Harris v. Blanckensee
| Decision Date | 09 March 2022 |
| Docket Number | CV-20-00307-TUC-RM (EJM) |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Arizona |
| Parties | Donte H Harris, Petitioner, v. Barbara V. Blanckensee, Respondent. |
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
Pending before the Court is Petitioner Donte Harris's pro se Petition Under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 for a Writ of Habeas Corpus by a Person in Federal Custody (“Petition”) (Doc. 1). Respondent filed a Response (Doc. 10), and Petitioner filed a Reply (Doc. 12).
As an initial matter, the Court notes that the proper respondent in an action for habeas corpus is the Petitioner's custodian, who, at the time this action was filed, was Barbara Von Blanckensee, warden of United States Penitentiary-Tucson. See 28 U.S.C. § 2242; Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426, 435-36 (2004). The Court takes judicial notice that Petitioner is currently incarcerated at USP-Allenwood, in Pennsylvania.[1] The Court will substitute the warden of USP-Allenwood, Herman Quay, as Respondent pursuant to Rule 25(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Pursuant to Rules 72.1 and 72.2 of the Local Rules of Civil Procedure this matter was referred to Magistrate Judge Markovich for a Report and Recommendation. For the reasons discussed below the undersigned Magistrate Judge recommends that the District Court deny and dismiss the Petition.
Petitioner is serving an aggregate sentence of 13 years and 5 months imprisonment with a projected release date of August 9, 2024. (Doc. 13 Ex. A Attach. 1).
Petitioner filed his pro se Petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 for a Writ of Habeas Corpus on July 18, 2020. (Doc. 1). Petitioner alleges one ground for relief arguing that his Fifth Amendment due process rights were violated during a disciplinary hearing for Incident Report (“IR”) No. 3025608 because he was denied: 1) access to documentary evidence relied on by the Disciplinary Hearing Officer (“DHO”); 2) exculpatory video recordings; 3) exculpatory witnesses; and 4) “a NIK test confirming the alleged Suboxone was in fact such.” Id. at 4. Petitioner requests that the Court vacate the IR by ordering expungement and reinstating the 41 days of good conduct time that Petitioner was sanctioned with. Id. at 9.
Respondent requests that the Court deny and dismiss the Petition on the merits because Petitioner has failed to show that the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) violated his constitutional rights. (Doc. 10).
For the reasons explained below, the undersigned finds that Petitioner's claim lacks merit and that the Petition should be dismissed.
“Federal courts are always ‘under an independent obligation to examine their own jurisdiction,' and a federal court may not entertain an action over which it has no jurisdiction.” Hernandez v. Campbell, 204 F.3d 861, 865 (9th Cir. 2000) (quoting FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 231 (1990)). “Generally, motions to contest the legality of a sentence must be filed under § 2255 in the sentencing court, while petitions that challenge the manner, location, or conditions of a sentence's execution must be brought pursuant to § 2241 in the custodial court.” Id. at 864. Additionally, the judicial power of this and all federal courts is limited to actual cases or controversies. U.S. Const. art. III; see also Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 94 (1968); Munoz v. Rowland, 104 F.3d 1096, 1097 (9th Cir. 1997). A petition for writ of habeas corpus is moot where a petitioner's claim for “relief cannot be ‘redressed by a favorable . . . decision' of the court issuing a writ of habeas corpus.” Burnett v. Lampert, 432 F.3d 996, 1001 (9th Cir. 2005) (quoting Spencer v. Kenna, 523 U.S. 1, 7 (1998)). Therefore, a proper characterization of the petition is necessary to determine jurisdiction.
Here, Petitioner alleges that he was denied due process during disciplinary hearing proceedings resulting in loss of privileges and good conduct time. As such, Petitioner is challenging the manner, location, or condition of the execution of his sentence. It is well established that a § 2241 petition is the proper vehicle through which a federal prisoner challenges the manner or execution of a sentence. See, e.g., Hernandez, 204 F.3d at 864; Tucker v. Carlson, 925 F.2d 330, 331 (9th Cir. 1991) ().
At the time of filing the Petition, Petitioner was incarcerated at USP-Tucson in Arizona, and the Petition challenges the manner in which Petitioner's sentence was being executed in the District of Arizona. However, Petitioner is presently incarcerated at USP- Allenwood. While “jurisdiction attaches on the initial filing for habeas corpus relief, and it is not destroyed by a transfer of the petitioner and the accompanying custodial change[, ]” Francis v. Rison, 894 F.2d 353, 354 (9th Cir. 1990) (citation omitted), “[d]istrict courts are limited to granting habeas relief ‘within their respective jurisdictions.'” Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. at 442 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2241(a)). Thus, “in habeas challenges to present physical confinement-‘core challenges'-the default rule is that the proper respondent is the warden of the facility where the prisoner is being held, not the Attorney General or some other remote supervisory official.” Id. at 435. “The court issuing the writ must have personal jurisdiction over the custodian[, because w]ithout such jurisdiction, the court has no authority to direct the actions of the restraining authority.” Malone v. Calderon, 165 F.3d 1234, 1237 (9th Cir. 1999). Here, the undersigned finds that the Court presumably lacks personal jurisdiction over Petitioner's current custodian at USP-Allenwood, which is located in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. See Singh v. Wolf, 2020 WL 4455468, at *3 (D. Ariz. Mar. 31, 2020) (), report and recommendation adopted, 2020 WL 2611208 (D. Ariz. May 22, 2020); Divine v. Chavez, 2009 WL 3722994, at *6 (D. Ariz. Nov. 4, 2009) ().
While the Court could transfer this action to any other such court in which the action could have been brought, the undersigned finds that it is not in the interests of justice to transfer this matter. See Miller v. Hambrick, 905 F.2d 259, 262-63 (9th Cir. 1990) ().[2]An inmate may be transferred to a different institution at any time, and the undersigned is mindful of avoiding a “ping-pong” effect where the § 2241 petition is transferred to a new court each time the petitioner is designated to a new institution. Moreover, as explained below, regardless of whether this action may be considered moot in this Court, the undersigned recommends that the Petition be denied on the merits.
“As a prudential matter, courts require that habeas petitioners exhaust all available judicial and administrative remedies before seeking relief under § 2241.” Ward v. Chavez, 678 F.3d 1042, 1045 (9th Cir. 2012). “The requirement that federal prisoners exhaust administrative remedies before filing a habeas corpus petition was judicially created; it is not a statutory requirement.” Brown v. Rison, 895 F.2d 533, 535 (9th Cir. 1990), overruled on other grounds by Reno v. Koray, 515 U.S. 50, 54-55 (1995). “Nevertheless, ‘[p]rudential limits, like jurisdictional limits and limits on venue, are ordinarily not optional.'” Puga v. Chertoff, 488 F.3d 812, 815 (9th Cir. 2007) (quoting Castro-Cortez v. INS, 239 F.3d 1037, 1047 (9th Cir. 2001), abrogated on other grounds by Fernandez-Vargas v. Gonzales, 548 U.S. 30 (2006)). Here, Respondent concedes that Petitioner properly exhausted his administrative remedies prior to filing the instant § 2241 petition.
The Ninth Circuit has made clear that jurisdiction over a petition filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241 exists in a federal prison setting in three circumstances: (1) when a prisoner “claims that he has been denied good time credits without due process”; (2) when a prisoner claims “that he has been subjected to greater restrictions of his liberty, such as disciplinary segregation, without due process”; and (3) when a prisoner “seeks expungement of a disciplinary finding from his record if expungement is likely to accelerate the prisoner's eligibility for parole.” Bostic v. Carlson, 884 F.2d 1267, 1269 (9th Cir. 1989), overruled on other grounds by Nettles v. Grounds, 830 F.3d 922 (9th Cir. 2016). Thus, a prisoner may only utilize a § 2241 petition when he is challenging the fact or duration of his custody with the traditional remedy being immediate or sooner release from custody. Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 484 (1973).
Here Petitioner asserts in Ground One that his due process rights were violated during a disciplinary hearing for IR No. 3025608 that resulted in loss of good conduct time. (Doc. 1 at 4). Petitioner contends that he was denied: 1) access to documentary evidence relied upon by the DHO; 2) exculpatory video recordings; 3) exculpatory witnesses; and 4) a “NIK” test confirming...
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