Bush v. Muncy

• Citation: 659 F.2d 402
• Decision Date: 04 September 1981
• Docket Number: No. 78-6388,78-6388
• Parties: John Claude BUSH, Appellant, v. R. M. MUNCY; Superintendent P.C.C.; Attorney General for the State of Maryland, Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

Page 402

659 F.2d 402

John Claude BUSH, Appellant, v. R. M. MUNCY; Superintendent P.C.C.; Attorney General for the State of Maryland, Appellees.

No. 78-6388.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 10, 1980.

Decided Sept. 4, 1981.

Paul Kaleta, Third Year Law Student (Michael E. Geltner and Larry J. Ritchie, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D. C., on brief), for appellant.

Stephen N. Rosenbaum, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, Md. (Stephen H. Sachs, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Bonnie Travieso, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, Md., on brief), for appellee Atty. Gen. of Maryland.

Guy W. Horsley, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va. (Marshall Coleman, Atty. Gen., of Virginia, Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellee Muncy.

Before HAYNSWORTH and BRYAN, Senior Circuit Judges, and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge.

JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge:

John Claude Bush appeals the denial by summary judgment of his claims for habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and for injunctive and monetary relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for alleged violation by Maryland and Virginia officials of federal rights secured to him by the Interstate Agreement on Detainers (IAD). ¹ We hold that there was no violation of the IAD entitling him to habeas corpus relief under section 2254, but that his section 1983 claims should not have been denied as to all defendants by summary judgment. Accordingly, we affirm in part, and reverse and remand in part for further proceedings on the section 1983 claim.

I

On June 4, 1975, Bush was charged in Virginia with unlawful possession of drugs. On June 10, 1975, authorities of Anne Arundel County, Maryland filed a detainer against him, and similar action was taken by authorities of Prince George's County, Maryland on June 27, 1975. Bush pleaded guilty to the Virginia charge on September 16, 1975, and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment at Virginia's Powhatan Correctional Center, where the two Maryland detainers remained lodged against him while he served his sentence.

On November 17, 1975, Bush was taken to Prince George's County, Maryland for trial, but, upon the granting of a continuance requested by the Maryland authorities, he was returned at his own request to Virginia to await trial. He was again taken to Prince George's County, Maryland on February 17, 1976, at which time he stood trial and was acquitted of the charges lodged against him in that county. Despite the requirement of article IV(b) of the IAD that the appropriate authorities of the sending state are to notify "all other officers and appropriate courts in the receiving State who have lodged detainers against the prisoner" of the request for custody of the prisoner by another officer of the receiving state who has lodged a detainer against the prisoner, see 18 U.S.C. App. § 2, art. IV(b), there is no indication in the record that any Virginia official ever notified the Anne Arundel County authorities of Bush's impending transfers to Prince George's County to stand trial, or that the Anne Arundel County authorities otherwise had knowledge of Bush's presence in Maryland prior to his return to Virginia following trial on the Prince George's County charges.

After his acquittal in Prince George's County, Bush was returned to prison in Virginia on March 1, 1976. On April 13, 1976, however, Anne Arundel County authorities requested that Bush be delivered to their custody for trial on the charges still pending against him in that county. Bush wrote Powhatan Correctional Center Superintendent Muncy and Virginia Assistant Attorney General O'Hare, the Virginia official apparently charged with administering the IAD, and objected to this transfer. His letter asserted that the Anne Arundel County charges against him should have been dismissed because, in violation of article IV(e) of the IAD, see 18 U.S.C. App. § 2, art. IV(e), he had not been tried on all pending Maryland charges on which detainers had been lodged prior to his return to Virginia following his trial on the Prince George's County charges. O'Hare communicated Bush's objection to Virginia Governor Godwin, but advised the governor that Bush's objection was one properly addressed to the Maryland courts and that it should not preclude his transfer from Virginia.

Bush then filed this action, proceeding pro se, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. His complaint sought relief in the form of dismissal of the Anne Arundel County charges, removal of the detainer against him on those charges and a restraining order preventing his transfer to Maryland. Despite the pendency of this action, the Virginia prison officials transferred Bush to Anne Arundel County, Maryland, on July 6, 1976. There he was tried and convicted on the outstanding Maryland charges. After imposition of sentences totalling seventeen years on these charges, Bush was returned to Virginia for completion of his term of imprisonment in that state. On June 12, 1977, Virginia paroled Bush to Maryland, where he is now imprisoned.

Bush appealed his conviction on the Anne Arundel County charges to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, contending that his trial on those charges was in violation of the trial-before-return rule of article IV(e) of the IAD. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the conviction. Virginia officials had not complied with article IV(b) of the IAD and notified Anne Arundel County authorities of the request for transfer of the Prince George's County authorities. Under a special "supplementary" provision of Maryland's version of the IAD, Md.Ann.Code art. 27, § 616Q, the trial-before-return obligation of article IV(e) arises only if Maryland officials who have lodged detainers have actual notice of such a request prior to a prisoner's return to his state of custody. Because in Bush's case they had no such notice, the court held that the IAD was not violated by his trial on the Anne Arundel County charges. Bush's subsequent petition for certiorari to the Court of Appeals of Maryland was denied.

In the meantime, Bush's pending federal action had been transferred from the Eastern District of Virginia to the District of Maryland. In a letter to the clerk of that court on September 8, 1977, Bush sought to amend his original complaint to assert damage claims against the original defendants, Powhatan Correctional Center Superintendent Muncy and the Attorney General of Maryland, as well as others he sought to add as parties, including the Anne Arundel County prosecutor and those Virginia officials "who assisted in the deprivation of his rights."

Acting upon defendants' motion for summary judgment, on a record supplemented by affidavits, the district court dismissed all Bush's claims. With respect to the habeas claim the court held that Bush had alleged no violation of federal law cognizable on a claim for that relief. Only Maryland law its version of the IAD was alleged to have been violated; as to that law the Maryland courts had the last word; therefore, even if Maryland's interpretation of that state law was erroneous, it was of no moment to the habeas claim which alleged no violation of federal law. With respect to the section 1983 claim, the court held that even if a violation of federally secured rights by the defendant Maryland and Virginia officials were alleged, those defendants were entitled as a matter of law to judgment by reason of prosecutorial and good faith immunity defenses.

Although the district court took notice of Bush's attempted amendment of his complaint by his letter of September 8, it never expressly ruled on this amendment. The reasons given by the court for its ultimate decision to dismiss all claims by Bush, however, clearly imply that the court felt that there was no defendant against whom, and no state of facts upon which, Bush validly could state a claim. This appeal followed.

The threshold question presented by the appeal is whether the IAD is federal law, the violation of which might be remediable under either 28 U.S.C. § 2254 or 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Assuming this question is answered in the affirmative, the issue then arises whether there was alleged a violation of the IAD in this case that might, in fact, entitle Bush to relief under either or both of those sections.

II

A.

Two decisions of the Supreme Court handed down since entry of the district court's judgment have now established that the IAD is federal law for purposes of section 1983. In Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1, 100 S.Ct. 2502, 65 L.Ed.2d 555 (1980), the Court held that 42 U.S.C. § 1983 provides relief for violations of federal statutory law as well as constitutional rights. In Cuyler v. Adams, --- U.S. ----, 101 S.Ct. 703, 66 L.Ed.2d 641 (1981), it decided that, because the IAD is a compact among the states sanctioned by Congress under Art. 1, § 10, cl. 3 of the Constitution, it is a federal law whose violation may be remedied under section 1983.

Thiboutot and Cuyler therefore directly establish that violations of the IAD may give rise to claims for relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. ²

B.

The cognizability question with respect to the claim for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 is more difficult. It has two elements: whether federal law by compact should under any circumstances be considered one of the "laws ... of the United States" contemplated by section 2254; and whether, if so, the particular violation of the IAD here alleged is a violation of that federal law for which relief under section 2254 may be had. On the first element, we agree with the Third Circuit that the same Compact Clause analysis that compels finding an interstate agreement to be federal law for section 1983 purposes compels finding it a law of the United States within the meaning of section 2254. United States ex rel. Esola v. Groomes, 520 F.2d 830, 840-42 (3d Cir. 1975) (Garth, J., concurring); accord, Echevarria v. Bell, 579 F.2d 1022, 1024-25 (7th Cir. 1978) (dictum).

The...