Bloodgood v. Garraghty

• Decision Date: 14 February 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-6075,85-6075
• Citation: 783 F.2d 470
• Parties: Claude Frizzell BLOODGOOD, III, Appellant, v. David A. GARRAGHTY, Warden; Attorney General of Delaware, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 470

783 F.2d 470

Claude Frizzell BLOODGOOD, III, Appellant, v. David A. GARRAGHTY, Warden; Attorney General of Delaware, Appellees.

No. 85-6075.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued Nov. 5, 1985.

Decided Feb. 14, 1986.

Richard T. Robol (Seawell, Dalton, Hughes & Timms, Norfolk, Va., on brief), for appellant.

Michael A. Likavec, Asst. Atty. Gen. (William G. Broaddus, Atty. Gen. of Va., David R. Curry, Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellees.

Before HALL, MURNAGHAN and WILKINSON, Circuit Judges.

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

Claude Frizzell Bloodgood, III challenges under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 the administrative decisions denying him parole and A-custody (minimum security) status. He contends that in making their decisions the Virginia Parole Board and the Central Classification Board relied on prior uncounseled convictions. He asks this court to compel the Parole Board to review his application for parole without considering the convictions, and also to enjoin the Board from ever considering the convictions in the future. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants.

We affirm. A parole proceeding is not a proper forum for an inmate to contest the legal sufficiency of past convictions. Moreover, we do not believe that the Parole Board or the Central Classification Board even relied upon the convictions in question or intend to use the allegedly uncounseled convictions in the future. Therefore, the district court properly refused Bloodgood relief. ¹

I.

In 1962, Bloodgood was charged with three counts of burglary in Delaware. Bloodgood alleges that he was not represented by counsel and that he did not waive counsel; he pled guilty to all three counts. Between 1962 and 1967, Bloodgood was imprisoned in Delaware. In 1963, the Supreme Court decided Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), giving indigent felony defendants the right to counsel. The Court extended Gideon in United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 92 S.Ct. 589, 30 L.Ed.2d 592 (1972), holding that convictions obtained in violation of Gideon cannot be considered as a factor in sentencing. See also, Burgett v. Texas, 389 U.S. 109, 88 S.Ct. 258, 19 L.Ed.2d 319 (1967).

After Gideon was decided, Bloodgood petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that he did not have assistance of counsel, and did not waive his right to counsel. The Superior Court of Delaware dismissed Bloodgood's petition as frivolous, writing in a letter to Bloodgood that: "The records of this Court show that you were offered a court-appointed attorney but that you refused this offer. In so refusing, you waived your right to be represented." Bloodgood appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court, which decided that the record before it was insufficient to sustain Bloodgood's contentions. The Supreme Court then remanded, and gave Bloodgood leave to file a new petition with the court below. The record is silent as to what happened thereafter.

In 1969, Bloodgood was convicted in Norfolk, Virginia of forgery, uttering a forged check, and grand larceny. In 1970, the Norfolk court convicted Bloodgood of the first degree murder of his mother, and sentenced him to death. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison, and Bloodgood is currently serving that sentence. Bloodgood escaped in 1974 while playing in a chess tournament outside the institution. He was caught and returned to prison, and convicted of escape, bringing the total number of his felony offenses in Virginia to five.

Bloodgood was eligible for parole in 1983, but was denied parole because of the "seriousness of [his] crime" and his "pattern of criminal conduct." He contends, however, that he has been denied parole and A-custody status because of his uncounseled convictions. He now seeks to erase the 1962 convictions and to receive a parole redetermination upon his expunged record. In the event the Board decides to deny parole in Virginia, it will review each prisoner's case every year until that prisoner is released. Va.Code Sec. 53.1-154 (1985).

II.

We should note that Bloodgood's claim of a Sixth Amendment violation in the Delaware convictions is subject to some doubt. Bloodgood collaterally attacked his 1962 convictions in state court. The Delaware Superior Court, as noted supra, indicated that he had been offered court-appointed counsel and waived his Sixth Amendment right by refusing the offer. In his affidavit, Bloodgood vigorously contests that statement. The record on this matter, now over two decades old, is slim.

In considering Bloodgood's claim, we first take cognizance of the context in which that claim was brought. Courts have generally afforded parole authorities broad discretion in their exercise of expertise, and have refused to allow 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 to become a backdoor to review of all denials of parole. Tarlton v. Clark, 441 F.2d 384 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 403 U.S. 934, 91 S.Ct. 2263, 29 L.Ed.2d 713 (1971); Jackson v. Shields, 438 F.Supp. 183, 184 (W.D.Va.1977). Simply put, "the federal courts are not an appropriate forum to review the discretionary decisions of prison administrators which are based on evidence conflicting in nature and degree." Paine v. Baker, 595 F.2d 197, 200 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 925, 100 S.Ct. 263, 62 L.Ed.2d 181 (1979).

There are some 10,800 inmates in the Virginia penal system. Each one of them has a file. That file is likely to be voluminous, and contain numerous pieces of information, some correct, some open to contest. There is, however, no constitutionally mandated right of access of an inmate to his prison file. Paine, 595 F.2d at 200. Nor is there any cause of action under Sec. 1983 to contest every piece of information an inmate believes is incorrect. It would involve an intolerable burden on courts and an unacceptable usurpation of parole authority if prisoners launched Sec. 1983 actions to test the veracity of file contents in every parole decision. Thus the oversight of federal courts has understandably been confined to matters of procedure. In the parole setting, procedural due process requires no more than a statement of reasons indicating to the inmate why parole has been denied. Franklin v. Shields, 569 F.2d 784, 800 (4th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 1003, 98 S.Ct. 1659, 56 L.Ed.2d 92 (1978).

The usual way for an inmate to attack allegedly infirm convictions is a habeas corpus petition which poses directly to the decision-maker the question of constitutional error. ² A parole proceeding, however, is not a formal trial, or even a judicially supervised evidentiary hearing. See Fardella v. Garrison, 698 F.2d 208, 212 (4th Cir.1982). A parole board is neither established nor equipped to rule upon the validity of every underlying conviction on which its decision on parole may rest. The board's inquiry is not the legal foundation of some past conviction, but a prediction of a prisoner's prospects for a law-abiding life. Franklin v. Shields, 569 F.2d at 800. The factors, both objective and otherwise, that may inform this prediction are numerous. We decline to shift this general focus of inquiry by requiring the board to review or reject convictions where the courts themselves have not done so. Rather, we agree with the Fifth Circuit's holding in an analogous context that "until the conviction is judicially nullified, its underlying validity plays no necessary part in the consideration of whether a probated prison term should be continued in view of the alleged violation of the terms of probation." United States v. Francischine, 512 F.2d 827, 828 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 931, 96 S.Ct. 284, 46 L.Ed.2d 261 (1975). ³

III.

In Bloodgood's case, however, the claim pertains to Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, and the law of this circuit suggests that uncounseled convictions are especially suspect. Strader v. Troy, 571 F.2d 1263, 1266 (4th Cir.1978), held that if a sentencing court found prior convictions to be uncounseled, it followed also that the parole board "should not consider them in determining whether to grant Strader parole." Whether Bloodgood is permitted to renew his attack upon the allegedly uncounseled convictions in light of the earlier denial of collateral relief in Delaware is a question we need not address, because we do not believe that prison authorities even relied upon them. Affidavits from Frank Saunders, a member of the Virginia Parole Board and Louis Cei, Chief of Classification of the Virginia Department of Corrections, explained the independent basis for the adverse actions in Bloodgood's case. Together these affidavits amply support the magistrate's grant of summary judgment for defendants.

Saunders said in his affidavit that Bloodgood was denied parole for two reasons. First, he was in prison for murdering his mother. Saunders asserted that the Parole Board would have denied Bloodgood parole simply because of the seriousness of that crime. The second reason for denial of parole was Bloodgood's pattern of criminal conduct. When Bloodgood committed the murder, he had only recently been convicted of felony offenses in Virginia. Therefore, Saunders concluded that the 1962 Delaware convictions had no bearing on the denial of parole, stating in his affidavit that "the Parole Board is not currently denying Bloodgood parole on the basis of his 1962 convictions in the State of Delaware, nor will those convictions be considered in any future parole decisions."

Cei likewise said in his affidavit that the Classification Committee had not relied on the 1962 convictions to deny Bloodgood A-custody status. The Central Classification Board calculates a numerical score for each prisoner and then bases custody assignments on that score. For example, the prisoner is given points for the severity of the offense, prior felony convictions, or escapes. A lower score would make a prisoner eligible for lower custody status. However, there is a...