Duarte v. State ex rel. Lewis

• Decision Date: 25 November 1998
• Docket Number: No. 2,CA-CV,2
• Parties: , 283 Ariz. Adv. Rep. 11 Felix DUARTE and Raymond Sidoma, Plaintiffs/Appellants, v. STATE of Arizona ex rel. Samuel LEWIS, Director, Arizona Department of Corrections, Defendant/Appellee. 98-0034.
• Court: Arizona Court of Appeals

Page 214

971 P.2d 214

193 Ariz. 167, 283 Ariz. Adv. Rep. 11

Felix DUARTE and Raymond Sidoma, Plaintiffs/Appellants, v. STATE of Arizona ex rel. Samuel LEWIS, Director, Arizona Department of Corrections, Defendant/Appellee.

No. 2 CA-CV 98-0034.

Court of Appeals of Arizona,

Division 2, Department A.

Nov. 25, 1998.

Jack L. Lansdale, Tucson, for Plaintiffs/Appellants.

Grant Woods, Attorney General By Thomas J. Dennis and Paul E. Carter, Phoenix, for Defendant/Appellee.

FLREZ, Judge.

¶1 Appellants Raymond Sidoma and Felix Duarte were assigned to a work detail at an Arizona state prison and were injured when they fell from a scaffolding that prison officials had directed them to climb as part of their work. They sued the state for their injuries, and a jury returned verdicts of $100,000 for Duarte and $10,000 for Sidoma, apportioning eighty-five percent of the fault to appellants and fifteen percent to the state. The trial court entered a judgment finding "that the Defendant State of Arizona is entitled to a setoff against each Plaintiff pursuant to A.R.S. § 31-238, in a sum equal to eighty percent of the amount due under the verdict." After reducing the verdicts by the amount of comparative fault the jury had apportioned, the court further reduced appellants' damages by the amount of the setoffs to which the state was entitled under the statute. After making these calculations, the court entered a judgment of $3,000 for Duarte and $300 for Sidoma.

¶2 Appellants appeal only from that part of the court's calculations applying § 31-238 and setting off the state's costs of their incarceration against the amounts they had been awarded from the state. Appellants challenge the statute on two constitutional grounds. They do not challenge the trial court's method of calculating the setoff amounts for both past and future incarceration. We affirm.

Equal Protection

¶3 Appellants first argue that § 31-238 denies them equal protection of the law. The statute requires the director of the department of corrections to establish a per annum cost of incarcerating criminals and grants the state

the right to set off the cost of incarceration calculated under subsection A at any time and without prior notice against any claim made by or monetary obligation owed to a person for whom a cost of incarceration can be calculated, except that twenty per cent of any claim or monetary obligation shall be exempt from the provisions of this section.

§ 31-238(D). We assume that appellants' challenge to the statute is based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution although they have nowhere cited this provision in their brief.

¶4 "When reviewing the constitutionality of a statute, we must presume it is constitutional. [A party challenging the constitutionality of a statute] must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that [it] is unconstitutional." Samaritan Health Sys. v. Superior Court, 278 Ariz. Adv. Rep. 27, p 21, ---Ariz. ----, --- P.2d ----, 1998 WL 652190 (Ct.App. September 24, 1998) (citations omitted); see also United States v. Doyan, 909 F.2d 412 (10th Cir.1990). We review de novo constitutional challenges because they involve questions of law. Little v. All Phoenix S. Community Mental Health Ctr., 186 Ariz. 97, 919 P.2d 1368 (App.1996).

¶5 Fourteenth Amendment equal protection analysis applies one of three tests--the rational relationship test, the strict scrutiny test, and the intermediate or "means scrutiny" test. See, e.g., Kenyon v. Hammer, 142 Ariz. 69, 688 P.2d 961 (1984); Lerma v. Keck, 186 Ariz. 228, 921 P.2d 28 (App.1996); see also 3 Ronald D. Rotunda and John E. Nowak, Treatise on Constitutional Law § 18.3, n. 5 (2d ed.1992). The parties agree that, because the statute does not apply to any suspect classification and because it burdens no fundamental right, the rational basis or rational relationship test applies. Doyan; see also Beck v. Symington, 972 F.Supp. 532 (D.Ariz.1997) (equal protection challenge to statute requiring inmates to pay court filing fees subject to rational basis analysis); Gardner v. Wilson, 959 F.Supp. 1224 (C.D.Cal.1997) (equal protection challenge to statute authorizing inmate to be charged copay fee for medical services reviewed under rational basis test); DelVerne v. Klevenhagen, 888 F.Supp. 64 (S.D.Tex.1995) (challenge to statute authorizing prisoners to be charged for medical services reviewed under rational relationship test), rev'd on other grounds, Myers v. Klevenhagen, 97 F.3d 91 (5th Cir.1996); Burns v. State, 303 Ark. 64, 793 S.W.2d 779 (Ark.1990) (equal protection challenge to statute authorizing county jails to charge prisoners for medical services subject to rational basis review).

¶6 Under the rational basis test, legislation must serve some legitimate state interest and the legislative scheme must rationally further that interest. Kenyon; Lerma. We agree with the state that § 31-238(D) rationally serves the legitimate state interest of reducing the state's costs of incarceration and thereby reinforcing inmates' social accountability and fiscal responsibility for their crimes. A substantial number of federal courts also agree that legislation allowing the government to recover the costs of an inmate's incarceration serves legitimate government interests. United States v. Breeding, 109 F.3d 308 (6th Cir.1997); United States v. May, 52 F.3d 885 (10th Cir.1995); United States v. Leonard, 37 F.3d 32 (2d Cir.1994); United States v. Turner, 998 F.2d 534 (7th Cir.1993); United States v. Hagmann, 950 F.2d 175 (5th Cir.1991); Doyan; see United States v. Zakhor, 58 F.3d 464 (9th Cir.1995) (costs of supervised release); see generally S.P. Conboy, Prison Reimbursement Statutes: The Trend Toward Requiring Inmates to Pay Their Own Way, 44 Drake L.Rev. 325 (1996); but see United States v. Spiropoulos, 976 F.2d 155 (3d Cir.1992). Setting off mutual claims instead of collecting the costs of incarceration through additional burdensome court actions not only expedites the manner in which the state meets its responsibility to pay judgments against it but also provides an efficient means to obtain reimbursement for the costs of incarceration, which equitably and reasonably should have priority in repayment. Cf. DelVerne (statute authorized county to bring independent civil action against inmate to recover cost of medical services).

¶7 Doyan is particularly instructive. There, the court upheld a district court's application of a federal sentencing guideline authorizing an additional fine to pay the costs of criminals' incarceration, applying the rational basis test and determining that the imposition of a fine to reimburse the government for the costs of incarceration did not violate the prisoner's equal protection rights. "Clearly, the federal government, 'has a fundamental interest in appropriately punishing persons--rich and poor--who violate its criminal laws.' " 909 F.2d at 416, quoting Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660, 669, 103 S.Ct. 2064, 2071, 76 L.Ed.2d 221, 231 (1983). The court explained that reimbursing the government through a fine served the legitimate government interest of sparing the taxpayers the expenses of incarceration. This legitimate government interest is served as much by a setoff as by imposing a fine.

¶8 We note, moreover, that other states' statutes requiring inmates to reimburse the state for the costs of incarceration have also withstood equal protection challenges. DelVerne; Burns; State Treasurer v. Wilson, 423 Mich. 138, 377 N.W.2d 703 (1985).

¶9 Appellants argue, however, that the statute does not serve the state's legitimate interest in defraying the costs of incarceration because the setoff applies only to successful inmates who recover personal injury judgments against the state. We disagree. That the legislative scheme employs a setoff instead of another collection mechanism does not render the statute unconstitutional. Appellants do not cite, nor have we found, any authority that requires the state to use any specific method or all methods of serving a legitimate state interest before it can choose one of several rational methods. In rejecting a similar argument in another equal protection challenge to a statute abrogating the collateral source rule in medical malpractice cases, our supreme court said, "The legislature is entitled to proceed 'one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind.' " Eastin v. Broomfield, 116 Ariz. 576, 585, 570 P.2d 744, 753 (1977), quoting Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, 348 U.S. 483, 489, 75 S.Ct. 461, 465, 99 L.Ed. 563, 573 (1955).

¶10 Appellants further argue that the statute is not rational because the legislature has not provided other means of recovering incarceration costs. They are incorrect. The legislature has provided other means of recovering the costs of incarceration, for example, by authorizing the deduction of utility fees from prisoners' accounts, A.R.S. § 31-239, and by requiring that earnings of prisoners on work furlough be used to pay their personal expenses. A.R.S. § 31-334; see Hogan v. Arizona Bd. of Pardons & Paroles, 108 Ariz. 472, 501 P.2d 944 (1972) (board had authority to confiscate payroll checks of prisoner on work furlough living in halfway house).

¶11 Appellants' equal protection challenge also questions the rational basis for the statute when the setoff is limited to eighty percent of the state's obligation to the inmate. They ask, "If the state's interest is in recouping costs of incarceration, why is 100 percent of the judgment not set off?" The rationality of the statute is supported by the state's response that twenty percent is a reasonable amount to exempt from setoff so inmates can pay their attorneys and the costs of litigation. The legislature's chosen method to serve the state's legitimate interests by pursuing only eighty percent of a judgment instead of one...