Banks v. Gonzales
| Decision Date | 14 February 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-CV-278-TCK-PJC.,05-CV-278-TCK-PJC. |
| Citation | 415 F.Supp.2d 1248 |
| Parties | Richard Myer BANKS, Mary Lafficer Doyle, Stanley Allen Acuff, Melanie Pool Alphin, Lisa Renee Bell, Plaintiffs, v. Alberto R. GONZALES, Attorney General, United States Department of Justice; Leonidas Ralph Mecham, Director, Administrative Office for the United States Courts; Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation; David E. O'Meilia, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma; Brad Stewart, Chief United States Probation Officer for the Northern District of Oklahoma, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Oklahoma |
Barry L. Derryberry, Robert Allen Ridenour, Federal Public Defender's Office, Tulsa, OK, for Plaintiffs.
Melody Noble Nelson, Phil E. Pinnell, Loretta Finiece Radford, Neal B. Kirkpatrick, Kevin Chambers Leitch, United States Attorney's Office, Tulsa, OK, for Defendants.
Before KERN, EAGAN, and PAYNE, District Judges sitting as an en banc panel.
Before the Court are: (1) Plaintiffs' Second Amended Complaint (Docket No. 13), filed June 7, 2005, which requests a permanent injunction and declaratory relief enjoining Defendants from forcing Plaintiffs to comply with the DNA Backlog Elimination Act of 2000, Pub.L. No. 106-546, 114 Stat. 2726 (Dec. 19, 2000) () ("DNA Act"); (2) Federal Defendants' Motion to Substitute the United States as the Sole Defendant and Dismiss the Individual Defendants (Docket No. 21), filed August 8, 2005; and (3) Federal Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs' Second Amended Complaint (Docket No. 22), filed August 8, 2005.
On May 12, 2005, the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Oklahoma filed a Complaint and Application for Emergency Restraining Order, Declaratory, and Injunctive Relief in the criminal case of United States v. Banks, 01-CR-124-TCK, seeking to forbid the United States Probation Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma ("Probation Office") from conducting a planned blood collection of Defendant Richard Banks ("Banks") and other similarly situated supervisees and probationers. The collection was scheduled for May 17, 2005. The United States responded, arguing that such relief could not be requested in the criminal case. On May 19, 2005, the Court ordered the matter to be opened as a civil case, which was styled Banks, et al. v. United States Department of Justice, et al., 05-CV-278-TCK-PJC.
On June 7, 2005, Banks and four other individual Plaintiffs filed a Second Amended Complaint in the civil case, which named five individual Defendants acting in their official capacities as governmental officials. The Second Amended Complaint seeks a permanent injunction forbidding the Probation Office from collecting DNA samples from Plaintiffs and declaratory relief determining that the DNA Act, as last amended in 2004, is unconstitutional as applied to Plaintiffs because it violates Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. On August 8, 2005, the United States filed a Motion to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint ("Motion to Dismiss") and a Motion to Substitute the United States as the Sole Defendant and Dismiss Individual Defendants ("Motion to Substitute"). On September 13, 2005, the Court entered an Order empaneling the three Judges of the Northern District of Oklahoma to sit en banc in ruling on Plaintiffs' Motion for Permanent Injunction and the two Motions filed by the United States.1 On November 21, 2005, the en banc Court held a hearing on these three Motions.
This case was brought by five individual Plaintiffs who were convicted of felonies and who are serving terms of probation or supervised release in the Northern District of Oklahoma. Information regarding the criminal history of each specific Plaintiff is as follows: (1) Richard Myer Banks, Case No. 01-CR-124-K: Banks pled guilty to one count of bank fraud. On February 27, 1998, he was sentenced to thirty-five months custody and five years supervised release in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.2 On November 5, 2001, jurisdiction of supervised release was transferred to the Northern District of Oklahoma. (2) Mary Lafficer Doyle, Case No. 04-CR-59-C: Doyle pled guilty to one count of theft of government funds. On October 22, 2004, she was sentenced to five years probation. (3) Stanley Allen Acuff, Case No. 01-CR-45: Acuff pled guilty to one count of wire fraud. On November 7, 2001, he was sentenced to sixteen months custody and three years supervised release. On August 21, 2003, it was found that Acuff had committed crimes of false impersonation and knowingly concealing stolen property while on supervised release. The court revoked his term of supervised release, and Acuff was sentenced to twelve months custody and two years supervised release. (4) Melanie Pool Allphin, Case No. 02-CR-77-S: Allphin pled guilty to misprision of a felony in the Eastern District of Oklahoma. The underlying crimes that Allphin failed to report related to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. On February 13, 2003, she was sentenced to five years probation. Allphin is being supervised by the Probation Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma. (5) Lisa Renee Bell, Case No. 97-CR-154-K: Bell pled guilty to one count of using a false social security number. On May 13, 1998, she was sentenced to fourteen months custody and three years supervised release. On December 15, 2003, it was found that Bell had committed crimes of false statement in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and false use of a social security number in violation of 18 § U.S.C. 408(a)(7)(b). The court revoked her term of supervised release, and she was sentenced to twelve months and one day and twenty-three months supervised release. All five Plaintiffs have been convicted of crimes that, prior to the 2004 Amendments, would not have subjected them to forced DNA collection under the DNA Act.
The five Defendants are: (1) Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice; (2) Leonidas Ralph Mecham, Director, Administrative Office for the United States Courts; (3) Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigations; (4) David O'Meilia, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma; and (5) Brad Stewart, Chief United States Probation Officer for the Northern District of Oklahoma. These are representatives of governmental entities that would potentially be impacted by the Court's grant of injunctive relief.
The United States' Motion to Substitute is made pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 21, entitled "Misjoinder and Nonjoinder of Parties," which provides in relevant part as follows: "Parties may be dropped or added by order of the court on motion of any party or of its own initiative at any stage of the action and on such terms as are just." FED.R.Civ.P. 21. It is undisputed that the individual Defendants are being sued in their official capacities. The United States relies on cases indicating that "official capacity" suits are "actually" suits against the United States, arguing that the United States should therefore be substituted as the sole Defendant. See, e.g., Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 165, 105 S.Ct. 3099, 87 L.Ed.2d 114 (1985) (); Atkinson v. O'Neill, 867 F.2d 589, 590 (10th Cir.1989) (); Simmat v. United States Bureau of Prisons, et al., 413 F.3d 1225, 1232 (10th Cir.2005) ().
As conceded by the United States, however, this is not a case in which the United States must be substituted as a party pursuant to statute. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. § 2679(d)(1) (). Nor is it a case in which substitution is necessary in order to allow the United States to assert the defense of sovereign immunity.3 Instead, the United States urges the Court to substitute the United States for the sake of procedural ease and because it is not "necessary" for the individuals and agencies to be named to effectuate the requested injunctive relief. Plaintiffs argue that the individual agencies are named Defendants in order to eliminate any question about the scope and effect of a possible injunction. The Court finds there is no procedural or substantive reason to disturb Plaintiffs' choice to name and sue the agencies impacted by suing the individual Defendants in their official capacities. Although the suit may, in reality, be one against the United States, the Court believes Plaintiffs' election should control where there is no overriding substantive or procedural reason to substitute the United States as the sole Defendant. The Motion to Substitute is therefore denied.
On December 19, 2000, Congress passed the original version of the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act. The original DNA Act required persons convicted of "qualifying federal offenses" to provide a DNA sample to be included in the Combined DNA Index System ("CODIS"), a national...
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