Walker v. Prisoner Review Bd.

• Decision Date: 26 July 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-2818,84-2818
• Citation: 769 F.2d 396
• Parties: Clarence W. WALKER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PRISONER REVIEW BOARD, James R. Irving, Chairman, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 396

769 F.2d 396

Clarence W. WALKER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PRISONER REVIEW BOARD, James R. Irving, Chairman Defendants-Appellees.

No. 84-2818.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 4, 1985.

Decided July 26, 1985.

Vladimir Tastevich, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.

Scott Graham, Ill. Atty. General's Office, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before BAUER, POSNER, Circuit Judges, and MORTON, Senior District judge. ^*

BAUER, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff Clarence W. Walker is an Illinois prisoner who was denied access to his parole file by the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. He filed an action under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 against the Illinois Prisoner Review Board and its chairman. The district court found that the denial of access to his parole file violated plaintiff's due process rights. Plaintiff appeals the district court's further rulings that the Illinois Prisoner Review Board and its chairman are immune from damages for this constitutional violation and that the presence of certain newspaper articles in plaintiff's parole file is not in violation of the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. We affirm the judgment of the district court.

I

Plaintiff is an inmate in an Illinois prison serving consecutive prison terms of 100 to 150 years for rape, 100 to 150 years for armed robbery, and 19 to 20 years for attempted murder. The Illinois Prisoner Review Board (the Board) had denied plaintiff's application for parole on several occasions prior to February 16, 1979, when he filed a Section 1983 action against the Board and its chairman because he was denied access to certain documents in his parole file. The district court dismissed the claim, but on appeal this court held that the denial of access to his parole file violated the command of Rule IV(C) of Illinois' Rules Governing Parole ¹ that "[a] parole candidate shall have access to all documents which the Board considers in denying parole." Walker v. Prisoner Review Board, 694 F.2d 499, 503 (7th Cir.1982). This court further held that such access was an element of due process, id. at 503, and accordingly remanded the case to the district court to determine whether the Board considered documents to which plaintiff was denied access. Id. at 505.

On remand, plaintiff amended his complaint to allege that his due process rights were violated by the presence of four newspaper articles in his parole file and to request an award for damages from the Board and its chairman. The newspaper articles, which plaintiff had discovered after being allowed access to his parole file, reported information which purportedly linked plaintiff to between eighteen and twenty-six slayings similar to the crime of which plaintiff was convicted.

The district court held on remand that the Prisoner Review Board violated plaintiff's due process rights by previously denying him access to his parole file, but that the Board and its chairman were immune from damages for that violation. Walker v. Prisoner Review Board, 594 F.Supp. 556, 560 (N.D.Ill.1984). The district court further held that the presence of the newspaper articles in plaintiff's parole file did not violate his due process rights. 594 F.Supp. at 559. This holding was based on the district court's finding that the Board did not rely on the articles in deciding to deny plaintiff parole and upon the reasoning that, even if the Board did consider the articles, it was within the Board's discretion to do so. Id. at 558-59. Plaintiff now appeals the district court's holdings that the Board members are immune from suit for damages and that the presence of the newspaper articles in his parole file does not violate due process.

II

Plaintiff argues that the Board members are not immune from damages for denying him access to his parole file because this action was not adjudicatory in nature, and the Board members' immunity extends only to actions taken in the course of the Board's adjudicatory function. In support of this argument, plaintiff relies primarily on the Third Circuit's decision in Thompson v. Burke, 556 F.2d 231 (3d Cir.1977), which drew a distinction between adjudicatory acts, for which a parole board member is absolutely immune from damages, and ministerial or non-adjudicatory acts, for which a parole board member receives only qualified immunity. 556 F.2d at 240. This distinction, however, has not been adopted by this circuit, and we affirm the district court's ruling that parole board members are absolutely immune from damages when acting in the course of their duties as parole board members.

The United States Supreme Court has established a "functional comparability" test to determine whether executive officials who act in an adjudicatory capacity for an administrative agency are entitled to the absolute immunity from suit afforded to the judiciary. Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 512, 98 S.Ct. 2894, 2913, 57 L.Ed.2d 895 (1978); Trotter v. Klincar, 748 F.2d 1177, 1182 (7th Cir.1984). Under this test, a court must determine whether the "administrative agency shares enough of the characteristics of the judicial process that those who participate in such adjudication should also be immune from suits for damages." Butz, 438 U.S. at 512-13, 98 S.Ct. at 2914. The Supreme Court has expressly reserved the "question of what immunity, if any, a state parole officer has in a Sec. 1983 action," Martinez v. California, 444 U.S. 277, 285 n. 11, 100 S.Ct. 553, 559 n. 11, 62 L.Ed.2d 481 (1980), but this circuit has held that the Illinois Prisoner Review Board is functionally comparable to the judiciary and that therefore its members are entitled to absolute immunity for their official actions. Trotter v. Klincar, 748 F.2d at 1182 (challenged actions related to parole revocation); United States ex rel. Powell v. Irving, 684 F.2d 494, 496 (7th Cir.1982) (challenged actions related to denial of parole).

This circuit also has declined to accept a distinction between adjudicatory actions by Board members, which receive absolute immunity, and administrative actions, which, as plaintiff argues, should receive only qualified immunity. In Powell we noted that such a distinction between a parole board's functions had been made by the Third Circuit in Thompson v. Burke, 556 F.2d 231 (3d Cir.1977), but we stated that "[i]t appears that all the tasks of Illinois Prisoner Review Board members relate to their adjudicatory function." Powell, 684 F.2d at 497 n. 4. Similarly, in Trotter we stated that the Board members' actions which are functionally comparable to those of the judiciary "include not only the actual decision to revoke parole, but also the activities that are part and parcel of the decision process." Trotter, 748 F.2d at 1182. ² Accordingly, we are not persuaded that the distinction between adjudicatory and administrative actions which plaintiff urges us to make is desirable or even possible.

Plaintiff relies heavily on Harris v. Powers, 520 F.Supp. 111 (W.D.Wis.1981), which applied the adjudicatory/administrative dichotomy to the Wisconsin parole board's decision regarding the location of a revocation hearing. The district court held that this decision was not adjudicatory in nature and that therefore the parole officer was entitled only to qualified immunity for his actions. Harris, 520 F.Supp. at 115-16. As we noted in Trotter, our subsequent decision in Powell "casts doubt on the continued validity of the holding in Harris." Trotter, 748 F.2d at 1182 n. 4. For the reasons stated in this opinion, we remove any doubt about the holding in Harris by declaring that its acceptance of only qualified immunity for "administrative" acts of parole board members no longer has any validity in this circuit.

In Powell we held that Board members were entitled to absolute immunity from Section 1983 suits "for their official activities in processing parole applications." 684 F.2d at 495. This standard encompasses all actions taken by Board members in the course of their official duties, whether or not they may be classified as adjudicatory or administrative, and is consistent with the rationale underlying the doctrine of absolute immunity discussed at length in Butz, 438 U.S. at 508-17, 98 S.Ct. at 2911-16, and Powell, 684 F.2d at 495-97. The burden placed on Board members would be heavy even if they were exposed to liability only for "administrative" actions. Furthermore, it is not clear that a dichotomy of "adjudicatory" and "administrative" actions realistically could be made. Even assuming such a distinction is possible, the line of division between "administrative" and "adjudicatory" acts might only be delineated through burdensome litigation which would unduly disrupt the Board's functions. Moreover, we noted in Powell that safeguards apart from Section 1983 suits for damages, including review of parole denials through petitions for writ of habeas corpus, "adequately guard prisoners' parole rights without impairing the performance of Board members." 684 F.2d at 497. We therefore reject plaintiff's argument that the holding in Powell extends only to adjudicatory and not administrative actions by Board members. Accord Anderson v. Boyd, 714 F.2d 906, 908-09 (9th Cir.1983).

It is clear that the Board's decision to deny plaintiff access to his parole file was an official action made in the course of processing plaintiff's parole application. Therefore, the Board members are absolutely immune from suit for this decision, and we affirm the ruling of the district court so holding.

III

Although the defendants in this case are immune from suit for damages, plaintiff is not precluded from obtaining injunctive or declaratory relief for unconstitutional actions by the Board. See United States ex rel. Powell v. Irving, 684 F.2d 494, 497-98 (7th Cir.1982); Hansen v. Ahlgrimm, 520 F.2d 768, 769 (7th Cir.1975). Therefore, we now consider plaintiff's claims that the Board violated his due process...