Hill v. Owens

• Decision Date: 04 February 2013
• Docket Number: No. S12A1819.,S12A1819.
• Citation: 292 Ga. 380,738 S.E.2d 56
• Parties: HILL v. OWENS, Comr., et al.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

292 Ga. 380

738 S.E.2d 56

HILL

v.OWENS, Comr., et al.

No. S12A1819.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Feb. 4, 2013.

V. Robert Denham, Jr., Meredith Lee Whigham, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, LLP, Atlanta, Brian Kammer, Georgia Resource Center, Atlanta, for appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Atty. Gen., Ashley Ledford Culberson, Asst. Atty. Gen., Joseph J. Drolet, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Mary Beth Westmoreland, Deputy Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Department of Law, for appellee.

HINES, Justice.

This case concerns the management of prisons and inmates in Georgia, and its effects potentially sweep broadly across that subject. Specifically, this case concerns who is legally authorized to select the drug or drugs to be used in executions in Georgia and how that choice may be made. However, this case could also affect the remaining myriad of management decisions made throughout Georgia's prison system, and this case concerns when those decisions must be made directly by the Board of Corrections in its policy-making role versus when they may by left to the statutorily-granted management prerogatives of the Commissioner of Corrections and the Department of Corrections that he manages.

Warren Lee Hill was convicted of murdering a fellow inmate in the Lee County Correctional Institute by beating the victim with a board embedded with nails. The jury fixed Hill's sentence at death, and this Court affirmed. See Hill v. State, 263 Ga. 37, 427 S.E.2d 770 (1993). Hill was unsuccessful in his initial state habeas proceedings and in his federal habeas proceedings. See Turpin v. Hill, 269 Ga. 302, 498 S.E.2d 52 (1998) (state habeas appeal); Head v. Hill, 277 Ga. 255, 587 S.E.2d 613 (2003) (state habeas appeal); Hill v. Schofield, 608 F.3d 1272 (11th Cir.2010) (federal habeas appeal in which a three-judge panel vacated Hill's death sentence); Hill v. Schofield, 625 F.3d 1313 (11th Cir.2010) (vacating the decision of the three-judge panel and ordering a rehearing en banc); Hill v. Humphrey, 662 F.3d 1335 (11th Cir.2011) (denying federal habeas relief on rehearing en banc), cert. denied, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2727, 183 L.E.2d 80 (2012). Upon the completion of Hill's federal habeas appeals, the trial court filed a new execution order, setting the seven-day window for Hill's execution for July 18–25, 2012. See OCGA §§ 17–10–40(a) and (b) (providing for new execution orders setting a seven-day window for execution). The execution was originally scheduled for July 18, 2012, but it was rescheduled for July 23, 2012. See OCGA § 17–10–40(c) (directing the Department of Corrections to set a specific execution day and time). The change in the specific execution date was announced by the Department of Corrections at approximately the same time that the Department of Corrections announced that it was changing from a three-drug execution procedure to a one-drug procedure. As this was occurring, this Court denied Hill's application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal in his second state habeas proceedings. See Hill v. Humphrey, S12W1799 (July 23, 2012) (unpublished order).

In response to the announcement of the new execution procedure, Hill filed a complaint against the Board of Corrections (“Board”), the Department of Corrections (“Department”), and the Commissioner of Corrections (“Commissioner”) in the Superior Court of Fulton County. In his complaint, Hill alleged that the defendants failed to comply with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act in adopting Georgia's new execution procedure, and he sought a declaratory judgment, an injunction, a stay of execution, and a writ of mandamus.¹ The Superior Court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss Hill's complaint on the ground that the Administrative Procedure Act did not apply to the new execution procedure, and this Court granted Hill's application for discretionary appeal and his motion for a stay of his scheduled execution. For the reasons that follow, we affirm that dismissal.

1. The Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) sets forth special requirements for the adoption of certain kinds of legally-binding rules by various agencies within Georgia government.² Among these special requirements for rulemaking are giving 30–days' notice to interested persons, allowing for input by interested persons, giving notice to the General Assembly, and filing the final rule with the Secretary of State. See OCGA §§ 50–13–4, 50–13–6. Failure of an “agency” to comply with these requirements renders a rule invalid. See OCGA §§ 50–13–4(d), 50–13–6(a).

The APA specifically states that the “Board of Corrections and its penal institutions” are not “agencies” within the meaning of the Act. See OCGA § 50–13–2(1). Thus, unless provided for elsewhere in the Code, the APA's requirements would not apply to the defendants here. However, OCGA § 42–2–11 provides that the Board should establish certain “rules” and also certain “rules and regulations,” and it also provides that all “rules and regulations” made by the Board will be subject to the requirements of the APA. See OCGA § 42–2–11 generally and OCGA § 42–2–11(g) (providing for the applicability of the APA). Whether the Board's rulemaking activities should be subject to the APA is governed by OCGA § 42–2–11, because that statute is more specific than and was enacted later than the general exemption from the APA of the Board and the prison system provided for in OCGA § 50–13–2(1). See Union City Bd. of Zoning Appeals v. Justice Outdoor Displays, Inc., 266 Ga. 393, 399–400(3), 467 S.E.2d 875 (1996) (noting that a more-specific statute should be treated as an exception to a more-general statute); Jenkins v. State, 265 Ga. 539, 540(1), 458 S.E.2d 477 (1995) (“The rule for construing statutes which may be in conflict is that the most recent legislative expression prevails.”). See also Ga. L.1969, p. 598, § 1 (making rules and regulations adopted by the Board of Corrections subject to the APA); Ga. L.1964, p. 338, § 2 (creating the APA and exempting the Board of Corrections at that time from the APA's special requirements for rule making).

2. We first address Hill's claims relative to the Board of Corrections. For the reasons explained below, we conclude that the Board is not specifically required by statute to make rules governing the particular subject of lethal injection procedures and that the Board also has not abused its discretion in declining to exercise its general statutory authority to make rules governing any aspect of the prison system in declining to make such rules.

a. Title 42 of the Code provides as follows:

The board shall adopt rules governing the assignment, housing, working, feeding, clothing, treatment, discipline, rehabilitation, training, and hospitalization of all inmates coming under its custody.

OCGA § 42–2–11(c)(1) (emphasis supplied). Hill argues that, under this statutory duty to adopt a body of rules governing the “treatment” administered to inmates within Georgia's prison system, the Board is legally required to adopt rules governing executions, including the selection of the specific drug or drugs to be used at any particular execution. See 1 Richard J. Pierce, Jr., Administrative Law Treatise § 6.9, p. 502 (5th ed.2010). We disagree for several reasons.

We reject Hill's argument regarding the meaning of the “treatment” of inmates in the context of this subsection of the Code. Id. “Treatment” in the context of governing the prison system could have two meanings. The first is an extremely broad meaning encompassing all aspects of how inmates are “behave[d] ... toward” or “handle[d]” by prison staff, including an infinitely-wide range of detailed topics such as the respectful language to be used with inmates, the manner in which inmates are clothed, fed, and housed, and the manner in which inmates condemned to death are executed. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, p. 1906 (3d ed.1992). The second is a more-focused meaning, referring to various forms of “medical aid.” Id. We conclude that this more-focused meaning is the appropriate meaning within this portion of the Code for two reasons.

First, “treatment” here should be understood in relation to the other words in this subsection of the Code. “Words, like people, are judged by the company they keep.” Anderson v. Southeastern Fidelity Ins. Co., 251 Ga. 556, 556, 307 S.E.2d 499 (1983) (defining the rule of statutory construction known as “noscitur a sociis”). Also, this Court avoids interpreting statutes in a manner that renders any portion of them surplusage or meaningless. See, e.g., Walker v. State, 290 Ga. 696, 698(2), 723 S.E.2d 894 (2012). “Treatment” is one of a number of enumerated topics concerning which the Board must adopt a set of legally-binding rules, and those topics also include “assignment, housing, working, feeding, clothing, ... discipline, rehabilitation, training, and hospitalization.” Reading “treatment” as referring to every aspect of the broad topic of how inmates are behaved toward or handled would subsume the remaining enumerated topics, rendering them surplusage and essentially meaningless. Thus, the narrower meaning regarding various forms of the medical care of inmates is to be preferred.

Second, recent legislation enacted by the General Assembly reinforces our judgment that “treatment” in this context refers to various forms of medical care rather than the general topic of how inmates are behaved toward or handled. This legislation amended the specific subsection of the Code at issue here. The new language in the subsection does not assume that “treatment” broadly encompasses how inmates are behaved toward or handled such that “treatment” would subsume issues such as the “management” of inmates; instead, the new language imposes certain new rulemaking duties on the Board related to the “management and treatment of inmates.” OCGA § 42–2–11(c)(2)(B) (as amended by Ga. L.2012, ...