Cronn v. Buffington
| Decision Date | 26 August 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. 96-40288,96-40288 |
| Parties | Donald Lorrin CRONN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. John BUFFINGTON, U.S. Parole Commission; Susan Haas, U.S. Probation Officer; William Fitzgerald, U.S. Probation Officer; Wade E. French, Chief Probation Officer; Gary Grey, U.S. Parole Commission; Ron C. Burkhart, Warden, FCI Fort Worth; Kathleen Hawk, Director, U.S. Department of Federal Bureau of Prisons; Edward F. Reilly, Jr., U.S. Parole Commission; U.S. Parole Commission; Federal Bureau of Prisons, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Donald Lorrin Cronn, Texarkana, TX, pro se.
Dane H. Smith, Tyler, TX, for Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Before WISDOM, KING and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff-Appellant Donald Lorrin Cronn appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment to Defendants in this civil rights action based on the court's conclusion that the Defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
Donald Lorrin Cronn ("Cronn") was sentenced in November of 1982 to seven years confinement and five years probation for conspiracy, wire fraud, and mail fraud, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1343 and 1341, respectively. He began his prison term in August of 1984, and was paroled in December of 1984, with a full-term release date in August of 1991.
After Cronn was arrested on a DWI charge in August of 1989, William S. Fitzgerald ("Fitzgerald"), a United States Probation Officer, notified John Buffington ("Buffington"), a Case Analyst for the United States Parole Commission ("the Commission"). In January of 1991, the Commission issued a parole-violator warrant ("warrant") as a detainer, based on Fitzgerald's report of Cronn's indictment on five separate violations of the Texas Securities Act. The Commission later supplemented the warrant with an additional violation based on another state charge.
The warrant was executed by placing Cronn into federal custody in April of 1991, upon his release by state authorities. At a preliminary interview with a Commission representative, Cronn denied the charged violations. After the representative found probable cause that Cronn had committed a parole violation, Cronn requested a revocation hearing, which was scheduled for June of 1991. In May of 1991, in response to a request from an Assistant United States Attorney that Cronn be allowed to act as a government informant in a telephone scam investigation, the Commission released Cronn from custody. It held the original supplemented warrant in abeyance until resolution of the state charges. The requested parole revocation hearing was never conducted.
Cronn was convicted on the state securities charges in April of 1992, and he received a suspended sentence and probation. The conviction was reflected in a supplement to the warrant. Susan Haas ("Haas"), a probation officer, notified Buffington that Cronn had pled guilty to the earlier DWI charge and that he had been arrested on a new DWI charge in August of 1992. The earlier DWI offense was added to the warrant. After Haas and Fitzgerald requested that the warrant for Cronn's arrest be reinstated, Buffington reinstated the warrant in January of 1993. Following the second execution of the original warrant, Cronn received a revocation hearing. The parole panel recommended that Cronn's parole be revoked, and credited Cronn for the month he served in prison following the first execution of the warrant.
Cronn successfully filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241. Cronn v. Burkhart, 830 F.Supp. 946 (N.D.Tex.1993). The district court held that the Commission lacked statutory authority to execute a parole-violator warrant, then withdraw the warrant and suspend its operation pending the outcome of the state charges. It also found that the Commission deprived Cronn of his right to the revocation hearing when he was retaken into custody. No appeal was taken from that order and it is now final.
In the instant suit, Cronn has alleged civil rights violations by individual federal Defendants and has sued the following officials of the United States Parole Commission and the Federal Bureau of Prisons in their individual and official capacities: John Buffington, case analyst for the Commission; Susan Haas, probation officer; William S. Fitzgerald, United States Probation Officer; Gary Gray, Administrator of the Parole Commission; Wade E. French, Chief Probation Officer for the Eastern District of Texas; Edward F. Reilly, Jr., Commissioner of the Parole Commission; Ron C. Burkhart, Warden at the FCI in Fort Worth; and Kathleen Hawk, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Also named as Defendants were the United States Parole Commission and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. We construe Cronn's action as one brought pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971).
Cronn alleged that failure to hold a parole revocation hearing was a denial of due process, that his second arrest for parole violation violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and that his illegal incarceration was cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. He claimed that Buffington, Haas, Fitzgerald, Gray, Burkhart, and Reilly personally deprived him of statutory and constitutional rights and that French and Haas also knew of and acquiesced in this deprivation. He sought both compensatory and punitive damages.
The Defendants moved for summary judgment, claiming they were entitled to absolute and qualified immunity. The trial court determined that Cronn had not been denied due process, rejecting the decision by the Northern District of Texas as being improperly decided and thus non-binding. Because it found that the federal courts of appeal differed on whether a parole revocation hearing could be held in abeyance, the court determined that there was no clearly defined right to a revocation hearing under Cronn's circumstances. It explained that the absence of a clearly defined right made it reasonable that the officials could believe that their conduct towards Cronn was lawful. The district court granted qualified immunity to all Defendants. Additionally it found that only Haas, Fitzgerald, and Buffington actually participated in revoking Cronn's parole and that the remaining Defendants could not be held liable for damages on a respondeat superior theory. The district court dismissed the claims against those remaining Defendants on the additional ground of failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. 1
We review a grant of summary judgment de novo. Ganther v. Ingle, 75 F.3d 207, 209 (5th Cir.1996). Summary judgment is proper when no issue of material fact exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. FED.R.CIV.P. 56(c). We view the facts and inferences in the light most favorable to the non-movant. Faruki v. Parsons S.I.P., Inc., 123 F.3d 315, 318 (5th Cir.1997).
To recover damages for an allegedly unconstitutional revocation of parole, a plaintiff must prove that his conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus. 2 Unless the plaintiff can prove one of the three criteria, his claim is not cognizable and must be dismissed. 3 Because the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted Cronn's habeas petition, his Bivens claim for damages from alleged illegal incarceration is cognizable.
The Defendants claim qualified immunity, which shields a government official performing discretionary functions not only from liability but also from suit. 4
The Supreme Court has clarified the proper analytical framework for addressing a claim of qualified immunity. 5 Once a defendant pleads the defense of qualified immunity, the trial judge must first determine "whether the plaintiff has alleged a constitutional violation at all" under current law. 6 If the plaintiff has done so, the judge then determines whether the defendant's actions were "objectively reasonable" with reference to "clearly established law" at the time of the conduct in question. 7 For a right to be "clearly established," its "contours ... must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right." 8 This does not mean that prior cases must have held the particular conduct unlawful; "but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent." 9 Having laid out the framework for determining if a plaintiff's allegations are sufficient to overcome a defendant's defense of qualified immunity asserted in a motion for summary judgment, we now turn to Cronn's claims.
Cronn first alleges that the absence of a parole revocation hearing following the April, 1991 execution of the parole-violator's warrant unlawfully deprived him of his right to due process. In ruling on his habeas petition, the district court determined that Cronn's constitutional rights had been violated. Cronn v. Burkhart, 830 F.Supp. 946, 957 (N.D.Tex.1993). No appeal was taken from that judgment, and it is now final. 10 Cronn v. Burkhart, 830 F.Supp. 946, 957 (N.D.Tex.1993).
We therefore turn to the second prong of the Siegert analysis: whether the Appellees' conduct was objectively reasonable under clearly established law at the time of the conduct in question.
In 1972, the Supreme Court held that the execution of a parole-violator warrant triggered a parolee's due process rights to a revocation hearing. 11 Following that decision, Congress enacted the Parole Commission and Reorganization Act of 1976, 18 U.S.C. §§ 4201-4218 ("the Act"). 12 It required a hearing within sixty days after a determination...
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