Moreland v. Federal Bureau of Prisons

• Decision Date: 01 April 2005
• Docket Number: No. CIV.A. H-04-3658.,CIV.A. H-04-3658.
• Citation: 363 F.Supp.2d 882
• Parties: Ellen Jeanette MORELAND, Petitioner, v. THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas

363 F.Supp.2d 882

Ellen Jeanette MORELAND, Petitioner, v. THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, Respondent.

No. CIV.A. H-04-3658.

United States District Court, S.D. Texas, Houston Division.

April 1, 2005.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Brent Evan Newton, Asst. Federal Public Defender, Houston, TX, for Petitioner.

James L. Turner, U.S. Attorney's Office, Houston, TX, for Respondents.

Order

HUGHES, District Judge.

The memorandum and recommendation entered March 30, 2005, by Magistrate Judge Stephen Wm. Smith is adopted as this court's opinion.

MEMORANDUM AND RECOMMENDATION

SMITH, United States Magistrate Judge.

This is a petition for habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, which has been referred to this magistrate judge for report and recommendation. (Dkt.3). The case involves the proper application of good conduct time (GCT) to the sentence of a federal prisoner under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b).

Background

On February 14, 1990, petitioner Ellen Jeanette Moreland committed two drug trafficking offenses in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for which she was arrested and then convicted on January 21, 1991. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin sentenced her to 210 months in prison, and she has been confined to the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, for most of that term. Moreland has actually been in federal custody since August 29, 1990, and has received 157 days jail credit against her sentence, which is not at issue here.

Moreland has apparently been a model prisoner, earning the maximum number of good conduct time credits each year under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b). Moreland contends that she is entitled to a GCT of 54 days for each year of the sentence imposed. She was sentenced to 17.5 years. The Bureau of Prisons disagrees, declaring that the credit is 54 days for each year of the sentence actually served. The Bureau's method of calculation, which requires numerous pages of mathematical explanation, yields 47 days of GCT each year of the sentence, seven days less than Moreland's method. The difference in calculation has a significant impact upon Moreland's expected release date. According to the Bureau, Moreland's maximum GCT is 810 days,¹ resulting in a projected release date of November 17, 2005. Moreland calculates her maximum GCT credit to be 945 days, resulting in her release on July 18, 2005, some four months sooner.

Resolution of this dispute hinges entirely upon a matter of statutory interpretation: does section 3624(b) award good conduct time credit based on the sentence imposed, or on time actually served?

Analysis

As a preliminary matter, the Bureau contends that Moreland has failed to exhaust her administrative remedies.² This contention has no merit, because "the exhaustion requirements of 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) do not apply to a properly filed section 2241 petition." Mayberry v. Pettiford, 74 Fed.Appx. 299, 299 (5th Cir.2003) (unpublished); see also Davis v. Fechtel, 150 F.3d 486, 487 (5th Cir.1998) (finding the Prison Litigation Reform Act does not apply to section 2241 petitions). While there is a judicially created exhaustion requirement with respect to section 2241, exceptions to the exhaustion requirement are appropriate where the attempt to exhaust such remedies would be patently futile. See Fuller v. Rich, 11 F.3d 61, 62 (5th Cir.1994). The Bureau has adopted a uniform policy to calculate the amount of good time awarded per year under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b)(1), expressed in 28 C.F.R. § 523.20. In light of the Bureau's established policy, it would be patently futile to require Moreland to continue seeking an administrative remedy. Thus, the court will review the merits of Moreland's petition.

1. Text of the Statute

Title 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) reads:

(b) Credit toward service of sentence for satisfactory behavior. —

(1) Subject to paragraph (2), a prisoner who is serving a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year other than a term of imprisonment for the duration of the prisoner's life, may receive credit toward the service of the prisoner's sentence, beyond the time served, of up to 54 days at the end of each year of the prisoner's term of imprisonment, beginning at the end of the first year of the term, subject to determination by the Bureau of Prisons that, during that year, the prisoner has displayed exemplary compliance with institutional disciplinary regulations.

18 U.S.C. § 3624(b)(1) (emphasis supplied).

The key phrase in the italicized passage is "term of imprisonment," which is not defined by the statute. Moreland argues this phrase means "sentenced imposed," so that the maximum credit she could earn for good conduct is 54 days for each of the 17.5 years of her sentence. On the other hand, the government contends this phrase means "time served," which, after a complex mathematical computation requiring dozens of pages of explanation in the Bureau's Sentence Computation Manual yields a maximum of 47 days for each year of the sentence.

When construing a statute, a court must consider the statute as a whole. Crandon v. United States, 494 U.S. 152, 158, 110 S.Ct. 997, 108 L.Ed.2d 132 (1990). A fundamental canon of statutory construction is that identical terms within an act should be given the same meaning. Sorenson v. Sec'y of Treasury, 475 U.S. 851, 860, 106 S.Ct. 1600, 89 L.Ed.2d 855 (1986). This rule of statutory consistency is at its "most vigorous" when a term is repeated within a given sentence. Brown v. Gardner, 513 U.S. 115, 118, 115 S.Ct. 552, 130 L.Ed.2d 462 (1994).

The phrase "term of imprisonment" appears three times in the first sentence of section 3624(b)(1). On the first two occasions, the phrase undoubtedly means sentence imposed, as several courts have observed. See, e.g., White v. Scibana, 390 F.3d 997, 1001 (7th Cir.2004); Esposito v. Ashcroft, 2005 WL 119872, at *4 (N.D.W.Va.2005); Williams v. Dewalt, 351 F.Supp.2d 412, 416 (D.Md.2004). There is no evidence that Congress intended a different meaning the third time around. On the contrary, Congress used the phrase "time served" elsewhere within this same contested sentence, fully demonstrating its drafting ability to distinguish between the two terms when it chose to do so. See, e.g., Williams, 351 F.Supp.2d at 417 ("In drafting § 3624(b), Congress used the phrase `time served' when it meant time served"). The Bureau's interpretation not only renders the third instance of the phrase "term of imprisonment" inconsistent with its plain meaning in the two previous appearances, but also transforms its meaning to that of a contrary phrase within the same sentence. Sloppy draftsmanship is not difficult to find in the U.S. Code,³ but the Bureau's interpretation plumbs new depths of linguistic confusion.

To be sure, broadening the focus to the rest of section 3624 does reveal a single instance in which "term of imprisonment" is apparently intended to denote "time served."⁴ Against this lone example, three other instances may be cited in which the phrase in question can only mean "sentence imposed."⁵ While the Bureau may be correct that Congress was not perfectly consistent in other parts of section 3624, the canon of statutory consistency favors Moreland's interpretation, at least insofar as subsection (b) is concerned.

The Bureau points to other language in the contested sentence to support its position: "up to 54 days at the end of each year of the prisoner's term of imprisonment." 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b)(1) (emphasis supplied). According to the Bureau, this language can only mean that the GCT must be applied after the end of each year. But this argument is linguistically unsound, because it incorrectly interprets "at" to mean "after." No support for this substitution has been found in any standard dictionary. On the contrary, Webster's first definition of "at" is: "1. on; in; near; by; as, at the office, at heart." Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary 17 (2d ed.1983). In fact, the same dictionary explicitly equates the two phrases "at the end" and "in the end." Id. at 599. Substituting the listed prepositions in, near, or by in place of at in the contested passage clearly conveys the meaning that GCT is to be applied during the last part of the year, not after the year is over.

Normal usage readily demonstrates that the prepositions "at" and "after" are not fungible, and generate quite different meanings when used in a temporal setting. King Lear dies at the end of the play, not after the play. The fat lady sings at the end of the opera, not after it. The two-minute warning occurs at the end of the game, not after it. Halloween comes at the end of October, not after. This common usage of "at" extends to non-temporal settings as well: the barb is at the end of the hook; the tail is at the end of the dog; the filter is at the end of the cigarette; the caboose is at the end of the train. In each of these examples, the first item mentioned is included within the object referenced, not beyond or outside it.

An analogy based on a familiar childhood experience illustrates the point. A child is told that if she is "nice" she will be rewarded with Christmas presents at the end of the year. Christmas morning comes, the child has been nice, but no presents are under the tree. The child's parents (doubtless BOP employees) tell the distraught child that Christmas really comes after the end of the year, and so the presents are not due until January. In like fashion, the Bureau's position can fairly be dubbed the "Christmas-in-January" approach to GCT.

Moreland interprets the phrase "at the end of each year" to mean that good conduct time credit is included within the last part of the year, like so:

311 days actually served + 54 days GCT = one year of the sentence imposed.

Like Christmas in December, this "inclusive year" approach best conforms to our ordinary understanding of these words. The Bureau's interpretation conflicts with plain meaning, normal usage, and, as we have seen, accepted canons of...