State ex rel. Bailey v. STATE DIV. OF CORP.

• Decision Date: 19 June 2003
• Docket Number: No. 31148.,31148.
• Citation: 584 S.E.2d 197,213 W.Va. 563
• Court: West Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of West Virginia ex rel. Randy BAILEY, Petitioner, v. STATE of West Virginia, DIVISION OF CORRECTIONS; James Rubenstein, Commissioner; Mark A. Williamson, Warden; Denmar Correctional Center; and William S. Haines, Warden, Huttonsville Correctional Center, Respondents.

584 S.E.2d 197

213 W.Va. 563

STATE of West Virginia ex rel. Randy BAILEY, Petitioner, v. STATE of West Virginia, DIVISION OF CORRECTIONS; James Rubenstein, Commissioner; Mark A. Williamson, Warden; Denmar Correctional Center; and William S. Haines, Warden, Huttonsville Correctional Center, Respondents.

No. 31148.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Submitted April 9, 2003.

Decided June 19, 2003.

Jason E. Huber, Esq., Forman & Huber, Charleston, Christopher W. Cooper, Esq., Parsons, for Petitioner.

Darrell V. McGraw, Jr., Attorney General, Charles P. Houdyschell, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Charleston, for Respondents.

PER CURIAM:

I.

FACTS

This case concerns the revocation of a prisoner's so-called "good time" for violations of prison rules. As discussed, infra, West Virginia Code § 28-5-27 (1984) allows for a one day reduction in the time an inmate must serve for every day that inmate is incarcerated without disciplinary problems. Randy Bailey, petitioner, entered a plea of guilty to 3rd offense Driving Under the Influence in November 2001 in the Circuit Court of Cabell County. The court ordered Mr. Bailey to serve an indeterminate sentence of 1 to 3 years in prison. The Order of Commitment indicates that Mr. Bailey's conviction date was November 14, 2001, with an "effective sentence" date of November 13, 2001.

Pursuant to West Virginia Code § 28-5-27(g) (1984), prison authorities calculated Mr. Bailey's minimum discharge date to be May 13, 2003. That is, provided that Mr. Bailey did not have any discipline problems, he could earn one day good time for each day served and be released in eighteen months, rather than thirty-six months. After initial processing at the Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County, Mr. Bailey arrived on March 7, 2002 at the Denmar Correctional Center near Hillsboro in Pocahontas County.

Apparently Mr. Bailey did not adjust well to prison life, and he soon ran afoul of several prison rules. In his first three weeks at Denmar, Mr. Bailey allegedly created a disturbance and refused an order, both of which are violations of prison rules. Prison officials neither segregated Mr. Bailey nor did they deduct any good time for these two offenses, although they did revoke certain other privileges. Within one week of these initial troubles, Mr. Bailey allegedly committed four additional rule violations, including allegedly threatening to "knock someone's head off," being disruptive and raising his voice in a loud and threatening manner, refusing an order to use a sign in/out log, and refusing an assigned work detail.

Prison authorities memorialized each of these last four offenses by preparing a document called a Violation Report, specifying the wrongful conduct and noting the particular rule allegedly violated by Mr. Bailey. On April 11, 2001, a "magistrate"¹ held a series of hearings on these offenses, and in each case the magistrate found Mr. Bailey guilty. The magistrate entered three separate orders, each of which reduced Mr. Bailey's good time by six months. By notice dated April 18, 2002, prison authorities informed Mr. Bailey that he had lost a total of 18 months of good time and that his new minimum discharge date would be November 13, 2004.

As of the date of the notice, April 18, 2002, Mr. Bailey had only served 156 days of his sentence, thus, pursuant to W. Va.Code § 28-5-27(c) (1984), Mr. Bailey had only earned, in his view, 156 days of good time. The magistrate's orders took away not only these 156 days, but also took away every possible day of good time that Mr. Bailey could ever earn under his original sentence. Thus the decision of the magistrate, if left standing, would require Mr. Bailey to serve the entirety of his 1 to 3 year sentence.² Mr. Bailey subsequently attempted to appeal the magistrate's decision to the Commissioner of West Virginia Division of Corrections, Jim Rubenstein, to no avail. Mr. Bailey now petitions this Court for a writ of mandamus, ordering the respondents to return any good time days beyond the 156 days he had served as of the date of the notice. For the reasons set forth below, we grant the writ.

II.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

Petitioner Bailey seeks a writ of mandamus. As this Court has noted on many occasions:

Before this Court may properly issue a writ of mandamus three elements must coexist: (1) the existence of a clear right in the petitioner to the relief sought; (2) the existence of a legal duty on the part of the respondent to do the thing the petitioner seeks to compel; and (3) the absence of another adequate remedy at law.

Syl. pt. 3, Cooper v. Gwinn, 171 W.Va. 245, 298 S.E.2d 781 (1981); accord, Parks v. Board of Review, 188 W.Va. 447, 425 S.E.2d 123 (1992)

. We bear this standard in mind as we review the arguments of the parties.

III.

DISCUSSION

Petitioner Bailey argues that the respondents violated the relevant code provision by taking from him over 547 days of good time when he had only been incarcerated for 156 days. In a nutshell, Mr. Bailey argues that a day of good time does not exist until an inmate has served a day without incident, thus it should be impossible for prison authorities to take away more days of good time than an inmate has served.

First we note that good time "is designed to advance the goal of improved prison discipline." Woods v. Whyte, 162 W.Va. 157, 160, 247 S.E.2d 830, 832 (1978) (citation and footnote omitted); accord, State ex rel. Valentine v. Watkins, 208 W.Va. 26, 32, 537 S.E.2d 647, 653 (2000)

. Perhaps no place else are fairness and predictability more valued than within the walls of a prison. Those incarcerated have little to look forward to, and little to motivate them, beyond a return to their normal, free lives on the outside. It is vitally important to the orderly operation of our prisons that inmates believe they will be rewarded for good behavior.

As this Court has stated: "[t]he purpose of awarding good time credit is to encourage not only rehabilitative efforts on the part of the inmate by encouraging the industrious and orderly, but also to aid prison discipline by rewarding the obedient." Woodring v. Whyte, 161 W.Va. 262, 275, 242 S.E.2d 238, 246 (1978); accord, State ex rel. Valentine v. Watkins, 208 W.Va. 26, 32, 537 S.E.2d 647, 653 (2000)

.

This Court has described good time as "a purely statutory creation" Woods v. Whyte, 162 W.Va. 157, 160, 247 S.E.2d 830, 832 (1978), and the Court has often explained that it is the legislative, and not judicial branch that gave life to this practice: "We repeatedly have held that `[c]ommutation of time for good conduct is a right created by the Legislature.' Syl. pt. 8, in part, Woodring v. Whyte, 161 W.Va. 262, 242 S.E.2d 238 (1978); accord, State ex rel. Valentine v. Watkins, 208 W.Va. 26, 32, 537 S.E.2d 647, 653 (2000)

." State ex rel. Williams v. Dept. of Military Affairs, 212 W.Va. 407, 414, 573 S.E.2d 1, 8 (2002).

However, once created by the state and granted to inmates, good time may not be taken away arbitrarily. As this Court has long held: "Good time credit is a valuable liberty interest protected by the due process clause, W. Va. Const. art. III § 10." Syl. pt. 2, State ex rel. Gillespie v. Kendrick, 164 W.Va. 599, 265 S.E.2d 537 (1980). Accord, syl. pt. 3, State ex rel. Goff v. Merrifield, 191 W.Va. 473, 446 S.E.2d 695 (1994); syl. pt. 2, State ex rel. Coombs v. Barnette, 179 W.Va. 347, 368 S.E.2d 717 (1988); syl. pt. 6, State ex rel. Williams v. Dept. of Military Affairs, 212 W.Va. 407, 573 S.E.2d 1 (2002).

As this Court explained in Gillespie, we have looked to the United States Supreme Court for guidance on this issue, and that Court has explained that the mere fact that good time is a legislatively created right does not permit the state to take it from a prisoner arbitrarily:

But the State having created the right to good time ... the prisoner's interest has real substance and is sufficiently embraced within Fourteenth Amendment "liberty" to entitle him to those minimum procedures appropriate under the circumstances and required by the Due Process Clause to insure that the state-created right is not arbitrarily abrogated ....

We think a person's liberty is equally protected, even when the liberty itself is a statutory creation of the State. The touchstone of due process is protection of the individual against arbitrary action of government, Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114, 123, 9 S.Ct. 231, 233, 32 L.Ed. 623 (1889).

Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 557-58, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2975-76, 41 L.Ed.2d 935, 951-52 (1974). However, c.f. Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995),

which held, with respect to segregating prisoners from the general prison population, that prisoners may not have a liberty interest in being free from punitive segregation.³

Or, as this Court stated in a more encompassing fashion, incarceration does not strip an inmate of all rights, or deprive him or her the expectation that the state will act in a reasonable and logical manner:

Our federal and state constitutions do not give liberty to people: they protect a free people from deprivation of their God-given freedom by governments. The entitlement to liberty and freedom must follow every citizen from birth to death, however mean or degenerate he may be viewed by his government or his peers at any given time along the way.

And so, the physical deprivation of his liberty must at every stage carry the burden upon the state to overcome the great presumption that he is a free man. His constitutional rights follow him into prison, or mental hospital, or military servitude, or wherever he is forced by the government to be.

Watson v. Whyte, 162 W.Va. 26, 29, 245 S.E.2d 916, 918 (1978).

Turning to the statute at issue, this Court has explained that, "[t]he provisions of West Virginia Code § 28-5-27 (1992) solely govern the accumulation of `good time' for inmates sentenced to the West Virginia State...