Barber v. Thomas

• Court: U.S. Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Justice BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.
• Citation: Barber v. Thomas, 130 S.Ct. 2499, 177 L.Ed.2d 1 (2010)
• Decision Date: 30 March 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-5201.,09-5201.
• Parties: Michael Gary BARBER, et al., Petitioners, v. J. E. THOMAS, Warden.

130 S.Ct. 2499

177 L. Ed. 2d 1

560 US __

Michael Gary BARBER, et al., Petitioners, v. J. E. THOMAS, Warden.

No. 09-5201.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued March 30, 2010.

Decided June 7, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

Stephen R. Sady, Portland, OR, for Petitioners.

Jeffrey B. Wall, for Respondent.

Stephen R. Sady, Chief Deputy Federal Public Defender, Lynn Deffebach, Portland, OR, for Petitioners.

Elena Kagan, Solicitor General, Lanny A. Breuer, Assistant Attorney General, Michael R. Dreeben, Deputy Solicitor General, Jeffrey B. Wall, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Kevin R. Gingras, Washington, D.C., for Respondents.

Justice BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.

Federal sentencing law permits federal prison authorities to award prisoners credit against prison time as a reward for good behavior. 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b). Petitioners, two federal prisoners, challenge the method that the Federal Bureau of Prisons uses for calculating this "good time credit." We conclude that the Bureau's method reflects the most natural reading of the statute, and we reject petitioners' legal challenge.

I

A

A federal sentencing statute provides:

"[A] prisoner who is serving a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year . . . may receive credit toward the service of the prisoner's sentence, beyond the time served, of up to 54 days at the end of each year of the prisoner's term of imprisonment, beginning at the end of the first year of the term . . . . [C]redit for the last year or portion of a year of the term of imprisonment shall be prorated and credited within the last six weeks of the sentence." § 3624(b)(1).

The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) applies this statute using a methodology that petitioners in this case challenge as unlawful. In order to explain the BOP method, we shall use a simplified example that captures its essential elements. The unsimplified calculations described by the BOP in its policy statement, see App. 96-100, will reach approximately the same results as, and are essentially the mathematical equivalent of, the simplified system we describe (there may be other ways to describe the calculation as well). To the extent that there are any differences between the methodology employed by the BOP and that reflected in our example, they are of no consequence to the resolution of petitioners' challenge and are therefore not before us. Similarly, although petitioners committed their crimes before the current version of § 3624 was enacted and are therefore subject to a previous version that differed slightly in certain details, see 18 U.S.C. § 3624 (1988 ed.), the differences between the two versions are immaterial to the questions presented by this case. The parties refer to the current version as the relevant provision of law, see Brief for Petitioners 2-3; Brief for Respondent 8, n. 2, and we shall do the same.

In our example we shall imagine a prisoner who has received a sentence of 10 years' imprisonment. We shall assume that his behavior throughout his confinement is exemplary and that prison authorities will consequently consider him to merit the maximum good time credit that the statute will allow. And we shall ignore leap years.

Thus, at the end of the first year (Year 1) that prisoner would earn the statute's maximum credit of 54 days. The relevant official (whom we shall call the "good time calculator") would note that fact and, in effect, preliminarily put the 54 days to the side. At the end of Year 2 the prisoner would earn an additional 54 days of good time credit. The good time calculator would add this 54 days to the first 54 days, note the provisional total of 108 days, and again put the 108 days' credit to the side. By the end of Year 8, the prisoner would have earned a total of 432 days of good time credit (8 years times 54 days). At that time, the good time calculator would note that the difference between the time remaining in the sentence (2 years, or 730 days) and the amount of accumulated good time credit (432 days) is less than 1 year (730 minus 432 equals 298 days, which is less than 365). The 432 days of good time credit that the prisoner has earned by the end of Year 8 are sufficient to wipe out all of the last year of the 10-year prison term and to shorten the prisoner's 9th year of imprisonment by 67 days.

Year 9 of the sentence will consequently become the prisoner's last year of imprisonment. Further, because the prisoner has already earned 67 days of credit against that year (432 days already earned minus 365 days applied to Year 10 leaves 67 days to apply to Year 9), the prisoner will have no more than 298 days left to serve in Year 9. Now the good time calculator will have to work out just how much good time the prisoner can earn, and credit against, these remaining 298 days.

As we said, the statute provides that "good time" for this "last year or portion" thereof shall be "prorated." Thus, the good time calculator must divide the 298 days into two parts: (1) days that the prisoner will have to serve in prison, and (2) credit for good behavior the prisoner will earn during the days served in Year 9. In other words, the number of days to be served in Year 9 plus the number of good time credit days earned will be equal to the number of days left in the sentence, namely, 298. And to keep the award of credit in the last year proportional to awards in other years, the ratio of these two parts of Year 9 (i.e., the number of good time days divided by the number of days served) must be 54/365, the same ratio that the BOP applies to full years served. We can use some elementary algebra, described in the Appendix, infra, to work out the rest. The result is that if the prisoner serves 260 days, he can earn an additional 38 days of credit for good behavior. That is to say, of the 298 days remaining in his sentence, the prisoner will have to serve 260 days in confinement, after which point, his sentence will be fully accounted for (given the additional 38 days' credit earned), and he will be released. In sum, a prisoner subject to a 10-year (3,650-day) sentence who earns the maximum number of days the statute permits will serve 3,180 days in confinement and receive 470 days of "good time" credit, about 15% of the prison time actually served.

B

In this case petitioners claim that the BOP's calculation method is unlawful. They say that § 3624(b)(1) (2006 ed.) requires a straightforward calculation based upon the length of the term of imprisonment that the sentencing judge imposes, not the length of time that the prisoner actually serves. Thus, if a sentencing judge imposes a prison term of 10 years (as in our example), then, in petitioners' view, the statute permits a maximum good time award of 540 days (10 years times 54 days), not the 470 days that the method described above would allow. And if the judge imposes a prison term of 10 years and 6 months, then the statute permits 567 days (540 days for the 10 years plus 27 days for the extra 6 months), not the 494 days that the method above would allow. According to petitioners, the BOP's method causes model prisoners to lose seven days of good time credit per year of imprisonment, and because their sentences are fairly long (one, Michael Barber, was sentenced to 26 years and 8 months; the other, Tahir Jihad-Black, was sentenced to 21 years and 10 months), the difference in their cases amounts to several months of additional prison time.

The District Court in each of these cases rejected the prisoner's challenge. Civ. No. 08-226 MO (D Ore., Oct. 27, 2008), App. 13; Jihad-Black v. Thomas, Civ. No. 08-227 MO (D Ore., Oct. 27, 2008), App. 25. And in each instance the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court. Tablada v. Thomas, No. 07-35538 (CA9, Apr. 10, 2009), App. 11; see also Tablada v. Thomas, 533 F.3d 800 (C.A.9 2008). Because the BOP's administration of good time credits affects the interests of a large number of federal prisoners, we granted the consolidated petition for certiorari to consider petitioners' challenge.

II

Having now considered petitioners' arguments, we conclude that that we must reject their legal challenge. The statute's language and its purpose, taken together, convince us that the BOP's calculation method is lawful. For one thing, that method tracks the language of § 3624(b). That provision says that a prisoner (serving a sentence of imprisonment of more than a year and less than life) "may receive credit . . . of up to 54 days at the end of each year" subject to the "determination by the Bureau of Prisons that, during that year, the prisoner" has behaved in an exemplary fashion. Ibid. (emphasis added). And it says that credit for the "last year or portion of a year . . . shall be prorated and credited within the last six weeks of the sentence." Ibid. As the example in Part I makes clear, the BOP's interpretation provides a prisoner entitled to a maximum annual credit with 54 days of good time credit for each full year of imprisonment that he serves and a proportionally adjusted amount of credit for any additional time served that is less than a full year. And, as § 3624(b) directs, the BOP awards the credit at the end of each year of imprisonment (except, of course, for Year 9, which is subject to the statute's special instruction requiring proration and crediting during the last six weeks of the sentence).

We are unable similarly to reconcile petitioners' approach with the statute. Their system awards credit for the sentence imposed, regardless of how much time is actually served. Thus, a prisoner under petitioners' system could receive 54 days of credit for Year 10 despite the fact that he would be released after less than 8½ years in prison. The good time calculation for Year 10 would not be made "at the end of" Year 10 (nor within the last six weeks of a sentence ending during that year). Neither could the BOP determine whether the prisoner had behaved in exemplary...