Nogales v. Becerra
| Decision Date | 09 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No.: 19-CV-2485-LAB(WVG) |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of California |
| Parties | JOSE NOGALES, Plaintiff, v. XAVIER BECERRA, Defendant. |
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION ON DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO DISMISS
[Doc. No. 15.]
Plaintiff, a state prisoner, claims his exclusion from recent changes to California state prosecutors' ability to charge 14- and 15-year-old defendants as adults violates his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Through this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action, he asks the Court to make this declaration and seeks the application of the statutory changes to himself and other excluded prisoners. As explained below, this Court RECOMMENDS that Defendant's motion to dismiss be GRANTED-IN-PART and the Complaint be DISMISSED without leave to amend.
Plaintiff was 14 years old in 2007 when he was tried as an adult, convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of shooting at an inhabited dwelling, and sentenced to 80 years-to-life in prison. Then, in 2019, the California Legislature enacted Senate Bill 1391, which amended California Welfare and Institutions Code section 707, "effectively bringing to an end to the practice of charging 14 and 15-year-old offenders as adults." (Doc. No. 1 ¶ 1.) However, the amendment did not apply to final convictions, and since Plaintiff's conviction was final by the time SB 1391 was enacted, "the State has repeatedly denied [Plaintiff's] request to have his case transferred to juvenile jurisdiction." (Id. at ¶¶ 3-4.)
Plaintiff alleges this denial constitutes a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because SB 1391 only applies to 14- and 15-year-old offenders who do not have finalized convictions and not persons, such as himself, whose convictions are final. Plaintiff also alleges it is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause that he continues to be subject to the provisions of California Penal Code section 3051, which allows for parole hearings only every 15, 20, or 25 years, while juvenile offenders covered by SB 1391 are not subject to such restrictions.
Although this is Plaintiff's first section 1983 lawsuit, he has previously filed two habeas petitions. The first petition was filed in this Court in 2011 and challenged the evidentiary findings in Plaintiff's underlying conviction. Nogales v. McDonald, No. 11CV2146-IEG(BLM), 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65752 (S.D. Cal. Feb. 22, 2012), report and recommendation adopted sub nom. Nogales v. McDonald, No. 11CV2146-IEG(BLM), 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65768 (S.D. Cal. May 10, 2012), aff'd, 624 F. App'x 608 (9th Cir. 2015).
The second petition was filed on March 20, 2019, in the San Diego Superior Court. It was identical to the present suit and alleged, among other things, that SB 1391 and California Penal Code section 3051 violated the Equal Protection Clause. The State trial court issued an order denying the petition with prejudice and addressed the merits of Plaintiff's arguments. Plaintiff then petitioned the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division One. The appellate court issued an opinion denying the petitionon the merits. Plaintiff filed a petition for review in the California Supreme Court, and the petition was denied on November 13, 2019. Plaintiff filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, which was denied on June 12, 2020.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) permits a party to bring a motion arguing that a complaint "fail[s] to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." The Court evaluates whether a complaint states a cognizable legal theory and sufficient facts in light of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a), which requires a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Although Rule 8 "does not require 'detailed factual allegations,' . . . it [does] demand[] more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)). More specifically, "a plaintiff's obligation to provide the 'grounds' of his 'entitle[ment] to relief' requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (citation omitted).
"To survive a motion to dismiss, a claim must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). A claim meets this requirement when the facts pled "allow . . . the court to draw the reasonable inferences that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Id. at 677 (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557). Although a claim need not be probable on its face, there must be "more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully." Id. Facts "merely consistent with a defendant's liability" do not equate to a facially plausible claim. Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557). Further, the Court is "not bound to accept as true a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation." Id. at 678. This review requires context-specific analysis involving the Court's "judicial experience and common sense." Id. at 678 (citation omitted). "[W]here the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than themere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has alleged—but it has not 'show[n]'—'that the pleader is entitled to relief.'" Id.
Taking Defendant's arguments out of order, the Court first addresses whether this action can be pursued at all under section 1983 or must be brought as a habeas corpus action. Defendant argues that Plaintiff's sole remedy is a writ of habeas corpus. The Court disagrees. Because success on the merits would not necessarily lead to Plaintiff's immediate or speedier release, the nature of his claims is therefore "outside the core of habeas corpus," and he may continue with this 1983 action.
1. Legal Background
Generally, a prisoner's claims are within the core of habeas corpus if they challenge the fact or duration of his conviction or sentence. See Nettles v. Grounds, 830 F.3d 922, 934 (9th Cir. 2016) (en banc); Ramirez v. Galaza, 334 F.3d 850, 858 (9th Cir. 2003). However, if success on the merits of a prisoner's claim would not "necessarily lead to immediate or speedier release from custody," they fall outside the "core of habeas corpus" and "must be pursued (if at all) in a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983." Nettles, 830 F.3d at 927-28; see, e.g., Borstad v. Hartley, 668 F. App'x 696, 697 (9th Cir. 2016) ().
In crafting jurisprudence on this subject, the Supreme Court "has focused on the need to ensure that state prisoners use only habeas corpus (or similar state) remedies when they seek to invalidate the duration of their confinement—either directly through an injunction compelling speedier release or indirectly through a judicial determination that necessarily implies the unlawfulness of the State's custody." Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 U.S. 74, 81 (2005) (emphasis in original). The Court's line of cases "taken together, indicatethat a state prisoner's § 1983 action is barred (absent prior invalidation)—no matter the relief sought (damages or equitable relief), no matter the target of the prisoner's suit (state conduct leading to conviction or internal prison proceedings)—if success in that action would necessarily demonstrate the invalidity of confinement or its duration." Id. at 81-82 (emphasis in original).
On November 8, 2016, California voters approved Proposition 57, a ballot measure that amended California's constitution to remove prosecutors' discretion to initiate prosecutions against minors directly in a court of criminal jurisdiction and instead required prosecutors to file a motion to transfer the minor out of juvenile court. See generally Davis v. San Joaquin Sup. Ct., No. 18-CV-2264-KJN(P), 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90071, at *8-9 (E.D. Cal. May 29, 2019). Here, if Plaintiff sought relief under only Proposition 57, then this case would fall outside the core of habeas corpus because Proposition 57 would only have entitled him to a parole consideration hearing rather than immediate release or the certainty of a lower sentence. See Smith v. Pearman, No. 19CV3683-SI, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 172923, at *3-6 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 4, 2019) (). However, Plaintiff seeks relief not under Proposition 57, but exclusively under California Senate Bill 1391.
In 2018, the California Legislature enacted SB 1391 which amended California Welfare and Institutions Code section 707 to altogether "'eliminate prosecutors' ability to seek transfer hearings for 14 and 15 year olds, [and] effectively rais[ed] the minimum age a child can be tried as an adult from 14 to 16.'" White v. Madden, No. 19CV8940-SVW(JDE), 2019 WL 7020682, at *1 n.1 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 19, 2019) (quoting B.M. v. Sup. Ct., 40 Cal. App. 5th 742, 746 (Cal. Ct. App. 2019)). Thus, Plaintiff, who was 14 at the time of his offense, would have fallen squarely with SB 1391's changes to the law and could not have been tried as an adult had this statutory change been in effect in 2007, when he was convicted. He now seeks the benefit of this change despite his conviction being final long before SB 1391 went into effect.
3. Discussion
Defendant contends that the...
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