to correct both errors, thus delaying his eligibility for parole; and that on the basis of his race or ethnicity, prison officials denied him access to prison programs that would have advanced his opportunity to obtain parole at an earlier date. One other possible claim emerges from these documents: that prison officials miscalculated Anyanwutaku's parole eligibility date and misclassified him as a felon because of his race or ethnicity. Reaffirming its section 1915(e) dismissal, the district court denied the motion for reconsideration.

Anyanwutaku now appeals the denial of the motion for reconsideration. The district court granted his application to proceed in forma pauperis on appeal. We appointed counsel for Anyanwutaku and scheduled oral argument together with two other prison litigation cases whose opinions we also issue today: Blair-Bey v. Quick, No. 96-5280, slip op., 1998 WL 412488 (D.C.Cir. July 24, 1998), and Crowell v. Walsh, No. 96-7192, slip op., 1998 WL 412489 (D.C.Cir. July 24, 1998). We directed the parties to address whether the PLRA's filing fee requirement, 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b), applies to this case, and whether Anyanwutaku must obtain a certificate of appealability pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2253, as amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), Pub.L. No.104-132, 100 Stat. 1214 (1996). While this appeal was pending, the D.C. Board of Parole released Anyanwutaku on parole.

Because In re Smith, 114 F.3d 1247, 1250 (D.C.Cir.1997), makes clear that Anyanwutaku's appeal falls squarely within the ambit of the PLRA's filing fee requirements, we ordered Anyanwutaku to pay the necessary fee before we would consider the remaining issues in his case. Anyanwutaku v. Moore, No. 96-7259 (D.C.Cir. June 18, 1998). He has now made that payment, so his appeal is properly before us.

II

We begin with a few threshold issues: Did Anyanwutaku need to bring his challenges to his parole eligibility date in habeas? Did he need to obtain a certificate of appealability pursuant to the newly enacted AEDPA? What effect does his release have on the justiciability of his claims?

As to the first issue, appellees contend that Anyanwutaku should have brought his challenges to his parole eligibility date not under section 1983, but as a petition for habeas corpus, and that because Anyanwutaku failed to exhaust his local habeas remedy, the district court lacked jurisdiction over his claims. We disagree.

Starting with Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), the Supreme Court has carved out a category of prisoner cases challenging the "fact or duration" of confinement that sound exclusively in habeas. Id. at 500, 93 S.Ct. 1827. In Preiser, state prisoners brought actions under section 1983 seeking restoration of good time credits that they lost as a result of adverse disciplinary actions, actions the prisoners claimed deprived them of due process. Holding that the prisoners must bring their claims in habeas, the Supreme Court noted that "even if restoration of respondents' good-time credits had merely shortened the length of their confinement, rather than required immediate discharge from that confinement, their suits would still have been within the core of habeas corpus in attacking the very duration of their physical confinement itself." Id. at 487-88, 93 S.Ct. 1827. Such cases, the Court said, must take the form of habeas petitions exclusively because 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b) "require[s] exhaustion of adequate state remedies as a condition precedent to the invocation of federal judicial relief.... It would wholly frustrate explicit congressional intent to hold that the respondents in the present case could evade this requirement by the simple expedient of putting a different label on their pleadings." Id. at 489-90, 93 S.Ct. 1827.

Unlike the prisoners in Preiser, whose challenges to the loss of good time credits, if successful, would have automatically shortened the duration of their confinement, Anyanwutaku challenges his assigned parole eligibility date. Although Anyanwutaku would have been eligible for parole at an earlier date had he prevailed on his claims in the district court, because D.C. parole decisions are entirely discretionary, see D.C.CODE ANN. § 24-204(a) (1996), there is no guarantee that he would have been released any earlier. Interpreting Preiser, a majority of our sister circuits have held that challenges to state parole procedures whose success would not necessarily result in immediate or speedier release need not be brought in habeas corpus, even though the prisoners filed their suits for the very purpose of increasing their chances of parole. See, e.g., Gwin v. Snow, 870 F.2d 616, 624-25 (11th Cir.1989); Serio v. Members of La. State Bd. of Pardons, 821 F.2d 1112, 1119 (5th Cir.1987); Georgevich v. Strauss, 772 F.2d 1078, 1087 (3d Cir.1985) (en banc); Walker v. Prisoner Rev. Bd., 694 F.2d 499, 501 (7th Cir.1982); Candelaria v. Griffin, 641 F.2d 868, 869 (10th Cir.1981) (per curiam); Strader v. Troy, 571 F.2d 1263, 1269 (4th Cir.1978); Williams v. Ward, 556 F.2d 1143, 1150-51 (2d Cir.1977). Even the Supreme Court reached the merits of a section 1983 claim by state prisoners alleging due process violations in the consideration of their suitability for parole without first addressing whether Preiser required the claim to be brought in habeas. See Greenholtz v. Inmates of the Neb. Penal and Correctional Complex, 442 U.S. 1, 99 S.Ct. 2100, 60 L.Ed.2d 668 (1979).

The Supreme Court's recent decisions in Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), and Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641, 117 S.Ct. 1584, 137 L.Ed.2d 906 (1997), underscore the distinction between this case and Preiser. In Heck, a state prisoner sought section 1983 damages, claiming that he had been unlawfully convicted...