State ex rel. Engweiler v. Cook, CC 01C19211.

• Citation: 340 Or. 373,133 P.3d 904
• Decision Date: 13 April 2006
• Docket Number: SC S52169.,CA 117264.,CC 01C19211.
• Parties: State ex rel Conrad R. ENGWEILER, Petitioner on Review, v. Dave COOK, Director of the Oregon Department of Corrections; and Charles Kliewer, Administrator at the Offender Information and Sentence Computation Agency of the Oregon Department of Corrections, Respondents on Review.
• Court: Supreme Court of Oregon

Page 904

133 P.3d 904

340 Or. 373

State ex rel Conrad R. ENGWEILER, Petitioner on Review, v. Dave COOK, Director of the Oregon Department of Corrections; and Charles Kliewer, Administrator at the Offender Information and Sentence Computation Agency of the Oregon Department of Corrections, Respondents on Review.

CC 01C19211.

CA 117264.

SC S52169.

Supreme Court of Oregon.

Argued and Submitted September 8, 2005.

Decided April 13, 2006.

On review from the Court of Appeals.^*

Andy Simrin, Salem, argued the cause and filed the brief for petitioner on review.

Janet A. Metcalf, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondents on review. With her on the brief were Hardy Myers, Attorney General, and Mary H. Williams, Solicitor General.

Before CARSON,^** Chief Justice, and GILLETTE, DURHAM, RIGGS, De MUNIZ,^*** BALMER, and KISTLER, Justices.

GILLETTE, J.

This is one of two cases, both decided this date, relating to the life sentence for murder that petitioner presently is serving. The life sentence is for an aggravated murder that petitioner committed as a teenager. In this case, he seeks a writ of mandamus to compel the Department of Corrections (DOC) to permit him to earn credit under ORS 421.121 against his prison term for good prison behavior. A trial judge dismissed the writ, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. State ex rel Engweiler v. Cook, 197 Or.App. 32, 103 P.3d 1205 (2005) (Engweiler III). We allowed petitioner's petition for review and, for the reasons that follow, now affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the trial court.

In 1990, when petitioner was 15 years old, he raped, sodomized, and killed a 16-year-old female acquaintance. He was tried as an adult and convicted of aggravated murder, for which the trial court ultimately imposed an indeterminate sentence of life imprisonment.¹ In June 1999, the Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision (the board) held a prison term hearing. At the conclusion of that hearing, the board issued Board Action Form (BAF) # 1, which established, among other things, a 480-month "prison term" for petitioner. That term was based on a matrix that the board had created in May 1999 to deal with juveniles who had been convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.² After unsuccessfully seeking administrative review of BAF # 1, petitioner petitioned for judicial review in the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals ultimately dismissed the petition,³ Engweiler v. Board of Parole, 197 Or.App. 43, 103 P.3d 1201 (2005) (Engweiler IV). In Engweiler v. Board of Parole, 340 Or. 361, 133 P.3d 910, 2006 WL 949991 (2006) (Engweiler V), decided this date, we affirm that decision, holding that BAF # 1 was not subject to judicial review under ORS 144.335 (1999), amended by Oregon Laws 2001, chapter 661, section 1; Oregon Laws 2003, chapter 352, section 1.

The present case presents an alternative approach to petitioner's effort to obtain judicial review in Engweiler IV. Here, as noted, petitioner contends that he is entitled under ORS 421.121 to earn "credits" (known as "earned-time credits") against the 480-month prison term that the board set in BAF # 1, because he has complied with DOC's rules for appropriate institutional behavior.⁴ ORS 421.121(1) provides, in part:

"Except as provided in ORS 137.635 [concerning certain repeat offenders, not applicable here], each inmate sentenced to the custody of the Department of Corrections for felonies committed on or after November 1, 1989, shall be eligible for a reduction in the term of incarceration for appropriate institutional behavior, as defined by rule of the Department of Corrections * * *."

(Emphasis added.) Petitioner requested that DOC make reductions in petitioner's 480-month prison term in accordance with ORS 421.121 and, when DOC refused, he filed the present mandamus proceeding to compel DOC to make the reductions. The trial court issued an alternative writ of mandamus. DOC then moved to dismiss the writ on the grounds that (1) DOC may not deduct earned-time credits from minimum sentences; (2) the sentencing court did not commit petitioner to DOC custody under the sentencing guidelines; and (3) earned-time credits do not apply to inmates serving life sentences. The trial court agreed with DOC with respect to all three arguments and dismissed the writ.

Petitioner appealed the trial court's ruling to the Court of Appeals, arguing that the plain words of ORS 421.121(1) make his eligibility for earned-time credits mandatory and that none of the three bases for the trial court's ruling was meritorious. Specifically, petitioner argued that (1) he was not serving a mandatory minimum sentence (indeed, the Court of Appeals in Engweiler I had vacated the mandatory minimum sentence that the trial court first had imposed); (2) whether or not he was serving a guidelines sentence was immaterial under ORS 421.121(1); and (3) ORS 421.121(1) does not make an exception for inmates serving life sentences.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's ruling, but on another ground. In that court's view, ORS 421.121(1) provides for eligibility for earned-time credits against an inmate's "term of incarceration," and that phrase, the court held, refers only to the term of incarceration that a sentencing court imposes, not to a prison term that the board may impose. Engweiler III, 197 Or.App. at 40, 103 P.3d 1205. The Court of Appeals observed that petitioner had confined his arguments to his eligibility under ORS 421.121(1) for earned-time credits against the 480-month prison term that the board had set in BAF #1. Indeed, the Court of Appeals observed, petitioner specifically had disavowed any duty on DOC's part to reduce his life sentence, acknowledging that "no mortal can predict with precision the length of his life."⁵ Id. at 41, 103 P.3d 1205. Accordingly, the court held, petitioner was not entitled to earned-time credits under ORS 421.121(1) for any of the reasons that he had advanced. Engweiler III, 197 Or.App. at 42, 103 P.3d 1205. We address the issue of the Court of Appeals' rationale first.

The operative words of ORS 421.121(1) provide that "each inmate sentenced to the custody of the Department of Corrections for felonies committed on or after November 1, 1989, shall be eligible for a reduction in the term of incarceration for appropriate institutional behavior." (Emphasis added.) As a preliminary matter, we observe that there is no dispute concerning the following: (1) petitioner was "sentenced to the custody of the Department of Corrections" for a felony committed after November 1, 1989; (2) ORS 421.121(1) applies to "each inmate" so sentenced, subject only to an exception not applicable here; (3) ORS 421.121 contains no explicit exception for inmates convicted of any particular crimes, including aggravated murder, for inmates not sentenced under the sentencing guidelines, or for inmates sentenced to life imprisonment; and (4) the phrase "each inmate * * * shall be eligible for a reduction in the term of incarceration" (emphasis added) indicates that DOC's duty to reduce the "term of incarceration" is mandatory for each inmate who meets the criteria for such reductions elsewhere described in ORS 421.121. In light of the foregoing, we conclude, as did the Court of Appeals, that the answer to the question presented by this case turns on the meaning of the phrase "term of incarceration."

Under this court's statutory interpretation paradigm, our task is to discern the intent of the legislature. In so doing, we first consider the text of the statute, in context. If the legislature's intent is clear at that level of analysis, further inquiry is unnecessary.

As the Court of Appeals noted, the phrase "term of incarceration" is not defined in the statutes. At first blush, however, the phrase "term of incarceration" does not appear to be ambiguous or in need of definition or interpretation. The plain and natural reading of the phrase would seem to refer simply to the amount of time that a prisoner must spend in prison before being eligible for parole. That would make a "term of incarceration" unlike a "sentence," the latter being something that is uniquely within a court's province to impose and that can include more than the amount of time that a prisoner must serve before being eligible for parole.

The foregoing notwithstanding, the Court of Appeals, after an analysis of the context of ORS 421.121, concluded that the phrase "term of incarceration" essentially is a term of art that refers to a prison term imposed by a sentencing court and not to a prison term set by the board. In other words, in the view of that court, "term of incarceration" in ORS 421.121(1) means "sentence." The court reached that conclusion first by demonstrating that the phrase "term of incarceration" is used interchangeably in the sentencing and parole statutes with the phrase "term of imprisonment" and, then, by explaining that its review of those statutes led it to the observation that, when the statutes use either of those phrases, they "typically refer to one of two closely related concepts: (1) the amount of time that a sentencing court is authorized to impose for particular offense; or (2) the amount of prison time that a sentencing court actually imposes as part of a sentence for a particular offender." Engweiler III, 197 Or.App. at 37-38, 103 P.3d 1205 (emphasis in original).

The court's conclusion that the phrase "term of incarceration" is a term of art does not follow from those premises, however. The unremarkable fact that the sentencing and parole statutes routinely refer to a sentencing court's authority to impose a sentence that includes some period, some "term," of incarceration is not, in our view, persuasive evidence that the phrase "term of incarceration" necessarily refers only to (or is coextensive with) a sentence imposed by a court. Indeed, the...