Wilson v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 25 July 2008
• Docket Number: No. 07-6347.,07-6347.
• Citation: 535 F.3d 262
• Parties: Lee O. WILSON, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gene JOHNSON, Director of Department of Corrections; Doris Ewing, court and Legal Supervisor; Edward Meeks, Superintendent Cold Springs Work Center, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

535 F.3d 262

Lee O. WILSON, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gene JOHNSON, Director of Department of Corrections; Doris Ewing, court and Legal Supervisor; Edward Meeks, Superintendent Cold Springs Work Center, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 07-6347.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: March 18, 2008.

Decided: July 25, 2008.

ARGUED: Katherine Crawford, Duke University School of Law, Durham, North Carolina, for Appellant. Stephen R. McCullough, Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Erwin Chemerinsky, James E. Coleman, Jr.; Students

Sachin Bansal, Virginia Duke, Catherine Tucker, Kish Vinayagamoorthy, Duke University School of Law, Durham, North Carolina, for Appellant. Robert F. McDonnell, Attorney General of Virginia, William E. Thro, State Solicitor General, Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellees.

Before MICHAEL and GREGORY, Circuit Judges, and David R. HANSEN, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, sitting by designation.

Reversed and remanded by published opinion, Judge GREGORY wrote the opinion, in which Judge MICHAEL joined. Senior Judge HANSEN wrote a dissenting opinion.

OPINION

GREGORY, Circuit Judge:

The Appellant, Lee O. Wilson, Jr., ("Wilson") appeals the district court's decision to dismiss his 42 U.S.C. § 1983¹ action against the Virginia Department of Corrections. Wilson claims that he is entitled to monetary damages for unconstitutional imprisonment because Virginia improperly extended the length of his prison sentence. The district court, citing to the Supreme Court's decision in Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486-87, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), dismissed Wilson's wrongful incarceration claim sua sponte stating that a "§ 1983 damages claim for unconstitutional imprisonment is not appropriate unless and until plaintiff's conviction or sentence `has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254.'" (J.A. 14.) This mandate is referred to as the "favorable termination" requirement.

Wilson contends that his § 1983 action is proper because success on that claim will not impugn his underlying conviction or sentence. Assuming, as we must, that Wilson's well-pleaded allegations are true, we agree that his claim is viable and as such, the district court's decision is reversed and remanded.

I.

Wilson was arrested on March 24, 2005, for grand larceny of a motor vehicle. On July 26, 2005, he pled guilty to the lesser charge of being an accessory after the fact. Consistent with Wilson's plea agreement, the Virginia state court sentenced him to twelve months imprisonment, six months of which was suspended due to time served. According to the Virginia Department of Corrections' ("VDOC") Uniform Commitment Report, Wilson's release date was April 21, 2006. (J.A. 6.) However, on March 15, 2006, the VDOC changed Wilson's release date to July 17, 2006. Wilson filed grievances with the prison administration disputing his additional imprisonment. The VDOC did not initiate any formal administrative proceedings to resolve Wilson's complaint. After Wilson was released from prison,² he sued, seeking monetary damages of $105,000 for wrongful imprisonment. The district court dismissed Wilson's claim without prejudice, holding that Heck's favorable termination requirement barred his § 1983 claim and stating that Wilson "may resubmit his claims to this Court in a [habeas petition]." (J.A. 15.) Wilson appeals.

II.

The VDOC contends that Wilson's § 1983 claim is not cognizable because: (1) Wilson failed to satisfy Heck's favorable termination requirement prior to filing his claim, and (2) even if Heck did not bar Wilson's claim, because the VDOC properly calculated his sentence, Wilson's claim is moot.³ Wilson argues that a § 1983 action is the proper vehicle to bring his wrongful imprisonment claim because a habeas action would have been inappropriate as he does not seek release from custody. Thus, whether Wilson's § 1983 claim for wrongful imprisonment, filed after his sentence expired, is cognizable, is the sole issue before this Court. We review the district court's decision to dismiss Wilson's claim due to lack of subject matter jurisdiction, a question of law, de novo, see e.g., Church v. Attorney General of Com. of Va., 125 F.3d 210, 215 n. 5 (4th Cir.1997), taking all of his allegations "in the light most favorable to [him]." Giarratano v. Johnson, 521 F.3d 298, 302 (4th Cir.2008) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

Although the convergence of habeas and § 1983 actions has been addressed by the Supreme Court on several occasions, as the VDOC admits, it has sent "mixed signals" as to when an inmate or former inmate can pursue a § 1983 claim. (Appellee's Br. 4.) In Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), a group of state prisoners filed a § 1983 action alleging that the New York State Department of Correctional Services' denial of good-time credits violated their constitutional right to due process. The prisoners sought an injunction to force the prison to restore the credits, a remedy which would have reduced the prisoners' sentences. Despite the "literal applicability" of § 1983, the Supreme Court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the claim because the prisoners' "challenge is just as close to the core of habeas corpus as an attack on the prisoner's conviction, for it goes directly to the constitutionality of his physical confinement itself and seeks either immediate release from that confinement or the shortening of its duration." Id. at 489, 93 S.Ct. 1827. Because the plaintiffs "sought no [monetary] damages, but only equitable relief-restoration of their good-time credits," id. at 494, 93 S.Ct. 1827, the Supreme Court expressly limited its holding to the equitable relief sought by the prisoners.

Subsequently, in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974), an inmate filed a § 1983 class action on behalf of himself and other inmates alleging inter alia, that the disciplinary proceedings at the Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex violated their due process rights. Like the plaintiffs in Preiser, the prisoners complained that the prison had improperly denied them good-time credits and sought injunctive relief. The Wolff inmates, however, also sought damages. In holding that Preiser precluded injunctive relief—i.e., the restoration of good-time credits, the Supreme Court confirmed the propriety of the plaintiffs' § 1983 claim:

habeas corpus is not an appropriate or available remedy for damages claims, which, if not frivolous and of sufficient substance to invoke the jurisdiction of the federal court, could be pressed under § 1983 along with suits challenging the conditions of confinement rather than the fact or length of custody.

Id. at 554, 94 S.Ct. 2963. Thus, the Supreme Court concluded that the district court erred by not determining "the validity of the procedures employed for imposing sanctions, including loss of good . . . [because] a declaratory judgment as a predicate to a damages award would not be barred by Preiser." Id. at 554-55, 94 S.Ct. 2963.

Two decades after Wolff, the Supreme Court, in Heck, considered a prisoner's § 1983 claim seeking monetary damages from the state because (1) state officers participated in an "unlawful, unreasonable, and arbitrary investigation leading to [his] arrest," (2) state officers "knowingly destroyed" exculpatory evidence, and (3) "an illegal and unlawful voice identification procedure" was relied upon at trial. Heck, 512 U.S. at 479, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (internal quotation marks omitted). Recognizing that Preiser provided an "unreliable, if not an unintelligible, guide," id. at 482, 114 S.Ct. 2364, as to whether a § 1983 claim for monetary damages is proper when it fails to challenge the "lawfulness of conviction or confinement," id. at 483, 93 S.Ct. 1827, and concluding that Wolff "recognized a § 1983 claim for using the wrong procedures, not for reaching the wrong result (i.e., denying good-time credits)," id. at 482-483, 114 S.Ct. 2364, the Court analyzed the issue as a matter of first impression. After reiterating that § 1983 claims, unlike petitions for habeas corpus, do not require administrative exhaustion, the Court held that when a plaintiff's claims challenge "the lawfulness of conviction or confinement," id. at 483, 114 S.Ct. 2364, they are simply not "cognizable as § 1983 claims" id., because:

[w]e think the hoary principle that civil tort actions are not appropriate vehicles for challenging the validity of outstanding criminal judgments applies to § 1983 damages actions that necessarily require the plaintiff to prove the unlawfulness of his conviction or confinement, just as it has always applied to actions for malicious prosecution.

Id. at 486, 114 S.Ct. 2364 (emphasis added). Heck's holding precludes a prisoner from a collateral attack that may result in two inconsistent results—for example, a valid criminal conviction and a valid civil judgment under § 1983 for monetary damages due to unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment.⁴ Although not essential to its holding, the Supreme Court extended its analysis a step further by concluding that "the principle barring collateral attacks . . . is not rendered inapplicable by the fortuity that a convicted criminal is no longer incarcerated." Id. at 489 n. 10, 114 S.Ct. 2364.

Justice Souter's concurrence in Heck, joined by three Justices, recognized that the majority opinion could be interpreted to "risk the rights of those outside the intersection of § 1983 and the habeas statute, individuals not `in custody' for habeas purposes," id. at 500, 114 S.Ct. 2364, thus...