Jonah v. Carmona

• Citation: 446 F.3d 1000
• Decision Date: 02 May 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-16391.,05-16391.
• Parties: JONAH R., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Gilbert CARMONA, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)

446 F.3d 1000

JONAH R., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Gilbert CARMONA, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 05-16391.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted January 11, 2006.

Filed May 2, 2006.

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Robert J. McWhirter, Federal Public Defender's Office, Phoenix, AZ, for the petitioner-appellant.

Linda C. Boone, Thomas C. Simon, Office of the United States Attorney, Phoenix, AZ, for the respondent-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Stephen M. McNamee, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-04-01519-SMM.

Before NOONAN, W. FLETCHER, and CALLAHAN, Circuit Judges.

WILLIAM A. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner Jonah R. spent almost 35 months in detention before he was sentenced to a 30-month term of confinement under the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act ("FJDA"), 18 U.S.C. § 5031 et seq. The Federal Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") calculates sentences for persons, including juveniles like Jonah, remanded to its custody. Pursuant to a recently-adopted policy, the BOP refused to subtract from Jonah's sentence any of the 35 months he spent in pre-sentence custody. The district court rejected Jonah's challenge to this policy. We hold that juveniles must receive credit for pre-sentence custody and accordingly reverse.

I. Background

On June 17, 2001, Jonah was arrested after shooting at a law enforcement officer while on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation. He was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1153, "Offenses committed within Indian Country," with assault with a dangerous weapon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(3), and with discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). In October 2001, the district court transferred Jonah, who was 17 at the time of the incident, to adult status. We reversed in July 2003, holding that because the district court did not obtain Jonah's juvenile records as required under FJDA, 18 U.S.C. § 5032, it lacked jurisdiction to transfer him for prosecution as an adult. United States v. Juvenile Male, 336 F.3d 1107, 1110-11 (9th Cir.2003). After spending nearly 35 months in custody, mostly while designated as an adult, Jonah was finally sentenced pursuant to the FJDA on June 7, 2004. He received 30 months of custody plus another 30 months of supervised release.

This appeal concerns the BOP's refusal to subtract any of the 35 months of Jonah's pre-sentence confinement from his 30-month sentence. 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b) provides that "[a] defendant shall be given credit toward the service of a term of imprisonment for any time he has spent in official detention prior to the date the sentence commences. . . ." The FJDA does not expressly incorporate § 3585. However, before 1999 the BOP consistently applied § 3585 to juveniles when calculating their sentences under the FJDA. See Bureau of Prisons, Sentence Computation Manual ("Old Law" — Pre CCCA-1984), Program Statement No. 5880.30, at XII-4 (July 16, 1993), available at http://www.bop.gov (declaring that "[p]resentence time shall be applied to a[juvenile's] sentence the same as for an adult. . . .").

The BOP reversed course in 1999. A year earlier, a U.S. Virgin Islands district court, noting that "the whole purpose of treating minors as juveniles [is] to take them out of the criminal process[,]" concluded that a juvenile is not a "defendant" who serves a "sentence" for a federal crime within the meaning of § 3585. United States v. D.H., 12 F.Supp.2d 472, 474 (D.Vi.1998). The court held that the BOP lacked the statutory authority to apply § 3585 to juveniles. Id. at 475. The BOP revised its policy to accord with D.H. It now refuses to credit juveniles with pre-sentence time served. See Bureau of Prisons, Operations Memorandum No. 007-2003 (5880), at 1 (Feb. 19, 2003).

Jonah filed a habeas petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241 to challenge the BOP's current policy. Rejecting a magistrate's report and recommendation, the district court decided to follow D.H. It reasoned that § 3585(b) applies only to "a defendant who has committed an offense and has received a sentence of imprisonment." According to the district court, juveniles commit "acts of juvenile delinquency," not offenses, and they "receive a term of official detention," not imprisonment. Hence § 3585(b) by its plain terms does not intersect with the FJDA, and the BOP "cannot grant juveniles credit for pretrial custody.. . ." This appeal followed.

II. Discussion

We review de novo the denial of a habeas petition filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241. Taylor v. Sawyer, 284 F.3d 1143, 1147 (9th Cir.2002). Whether a juvenile whose status is adjudicated under the FJDA must receive credit against his or her sentence for time spent in pre-sentence custody is a question of first impression. We begin with a close look at the relevant statutes.

A. Statutory Background

The first statute governs the calculation of sentences for adult offenders. Congress first enacted what eventually became § 3585 in 1932. This statute, which was codified in part at 18 U.S.C. § 3568, provided that a convicted defendant's sentence "shall commence to run from the date on which such person is received at the penitentiary, reformatory, or jail for service of said sentence. . . ." Act of June 29, 1932, Pub.L. No. 72-210, 47 Stat. 381, 381. Although the statute did not explicitly instruct the BOP to credit convicted defendants with time spent in pre-sentence custody, federal courts, as a "general practice," "provide[d] defendants credit against their sentence for time spent in jail for lack of bail." Stapf v. United States, 367 F.2d 326, 328 (D.C.Cir.1966).

There was a judicially-created exception to this "general practice." For crimes that carried mandatory minimum sentences, courts believed that they lacked the statutory power to afford defendants pre-sentence credit. Stapf, 367 F.2d at 328. In 1960, Congress, both signaling its approval of the "general practice" and indicating an intention to make § 3568 more universally applicable, amended the statute to eliminate this exception. Section 3568 as amended provided that

the Attorney General shall give any [person convicted of an offense in a court of the United States] credit toward service of his sentence for any days spent in custody prior to the imposition of sentence by the sentencing court for want of bail set for the offense under which sentence was imposed where the statute requires the imposition of a minimum mandatory sentence.

Act of Sept. 2, 1960, Pub.L. No. 86-691, 74 Stat. 738, 738.

As the D.C. Circuit noted, Congress did not expressly make the amended § 3568 applicable outside the mandatory minimum context "because it assumed that a credit for presentence custody for want of bail would continue to be provided by sentencing courts as a matter of course." Stapf, 367 F.2d at 328. However, some courts misunderstood the amendment and held that credit was required under § 3568 only for those defendants whose convictions carried mandatory minimum sentences. See Sobell v. United States, 407 F.2d 180 181 (2d Cir.1969); Bryans v. Blackwell, 387 F.2d 764, 766 (5th Cir.1967). In part to correct this misunderstanding, Congress again amended § 3568 in 1966 to provide that "any person convicted of an offense" shall receive "credit toward service of his sentence for any days spent in custody in connection with the offense or acts for which sentence was imposed[,]" regardless of whether the sentence involved a statutory minimum. Bail Reform Act of 1966, Pub.L. No. 89-465, § 4, 80 Stat. 214, 217. We observed shortly thereafter that, "[a]s amended, Section 3568 . . . require[s] that the Attorney General give credit in all cases of presentence custody." Williams v. United States, 440 F.2d 684, 685 (9th Cir.1971) (emphasis added).

The final relevant change came eighteen years later when Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. The statute repealed § 3568, see Pub.L. No. 98-473, § 212, 98 Stat.1987, 1987 (1984), and replaced it with 18 U.S.C. § 3585. See id. ch. 227, 98 Stat.2001 (codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3585); see also United States v. Wilson, 503 U.S. 329, 334-37, 112 S.Ct. 1351, 117 L.Ed.2d 593 (1992) (discussing replacement of § 3568 with § 3585). Section 3585 provides, in relevant part:

A defendant shall be given credit toward the service of a term of imprisonment for any time he has spent in official detention prior to the date the sentence commences —

(1) as a result of the offense for which the sentence was imposed; or

(2) as a result of any other charge for which the defendant was arrested after the commission of the offense for which the sentence was imposed. . . .

18 U.S.C. § 3585(b). Section 3585 substitutes "official detention" for "custody," and it enlarges the class of persons who receive pre-sentence credit, but is otherwise quite similar to § 3568. See, e.g., Wilson, 503 U.S. at 334, 112 S.Ct. 1351 (holding that "the Attorney General must continue to compute the credit under § 3585(b) as he did under the former § 3568").

The second statute governs the treatment of juveniles. The Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act ("FJDA") was first passed in 1938 to remedy "the unsatisfactory existing law" that required "juveniles to be treated and prosecuted in the same manner as adults." S.Rep. No. 75-1989, at 1 (1938). The statute furthers rehabilitative goals by "removing juveniles from the ordinary criminal justice system and by providing a separate system of `treatment' for them." United States v. Frasquillo-Zomosa, 626 F.2d 99, 101 (9th Cir.1980). As originally enacted, the FJDA provided, in pertinent part:

In the event that the court finds [a] juvenile guilty of juvenile delinquency. . . it may commit the delinquent to the custody of the Attorney General for a period not exceeding his minority, but in no event exceeding the term for which the juvenile could have been sentenced if he had been tried and convicted of the...