Moss v. Clark
| Decision Date | 13 November 1989 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 88-7828,s. 88-7828 |
| Citation | 886 F.2d 686 |
| Parties | Lawrence MOSS, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Jeffrey J. CLARK, Respondent-Appellant, Prisoners' Rights Program, Public Defender Service, Washington, D.C.; Marline Jackson; Laverne Anderson; Michele Anderson; Lillie Mae Bedney; Phyllis Clemons; Barbara Davis; Sheila Davis; Cynthia L. Fogg; Rocina L. Garmany; Edna Goolsby; Deborah Hagans; Vera Hardin; Mavis Hobbs; Irene Jenkins; Shirley Y. Jones; Justine Kinard; Pauline Massenberg; Deborah Morris; Patricia Ann Paige; Jarita Reaves; Annie Robinson; Flossie Robinson; Saundra Sanders; Rita Mae Scheer; Connie Smith-Johnson; Ayesha Stackhouse; Mary Thomas; Sandra Walker; Tiajuana Washington; Mary A. Wilson; Mona R. Wilson, Amici Curiae, and DC Correctional Department, Respondent. John Michael BRAND, Jr., Petitioner-Appellee, v. Jeffrey J. CLARK, Respondent-Appellant, Prisoners' Rights Program, Public Defender Service, Washington, D.C.; Marline Jackson; Laverne Anderson; Michele Anderson; Lillie Mae Bedney; Phyllis Clemons; Barbara Davis; Sheila Davis; Cynthia L. Fogg; Rocina L. Garmany; Edna Goolsby; Deborah Hagans; Vera Hardin; Mavis Hobbs; Irene Jenkins; Shirley Y. Jones; Justine Kinard; Pauline Massenberg; Deborah Morris; Patricia Ann Paige; Jarita Reaves; Annie Robinson; Flossie Robinson; Saundra Sanders; Rita Mae Scheer; Connie Smith-Johnson; Ayesha Stackhouse; Mary Thomas; Sandra Walker; Tiajuana Washington; Mary A. Wilson; Mona R. Wilson, Amici Curiae. (L), 88-7832. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Bradley Lynn Kelly, Asst. U.S. Atty. (Henry E. Hudson, U.S.Atty., Paula P. Newett, Asst. U.S. Atty., Jay B. Stephens, U.S. Atty., John D. Bates, Asst. U.S. Atty., R. Craig Lawrence, U.S. Atty. on brief) for respondent-appellant.
Susan Beth Smith (John D. Grad, Grad, Toothman, Logan & Chabot, P.C., on brief) for petitioner-appellee.
Robert C. Hauhart, Janet A. Vecchia, Prisoners' Rights Program, Public Defender Service, on brief, for amici curiae.
David W. DeBruin, Theresa A. Chmara, Jenner & Block, on brief for amici curiae.
Before ERVIN, Chief Judge, and PHILLIPS and WILKINSON, Circuit Judges.
We review here the constitutionality of provisions of the District of Columbia Good Time Credits Act, D.C.Code Sec. 24-428, et seq., which limit District of Columbia good time credits to inmates in District of Columbia correctional facilities. Appellees claim that denying such credits to prisoners sentenced under District law yet housed in federal prisons violates their rights of equal protection and due process under the Fifth Amendment. The district court held the relevant provisions of the District of Columbia Good Time Credits Act unconstitutional. Moss v. Clark, 698 F.Supp. 640 (E.D.Va.1988).
We reverse.
On October 2, 1985, appellee Lawrence Moss was convicted in District of Columbia Superior Court of the D.C. offenses of burglary, assault, and theft. He was given a 9 to 30 year indeterminate sentence. On February 12, 1985, John Michael Brand, Jr. was also convicted in the District of Columbia of sodomy and assault with intent to rape. He was sentenced to 4 to 15 years imprisonment. Both Moss and Brand were remanded, pursuant to D.C.Code Sec. 24-425, 1 to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States, who placed them in a District of Columbia Department of Corrections facility. Due to severe overcrowding in District correctional facilities, appellees were promptly transferred to the authority of the Federal Bureau of Prisons where they have remained incarcerated. As a result of their transfer, appellees will receive good time credit according to the federal scheme and are no longer entitled to good time credits under the District of Columbia Good Time Credits Act ("Good Time Act"). By its terms the Good Time Act applies only to inmates housed in District of Columbia facilities. D.C.Code Sec. 24-428(a). 2
The District and federal good time systems differ in significant respects. Under the federal good time system, the Bureau of Prisons applies good time credits to the prisoner's maximum sentence which moves the mandatory release date forward, but does not affect the minimum term required to be served before an inmate becomes eligible for parole. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4161 (1982). Under the District scheme, good time credits are applied to reduce the minimum term of imprisonment, which determines the date of parole eligibility, as well as to reduce the maximum term of imprisonment, which determines mandatory release. D.C.Code Sec. 24-428(b).
Under the federal system, the Bureau of Prisons awards "good conduct" credits of five to ten days per month, based on the length of the sentence, to those prisoners who demonstrate good behavior. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4161. The amount is not awarded automatically at the beginning of a sentence, but credited monthly as earned. Under the District system, an inmate incarcerated in a District correctional facility is automatically entitled to a maximum of 10 days institutional good time per month. D.C.Code Sec. 24-428(a). The credits cannot be revoked without a hearing. D.C.Code Sec. 24-432 (1989 Replacement Vol.). In addition to these automatic good conduct credits, extra good time credits are available under both systems, but with some variations. See, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4162; 28 C.F.R. Secs. 523.1-523.17; D.C.Code Sec. 24-429 (1989 Replacement Vol.). 3 Although the parties disagreed over the exact number of days involved in available credits under the federal versus the District good time systems, the district court found a significant difference in the opportunity to reduce petitioners' sentences under the two schemes. For example, under the federal system, the earliest parole date for petitioner Moss would be April 1994. If awarded credits under the District scheme, Moss would face a parole eligibility date of either January 1991 or June 1992. Moss, 698 F.Supp. at 646.
In March and June of 1988, respectively, Moss and Brand filed petitions for writs of habeas corpus in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia alleging that they were entitled to the more generous credits of the District Good Time Act and that the computation of their credits under the federal system deprived them of equal protection and due process. The district court held the Good Time Act violative of equal protection to the extent that it created a distinction between D.C.Code offenders housed in District of Columbia correctional facilities and those housed in federal penal institutions. In the view of the district court, denying D.C. credits to the latter class bore no rational relationship to the governmental purpose of relieving overcrowding in District prisons. The court reasoned that the situs of incarceration was an irrelevant basis for distinguishing between D.C.Code offenders and that all inmates "should be subject to both the penalties and benefits, including good time credit, of the sovereign whose laws [they] violated." Moss, 698 F.Supp. at 642. This appeal followed. 4
Moss claims that the District of Columbia Good Time Credits Act violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause because it awards differing good time credits to two classes of inmates convicted of District of Columbia Code offenses on the sole basis of their assignment to a District of Columbia or federal correctional facility. We disagree. The Act's classification of inmates based upon their situs of incarceration does not violate a fundamental right or involve a suspect class and is rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest in alleviating overcrowding in District of Columbia prisons. Thus the classification is permissible under the equal protection clause.
Laws are presumed to be constitutional under the equal protection clause, City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 440, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 3254, 87 L.Ed.2d 313 (1985), for the simple reason that classification is the very essence of the art of legislation. See also Massachusetts Bd. of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U.S. 307, 314, 96 S.Ct. 2562, 3567, 49 L.Ed.2d 520 (1976). The legislature must be given latitude to grapple with the practical problems of governance; a court may not void "legislation which it simply deem[s] unwise or [i]nartfully drawn." United States R.R. Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166, 175, 101 S.Ct. 453, 459, 66 L.Ed.2d 368 (1980). See also Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 485, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 1161, 25 L.Ed.2d 491 (1970). This deferential stance gives way to a rigorous standard of judicial review only when the classification involves a fundamental right or a suspect class.
No strict standard of review is implicated here. See McGinnis v. Royster, 410 U.S. 263, 270, 93 S.Ct. 1055, 1059, 35 L.Ed.2d 282 (1973). Prisoners are not a suspect class. See Thornton v. Hunt, 852 F.2d 526, 527 (llth Cir.1988). The status of incarceration is neither an immutable characteristic, Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 686, 93 S.Ct. 1764, 1770, 36 L.Ed.2d 583 (1973), nor an invidious basis of classification, Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 216, 102 S.Ct. 2382, 2394, 72 L.Ed.2d 786 (1982). Moreover, it would be ironic for the law to confer special solicitude upon a class whose members had violated it. See id. at 219 n. 19, 102 S.Ct. at 2396 n. 19 (). Similarly, there is no fundamental right to parole or to release from a sentence of incarceration that has itself been lawfully imposed. See Greenholtz v. Nebraska Penal Inmates, 442 U.S. 1, 7, 99 S.Ct. 2100, 2103, 60 L.Ed.2d 668 (1979); Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 557, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2975, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974). In the absence of infringement upon a fundamental right or a line drawn upon the basis of some suspect criterion, a...
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