Carpenter v. S.C. Dep't of Corr.

• Decision Date: 19 August 2020
• Docket Number: Appellate Case No. 2017-002577,Opinion No. 5762
• Citation: 848 S.E.2d 346,431 S.C. 512
• Parties: Charles Eugene CARPENTER, Appellant, v. SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS and the State of South Carolina, Respondents.
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals

431 S.C. 512

848 S.E.2d 346

Charles Eugene CARPENTER, Appellant,

v.SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS and the State of South Carolina, Respondents.

Appellate Case No. 2017-002577

Opinion No. 5762

Court of Appeals of South Carolina.

Heard June 3, 2020

Filed August 19, 2020

Desa Ballard and Harvey M. Watson, III, both of Ballard & Watson, Attorneys at Law, of West Columbia, for Appellant.

Damon Christian Wlodarczyk, of Riley Pope & Laney, LLC, of Columbia, for Respondent South Carolina Department of Corrections.

Attorney General Alan McCrory Wilson and Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General Megan Harrigan Jameson, both of Columbia, for Respondent the State.

HILL, J.:

Charles Carpenter alleges he is being unlawfully held in prison because his sentences for conspiracy in trafficking cocaine and conspiracy in trafficking marijuana have expired. He raised these allegations in two separate civil actions: a petition for writ of habeas corpus and a declaratory judgment action. After a bench trial, the circuit court ruled Carpenter was procedurally barred from raising his allegations in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and even if not barred, his allegations lacked merit. The circuit court therefore granted declaratory judgment in favor of the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC). Carpenter appeals these findings and also claims the circuit court erred in failing to rule on his declaratory judgment claims against the State and by failing to disclose a disqualifying bias in favor of the State. We affirm in part, vacate in part, and remand.

I. FACTS

After a state-wide grand jury investigation, Carpenter pled guilty in April 1990 to conspiracy to traffic cocaine and conspiracy to traffic marijuana. The plea agreement stipulated that if Carpenter cooperated with the State's investigation, the State would ask the trial court to run the sentences for his two convictions concurrently. In June 1990, the trial court sentenced Carpenter to twenty-five years’ imprisonment for the offense of conspiracy of trafficking in cocaine. At the sentencing hearing, the State alleged Carpenter had not complied with the terms of his plea agreement. The trial court ruled it was holding the sentence for conspiracy to traffic marijuana in abeyance pending a later sentencing hearing regarding Carpenter's alleged non-cooperation.

When Carpenter's sentencing hearing was reconvened in August 1990, the State presented evidence Carpenter had not cooperated with the State and therefore breached the plea agreement. The trial court found "beyond absolutely any doubt" the State had lived up to their agreement, but Carpenter had failed to do so. The trial court sentenced Carpenter to twenty-five years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to traffic marijuana and ordered the sentence run consecutively to Carpenter's sentence for conspiracy to traffic cocaine imposed in June 1990. In February 1992, the trial court issued an order affirming the August 9, 1990 consecutive sentence for conspiracy to traffic marijuana and divesting itself of jurisdiction over the matter.

Carpenter's convictions and sentences were affirmed on direct appeal. Carpenter then filed several post-conviction relief (PCR) applications, which were denied. In 1993, Carpenter filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, which was also denied. This denial was affirmed on direct appeal.

Upon Carpenter's remand to the custody of SCDC, his SCDC offender summary displayed his "maxout" date as November 23, 2016. A few years later, his summary reflected he was eligible for work release and noted he had earned a total of 700 good-time days and 102 earned work credits. In 1997, Carpenter's sentence was changed in the offender summary to indicate it was not parole eligible. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Carpenter's maxout date fluctuated, but it was never designated as later than 2019. During these fluctuations, his offender summary consistently stated his total sentence was fifty years and his sentences were to be served consecutively. In 2011, Carpenter's projected maxout date changed to April 7, 2040. A note at the bottom of the offender summary stated "Inmate's sentence corrected to show 25 yrs mandatory minimum [day]-for-day sentence per statute ...."

Carpenter wrote a letter to SCDC asking why his maxout date had changed to 2040. SCDC notified Carpenter his sentence was modified on June 24, 2011, as a result of an audit because pursuant to the statute he was sentenced under in 1990, Carpenter was required to serve two mandatory minimum sentences for "a total of 50 years that had to be served day-for-day." There is no evidence in the record showing Carpenter ever received a hearing on the issue of the change to his maxout date.

On September 8, 2013, Carpenter filed an SCDC "Inmate Grievance Form Step 1," stating his good time and earned work credits had been removed from his SCDC record, and if they were not restored, he would serve more time in prison than the law required. His grievance was denied. Carpenter then completed an SCDC "Inmate Grievance Form Step 2," arguing SCDC had misinterpreted the law, and as a result, he was being held past his maxout date. The grievance was denied in March 2013. The denial letter informed Carpenter he could appeal this decision to the Administrative Law Court (ALC). There is no evidence in the record that Carpenter pursued an appeal of this grievance denial.

Carpenter later hired a lawyer to investigate the change in his maxout date. The lawyer's correspondence with SCDC revealed that in 2010, an inmate named Carlos Gonzales wrote the South Carolina Supreme Court alleging he was being held past his SCDC maxout date. When the supreme court asked SCDC to respond to Gonzales’ letter, SCDC conducted an internal audit of all drug-trafficking offenders who were sentenced to twenty-five years or more before 1996. As a result of the audit, SCDC discovered that in the early 1990s, its record system was not programmed "to capture the 25 years day-for-day," and as a result, some inmates’ sentences "were not being reflected correctly." Carpenter was one of those inmates, and his sentences were "updated" to mandatory minimum sentences, causing the spike in Carpenter's maxout date to 2040. About four other inmates’ sentences were "updated" in the same way.

Other inmates whose sentences were audited had already been released, including Carpenter's co-conspirator, Bobby Gene Horne. Although sentenced to twenty-five years under the same statute as Carpenter, Horne received good-time, work, and educational credits. In an email to Carpenter's attorney, SCDC indicated that if Carpenter's sentence had not been entered as "day-for-day" as a result of the audit, he would have received the same type of credits as Horne, and due to Carpenter's consecutive sentence, he would have been released in 2015, fourteen years after Horne.

In this habeas corpus petition and declaratory judgment action, Carpenter alleges: 1) the trial court's jurisdiction to sentence Carpenter ended when the trial court accepted Carpenter's plea and sentenced him in June 1990; therefore, the trial court had no jurisdiction to impose the consecutive twenty-five sentence on Carpenter in August 1990, and that sentence is void; 2) SCDC violated Carpenter's due process rights by denying him notice and a hearing when it changed his sentence to be non-parolable, removed his good-time and work credits, and changed his maxout date to 2040; and 3) SCDC violated Carpenter the right to equal protection under the law when it released Horne in 2001 due to the good-time and work credits he had earned but denied Carpenter's right to the same credits and credit eligibility. Carpenter made these three allegations in both his declaratory judgment cause of action and his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. His prayer for relief included: his immediate release from SCDC custody; a declaration that the trial court's jurisdiction to sentence him evaporated after the trial court sentenced him on the cocaine trafficking conspiracy charge in June 1990; and a declaration that SCDC violated his due process and equal protection rights.

SCDC and the State moved to dismiss Carpenter's actions. In April 2017, retired Chief Justice Jean H. Toal, sitting as a circuit judge, heard the motions to dismiss. Both the State and SCDC argued Carpenter's claims were not appropriate for habeas corpus relief and should have been brought through the Uniform Post-Conviction Relief Procedure Act (PCR Act), S.C. Code Ann. §§ 17-27-10 to -120 (2014 & Supp. 2019), or through SCDC's grievance procedure. Judge Toal denied the State's and SCDC's motions to dismiss, finding the circuit court had jurisdiction over habeas petitions and over declaratory judgment claims. Judge Toal also ruled the PCR Act was not the exclusive method for challenging an unlawful sentence and declaratory relief was available under the circumstances to resolve Carpenter's legal disputes.

In June 2017, Judge Robert E. Hood held a bench trial on Carpenter's habeas corpus and declaratory judgment actions. At the trial, Carpenter contended the trial court did not have jurisdiction to bifurcate Carpenter's sentencing proceeding, and therefore, the proceeding that occurred on August 9, 1990, was not legal and could not result in a valid sentence. Carpenter asserted he had never raised the issue of whether the trial court had jurisdiction to sentence him as to his trafficking in marijuana charge at the August 9, 1990 hearing in any previous PCR action.

Carpenter next argued SCDC changed his sentence without notice, which violated his right to due process. Carpenter asserted the appropriate remedy for the due process violation was for the change in his maxout date to be vacated. Carpenter alleged SCDC violated his due process rights by removing his good-time and work credits, changing his parole eligibility, and increasing his maxout date to 2040 without notice and a hearing and by...