Smith v. State Parole Bd.

• Decision Date: 30 November 1983
• Citation: 456 N.E.2d 784,17 Mass.App.Ct. 145
• Parties: Richard J. SMITH v. STATE PAROLE BOARD et al. 1
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

Page 784

456 N.E.2d 784

17 Mass.App.Ct. 145

Richard J. SMITH v. STATE PAROLE BOARD et al. ¹

Appeals Court of Massachusetts Middlesex.

Argued Sept. 13, 1983.

Decided Nov. 30, 1983.

Frank R. Herrmann, Boston, for plaintiff.

Linda G. Katz, Asst. Atty. Gen., for defendants.

Before GRANT, KAPLAN and DREBEN, JJ.

KAPLAN, Justice.

The facts are agreed, and were as follows. The plaintiff, Richard J. Smith, was convicted of rape on June 10, 1968, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than seven nor more than twelve years at M.C.I. Walpole. After serving some five years, the plaintiff was paroled on June 12, 1973. For the reason that the plaintiff's whereabouts became unknown, the Parole Board on August 30, 1974, cancelled his permit to be at liberty and issued a warrant for his arrest.

On June 13, 1975, the plaintiff was indicted for the crime of assault with intent to commit rape, committed on December 23, 1974. On March 23, 1976, he pleaded guilty to the indictment. This would of course be a further basis for parole revocation. After a sixty-day commitment of the plaintiff for diagnosis at the Massachusetts Treatment Center (see G.L. c. 123A, § 4), the court on the basis of report and hearing determined that he was a sexually dangerous person (SDP) and committed him to the treatment center for one day to life (id., § 5). The Parole Board was aware of this disposition but deferred executing its parole violation warrant. On April 26, 1982, after hearing, the plaintiff was ordered discharged from the center because no longer an SDP (id., § 9). Thereupon the warrant was served upon him, and at the date of the commencement of the present action, June 3, 1982, he was at M.C.I. Concord, awaiting a parole revocation hearing. It is understood that the hearing was held on June 10, 1982, and that the Parole Board revoked parole.

In this action commenced in the Superior Court, the plaintiff sought a declaration that the Parole Board acted illegally in postponing the execution of the warrant, i.e., in postponing consideration of whether parole should be revoked. Pressing statutory and constitutional grounds, the plaintiff argues that the warrant should have been executed, if at all, promptly following his indefinite commitment to the treatment center, and that it must now be declared that the period of the SDP commitment, some six years, counts against the remainder of the sentence for the rape and satisfies it. ² (There is also a suggestion that after the lapse of time the Parole Board should be held to have lost the power to execute the warrant.) The Parole Board denied any illegality. A declaratory judgment entered below in favor of the Parole Board, and we affirm. ³ We have to discuss § 149 of G.L. c. 127 (governing parole revocation warrants), and then the Constitution.

Statute. We set out in the margin the text of § 149, as appearing in St.1980, c. 155, § 6, and invite particular attention to its last three sentences. ⁴ Section 149 deals with cases where a prisoner, out on parole, is sentenced to be imprisoned for a further crime. It is helpful to consider three situations that bear some possible resemblance to the case at hand. (i) Execution of a parole revocation warrant in respect to the earlier offense (whether the proposed revocation is based on the commission of the second crime or on some other ground) must be deferred until the second sentence of imprisonment is served, and, if parole is then revoked, the time served on the second sentence is not to be counted as service on the first sentence; the remainder of the first sentence is due to be served. (ii) Suppose, during imprisonment on the second sentence, the person is determined to be an SDP and is committed to the treatment center, a commitment under G.L. c. 123A, § 6. ⁵ The period at the center counts against the second sentence. ⁶ If released from the center as being no longer an SDP before the expiration of the period of that sentence, the person is still obliged to complete the sentence according to law. ⁷ The revocation warrant is then executed, and if parole is revoked, service is required on the first sentence. (iii) Take the same case, but assume that the person's stay at the treatment center extends beyond the date of expiration of the second sentence. The second sentence is deemed served. By the terms of § 149 it appears that the parole revocation warrant is still executed at that expiration date. If parole is revoked, the time the person remains at the treatment center beyond that date apparently counts as service under the first sentence which becomes currently due. ⁸

The present case lies outside G.L. c. 127, § 149, and the cases just described because there was no sentence of imprisonment on the second offense; as permitted by G.L. c. 123A, § 5, the plaintiff was committed as an SDP following his guilty plea (see note 5). Argument is possible that the SDP process is "civil," and commitment of a person thereunder is not a "sentence," so that what § 149 has to say about deferring execution of the warrant is inapplicable. And a weak reference might be made to case (iii) above with respect to the indicated handling of an SDP commitment so far as it extends beyond the period of the second sentence of imprisonment. The Parole Board stresses the "criminal" aspect of the SDP process; and something might be made of cases (ii) and (iii) so far as the SDP commitment is treated in each instance as an equivalent of service under the second sentence of imprisonment.

The truth of the matter, as we see it, is that any characterizations of the SDP procedure in earlier decisions as quasi-civil or quasi-criminal were responsive to the particular contexts and are not really helpful in answering to the new context. ⁹ Word- chopping does not take us far. ¹⁰ Section 149 does not cover the present case for the understandable reason that c. 123A, § 5, was not enacted until c. 127, § 149, had taken form, and the Legislature has not stepped in to revise § 149 to deal one way or other with the § 5 problem. ¹¹ Thus the present situation is a casus omissus from § 149--it does not tell us when a parole revocation warrant is to be executed in the case of a § 5 commitment--and the maxim about strict construction of penal statutes is not useful. ¹² We can fairly say no more than this: We think, on a broadly analogical basis, that if the draftsmen of § 149 had before them the § 5 problem they probably would not have written the statute in such a way as to oblige the Parole Board to execute a parole revocation warrant at the outset of the commitment.

Constitution. Although the Parole Board did not violate any statutory duty, there remains the question whether it acted constitutionally. The Supreme Court held in Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972), that a paroled person by virtue of the due process clause was entitled to certain limited rights of notice, hearing, etc. in the conduct of a proceeding to revoke parole. Then in Moody v. Daggett, 429 U.S. 78, 97 S.Ct. 274, 50 L.Ed.2d 236 (1976), the Court faced the question whether "a federal parolee imprisoned for a crime committed while on parole is constitutionally entitled to a prompt parole revocation hearing when a parole violator warrant is issued and lodged with the institution of his confinement but not served on him." Id. at 79, 97 S.Ct. at 275. After detailed discussion, the Court answered that question in the negative (a 7-2 decision). "With only a prospect of future incarceration which is far from certain, we cannot say that the parole violator warrant has any present or inevitable effect upon the liberty interests which Morrissey sought to protect." Id. at 87, 97 S.Ct. at 278. ¹³

Moody is correctly taken to announce a general rule that "there is no constitutional right to a prompt parole revocation hearing when the parolee is serving an independent intervening sentence in the same jurisdiction." Hopper v. United States Parole Commn., 702 F.2d 842, 845 (9th Cir.1983); cf. Stefanik v. State Board of Parole, 372 Mass. 726, 730, 363 N.E.2d 1099 (1977). Upon a liberal reading of the Moody opinion, however, one can imagine situations in which an individual might come forward and establish affirmatively, on particular facts, a claim of constitutional deprivation resulting from postponement of consideration of the parole revocation. Interests that might be asserted by the individual could include protection against: Risk of loss of evidence usable in defense against revocation. Cf. Rhodes v. United States Parole Commn., 456 F.Supp. 17, 21 (D.Conn.1977). Loss of rights to amenities in prison because of the outstanding warrant. Cf. Reddin v. Israel, 561 F.2d 715, 717-718 (7th Cir.1977). Prejudice to chances of securing parole from the second sentence or entry into other rehabilitative programs. Ibid.; cf. Sutherland v. McCall, 709 F.2d 730, 733 (D.C.Cir.1983); Hopper, 702 F.2d at 845. ¹⁴ In a more encompassing sense, anxiety about the utative results of the revocation hearing to be later held. Cf. Sutherland, 709 F.2d at 733; Commonwealth v. McInerney, 380 Mass. 59, 67-68, 401 N.E.2d 821 (1980). ¹⁵

Of course, a hearing, if held early, might still result in a decision by the Parole Board to postpone final consideration of parole violation to the time of completion of the second sentence. In some cases, perhaps many, the State would have a definite interest in deferring the evaluation: given the predictive quality of the hearing, it may be thought best to hold it "at the time at which prediction is both most relevant and most accurate--at the expiration of the parolee's intervening sentence." Moody, 429 U.S. at 89, 97 S.Ct. at 280. ¹⁶ If early hearing were accorded, and parole revoked, it would not necessarily follow (as the plaintiff seems to suggest) that service of the second sentence would operate also on the first, for the State may in some, perhaps...