Shockley v. Carroll

• Decision Date: 13 June 2007
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 06-211-SLR.
• Citation: 489 F.Supp.2d 397
• Parties: Sylvester SHOCKLEY, Petitioner, v. Thomas CARROLL, Warden, and Joseph R. Biden, III, Attorney General of the State of Delaware, Respondents.<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Delaware

489 F.Supp.2d 397

Sylvester SHOCKLEY, Petitioner, v. Thomas CARROLL, Warden, and Joseph R. Biden, III, Attorney General of the State of Delaware, Respondents.¹

Civ. No. 06-211-SLR.

United States District Court, D. Delaware.

June 13, 2007.

Sylvester Shockley, Pro se petitioner.

Loren C. Meyers, Chief of Appeals Division, Delaware Department of Justice, Wilmington, DE, for Respondents.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

SUE L. ROBINSON, Chief Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

Currently before the court is petitioner Sylvester Shockley's ("petitioner") application for a writ of habeas corpus filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. (D.I.1) He is incarcerated in the Delaware Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware. For the reasons that follow, the court will dismiss petitioner's § 2254 application.

II. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In September 1981, a Delaware grand jury returned a three-count indictment charging petitioner with first degree rape, first degree kidnaping, and third degree assault. Petitioner pled guilty in December 1981 to first degree rape, and the Superior Court sentenced him in 1982 to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. (D.I. 2, at A-1); See Del.Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4205(b)(2) (Rep1.1979).

In February 2005, petitioner filed in the Superior Court a petition for a writ of mandamus, seeking to compel the Department of Correction to calculate his conditional release date. The Superior Court summarily dismissed the petition, and the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed that judgment. Shockley v. Taylor, 882 A.2d 762, 2005 WL 2473792 (Del.2005).

Petitioner filed the pending habeas application on March 30, 2006. The State asserts that the court should deny the application as meritless. (D.I.13) Petitioner filed a traverse, which requests an evidentiary hearing and also provides additional arguments to support the claims raised in his habeas application. (D.I.16)

III. DISCUSSION

Petitioner's federal habeas application asserts two claims for relief: (1) House Bill No. 31 and the Delaware Supreme Court's decision in Evans v. State, 872 A.2d 539 (Del.2005) ("Evans II") violate the ex post facto clause of the United States Constitution; and (2) petitioner's good time and merit credit has been terminated or forfeited in violation of the due process and equal protection clauses of the United States Constitution. The premise for both claims is petitioner's belief that, in accordance with the Delaware Supreme Court decisions in Crosby v. State, 824 A.2d 894 (Del.2003) and Evans v. State, 2004 WL 2743546 (Del. Nov. 23, 2004)("Evans I") (withdrawn by Evans v. State, 872 A.2d 539 (Del.2005)("Evans II")), his parolable life sentence is for a fixed term of 45 years rather than for the term of his natural life and, therefore, he is entitled to conditional release pursuant to Del.Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4348. To place petitioner's claims in context, the court will briefly summarize the relevant Delaware law regarding good time credit, parole, and conditional release.

The Delaware General Assembly enacted §§ 4346 and 4348 in 1964. Section 4346 governs a prisoner's parole eligibility, and provides that an inmate is eligible to apply for parole after serving one-third of the term imposed by the court, adjusted for merit and good behavior credits. Del. Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4346(a). Release of an inmate on parole under § 4346 is discretionary. Evans, 872 A.2d at 554. Section 4348 governs an inmate's conditional release upon the earning of merit and good behavior credits. Del.Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4348. Conditional release of an eligible inmate under § 4348 is mandatory, and an inmate who has accumulated sufficient good behavior and merit credits must "be released from incarceration on his or her short-term release date, i.e., the maximum period of incarceration less accumulated good behavior and merit credits." Id.

The Delaware General Assembly enacted Delaware's Truth-In-Sentencing Act of 1989 ("TIS") on June 29, 1990, and it applies to crimes committed after that date. Del. Laws C. 130, § 3; Del.Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4354. TIS completely eliminated parole as a method of obtaining early release, but did not eliminate conditional release as a method for obtaining early release. Crosby, 824 A.2d at 899-900. Thus, to summarize,

[u]nder the system in effect before the enactment of the Truth-in-Sentencing-Act, good time operated in two ways to permit an inmate's early release from his term of incarceration. First, an inmate, in most cases, would have become eligible for parole under Del.Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4346 after serving one-third of the sentence imposed by the court, after the sentence was reduced by any good time award. Second, even if the inmate failed to obtain a discretionary grant of parole under Del.Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4346, the inmate could still obtain early release from his prison term, called "conditional release," solely by virtue of his accumulated good time credits. Conditional release is an early release mechanism that operates only if parole is not employed.

Snyder v. Andrews, 708 A.2d 237, 244 (Del. 1998). However, under the system in effect after the enactment of TIS, "the reduction of a sentence by earned good time credit [will only] result in conditional release under section 4348 for eligible inmates," not in release via parole. Evans, 872 A.2d at 554.

Finally, § 4346(c) expressly provides that, in order to determine the parole eligibility of an inmate sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, the life sentence is to be considered a 45 year term. Del. Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4346(c)(Repl.1979). Section 4348, the conditional release statute, does not contain any language regarding life sentences.

The issue here is whether § 4346(c)'s reference to a 45 year term for a life sentence permits a prisoner's parolable life sentence to be viewed as a 45 year term for the purpose of determining a conditional release date under § 4348. The Delaware Supreme Court has addressed this issue in three cases, all of which occurred after the enactment of TIS in 1990. The first time the Delaware Supreme Court faced this question was in Jackson v. Multi-Purpose criminal Justice Facility, 700 A.2d 1203, 1207 (Del.1997), overruled in part by Crosby v. State, 824 A.2d 894 (Del.2003), when the state court was asked to determine if a prisoner with a parolable life sentence imposed prior to TIS is entitled to conditional release under § 4348 when denied parole under § 4346. Construing the plain meaning of the statutes, the Jackson court held that a prisoner serving a pre-TIS life sentence with the possibility of parole cannot obtain conditional release under § 4348 because "[b]oth [§ 4346 and § 4348] were enacted by the General Assembly in 1964 ... [and][i]f the General Assembly had intended to permit those inmates serving life sentences with the possibility of parole to be eligible for conditional release under Section 4348, presumably it would have stated so expressly, as it did in Section 4346." Id. The Delaware Supreme Court explained that "[t]he absence of a corresponding provision in Section 4348 [defining a life sentence as a fixed term of 45 years] evidences a deliberate decision by the General Assembly to exclude those serving life sentences from qualifying for early release under Section 4348. This Court may not engraft upon Section 4348 language which has been clearly excluded therefrom." Id. (internal citation omitted).

The Delaware Supreme Court faced a slightly different issue in 2003 in Crosby v. State, 824 A.2d 894 (Del.2003), when asked to determine if a non-violent habitual offender's life sentence imposed after the enactment of TIS pursuant to Del.Code Ann. tit. 11, § 4214(a) violated the Eighth Amendment. The Delaware Supreme Court explained that its "ultimate resolution of Crosby's Eighth Amendment argument is dependent, in part, upon whether Crosby's life sentence as a habitual offender under section 4[2]14(a) is considered to be a term of 45 years, with the possibility of earning a substantial sentence diminution through good time credits; or is considered to be a natural life sentence with no possibility of reduction or release prior to death." Id. at 897. The Delaware Supreme Court proceeded to review the history of the habitual offender statute as well as the effect of TIS on Delaware's sentencing laws, and opined that § 4346 (parole eligibility) and § 4348 (conditional release) should be read in pari materia such that § 4348 incorporates the definition of a life sentence contained in § 4346(c) as being a fixed term of 45 years. Id. at 898-99. Then, after stating that, "to the extent that Jackson is inconsistent with this opinion, it is overruled," the Delaware Supreme Court held that "a person sentenced to life as a habitual offender pursuant to section 4214(a) is to be considered as having been sentenced to a fixed term of 45 years [under section 4346(c)] and qualifies for conditional release pursuant to section 4348, based upon good time credits earned pursuant to section 4381." Id. at 899, 902.

One year later, in Evans I,² the Delaware Supreme Court was again confronted with the question first presented in Jackson, namely, whether a prisoner with a pre-TIS parolable life sentence should be viewed as serving a 45 year term, thereby entitling the prisoner to conditional release under § 4348. Initially, the Evans I court decided that Crosby required an inmate's parolable life sentence imposed prior to TIS to be treated as a 45 year term for purposes of determining the inmate's qualification for conditional release. In response to the uproar following Evans I, the Delaware General Assembly enacted an amendment to the Delaware State Code, House Bill No. 31, which purported to overrule Evans I. Thereafter, the Delaware Supreme Court agreed to reconsider its decision in Evans I.

On April 11, 2005, the Delaware Supreme Court decided Evans II, in which it: (1) withdrew the Evans I decision; (2)...