Jones v. Ortiz
| Decision Date | 05 June 2019 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 19-451 (RMB) |
| Parties | RICKY LEE JONES, Petitioner, v. WARDEN ORTIZ, Respondent |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
APPEARANCES:
RALPH A. JACOBS, ESQ.
Jacobs Singer Kivitz & Herman LLC
34 Tanner Street
Haddonfield, NJ 08033
JESSICA ROSE O'NEILL
JOHN ANDREW RUYMANN
KRISTIN LYNN VASSALLO
Assistant United States Attorneys
Office of the U.S. Attorney
District of New Jersey
401 Market St., 4th Floor
P.O. Box 2098
Camden, New Jersey 08101
This matter comes before the Court upon the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus Under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 (Pet., ECF No. 1) by Petitioner Ricky Lee Jones, an inmate confined in the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey. ("FCI Fort Dix.") Petitioner claims that the Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") has denied him 195 days of good conduct time ("GCT"), in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, because the Bureau of Prisons refused to immediately act upon the amendment to GCT in the First Step Act ("First Step Act" or "the Act"), effective December 21, 2018. (Pet., ECF No. 1, ¶13.) Petitioner asserts that he should have been released from prison on March 10, 2019. (Id.)
Under 18 U.S.C. § 3006A, the Court appointed counsel to represent Petitioner. (Order, ECF No. 7.) Respondent filed its answer to the petition on March 25, 2019. ("Answer," ECF No. 8.) On April 26, 2019, Petitioner filed a reply to Respondent's answer. ("Petr's Reply," ECF No. 13.) Respondent filed a sur-reply. ("Sur-reply," ECF No. 15.) With permission of the Court, Petitioner filed a response to the sur-reply. ("Response to Sur-reply," ECF No. 16.) Respondent filed a reply to Petitioner's response. ("Respt's Reply to Response," ECF No. 18.) Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 78(b), the Court will determine the habeas petition on the briefs, without oral argument. For the reasons discussed below, the habeas petition is denied.
In 1996, Petitioner was convicted in the United States District Court, Southern District of Florida of: (1) possession of marijuana; (2) carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking offense; (3) being a felon in possession of a firearm; and (4) possession of an unregistered shotgun. Jones v. Gallegos, 180 F. App'x 32, 33 (10th Cir. 2006) (per curiam). On January 3, 1997, the district court sentenced Petitioner to a 228-months aggregate term of imprisonment. (Declaration of Christina Clark1 ("Clark Decl."), Ex. 1, ECF No. 8-3 at 3-4.) On January 23, 1998, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence. United States v. Jones, 132 F.3d 1460 (11th Cir. 1997) (table).
In 1997, Petitioner was convicted of assault in the United States District Court, Southern District of Georgia. United States v. Jones, No. 2:97-cr-0023-JRH-RSB (S.D. Ga.), ECF No. 41.2 On April 7, 1998, he received a sentence of 100-months in prison, to run consecutively to the 228-month term imposed by the Southern District of Florida. (Clark Decl., Ex. 1, ECF No. 8-3 at 6.) Petitioner satisfied his 228-month sentence from the Southern District of Florida on January 14, 2012 and began to serve the 100-month consecutive sentence imposed by the Southern District of Georgia. (Id. at 6-7.)
Under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b), the BOP calculated Petitioner's GCT by awarding 54 days of GCT for each year of incarceration served. (Clark Decl., Ex. 4, ECF No. 8-3 at 16.) Thus, the BOP awarded 54 days GCT for each year from January 14, 2012 through January 2019. (Clark Decl., Ex. 4, ECF No. 8-3 at 16.) The BOP expects to award 37 days of GCT for all time served between January 14, 2019, and September 25, 2019 (Petitioner's projected release date via GCT). (Answer, ECF No. 8 at 8.) According to the BOP, the total amount of GCT available to Petitioner for all time served in official detention as a result of his federal sentence is 415 days (54 x 7 + 37). (Clark Decl., Ex. 4, ECF No. 8-3 at 16.)
Prior to appointment of counsel, Petitioner filed a pro se petition under § 2241, arguing that the BOP violated his right to Due Process by failing to give immediate effect to the First Step Act's amendment to 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b), which would have entitled him to release from prison on March 10, 2019. (Pet., ECF No. 1, ¶13.)
Respondent contends Petitioner is not entitled to habeas relief because (1) Petitioner failed to exhaust his administrative remedies before filing the petition; (2) the First Step Act's amendment to 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) does not take effect until after the Attorney General completes and releases the risk and needs assessment system established under Section 101(a) of the Act, within 210 days of enactment; and (3) the BOP properly calculated Petitioner's GCT. (Answer, ECF No. 8.)
In reply, Petitioner contends that the First Step Act's amendment to the GCT provision in 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) became effective immediately upon enactment on December 18, 2018. (Reply, ECF No. 13 at 10-11.) Under the amended statute, Petitioner should have completed his sentence on March 10, 2019. (Id. at 11.)
Petitioner offers the following reasons why the amendment to § 3624(b) became effective immediately: (1) legislative history of the First Step Act repeatedly references the good time amendment as a "fix" to conform the statute to the original intent; (2) the 210-day "delay" provision of the First Step Act, which is the linchpin of the government's argument, was intended to apply only to the new programs established by the First Step Act; (3) the statutory context confirms that the delayed effective date should not apply to the amendment of § 3624(b); (4) the amendments in Section 102(b)(1)(B) of the First Step act use the phrase "this subsection" to mean subsection (g) of § 3624(g) governing new earned-time transfer to prelease custody; (5) courts construe legislation aimed at remedying prior drafting oversights to be immediately effective; (6) a delayed effective date would violate the Due Process Clause because federal prisoners have a protectable liberty interest in the statutory right to good time credit provided by 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b); (7) a delayed effective date would violate the Equal Protection Clause because it would require greater-than-intended incarceration for the class of well-behaved prisoners who, but for the delayed effective date, would be immediately released from incarceration. (Reply, ECF No. 13 at 11-19.)
Petitioner also raises a concern that Respondent's "statement of facts" in the Answer foreshadows the possibility that the BOP will later argue that March 10, 2019, is not Petitioner's release date under the Act. (Id. at 20.) This concern arises from Respondent's apparent failure to treat Petitioner's consecutive sentences as a single aggregate term under 18 U.S.C. § 3584; thereby depriving him of GCT for his 228-month sentence. (Id. at 21.) Respondent's position is that the BOP will not calculate Petitioner's sentence under the First Step Act until the expiration of the 210-day period for the risk and needs assessment. (Id.) If the Court determines that the GCT provision in the First Step Act is immediately effective, and the BOP then determines that Petitioner will only receive GCT under the Act for his 100-month sentence rather than his aggregate sentence, it could be months before Petitioner exhausts his challenge to the sentence calculation, depriving Petitioner of his liberty even further beyond his lawful release date. (Id. at 22.) Because he has already been harmed by the BOP's failure to award GCT under the Act, and he will be further harmed by the BOP's failure to calculate his release date immediately, Petitioner seeks interim relief of release from prison, subject to the terms of his sentence for supervised release. (Reply, ECF No. 13 at 22-23.)
In sur-reply, Respondent argues that the cardinal canon of statutory construction is that if a statute's words are unambiguous, "the judicial inquiry is complete." (Sur-reply, ECF No. 15 at 1, quoting Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253 (1992). Section 102(b)(2) of the Act provides:
EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by this subsection shall take effect beginning on the date that the Attorney General completes and releases the risk and needs assessment system under subchapter D of Chapter 229 of title 18, United States Code, as added by section 101(a) of this Act.
(Id. at 1.) Respondent contends the Court should not construe the statutory language "amendments made by this subsection" to mean "just one amendment made by this subsection," as Petitioner suggests. (Id. at 2.) Respondent distinguishes the statute discussed in Gozlon v. Peretz v. United States, 498 U.S. 395 (1991) because, unlike that statute, the First Step Act has an express effective date. (Id.)
In response to Petitioner's argument that there is no rational reason to delay the GCT amendment's effective date, Respondent maintains that delay gives the BOP time to prepare to recalculate sentences for the entire federal inmate population and to process those entitled to immediate release. (Sur-reply, ECF No. 15 at 2.)
Respondent asserts that Petitioner's constitutional claims are meritless. (Sur-reply, ECF No. 15 at 2.) First, Petitioner has no Due Process Claim because he has no entitlement to immediately benefit from the new computation method. (Id.) Second, there is no Equal Protection Claim because the new computation method applies equally to all inmates, no matter if their convictions occurred before, on or after the effective date of the amendment. (Id.)
As to Petitioner's release date, Respondent asserts Petitioner's argument is premature because the BOP has not recalculated Petitioner's release date under the First Step Act and will not do so until the amended version becomes effective. (Id. at 3.)
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