Wright v. Cuyler
| Decision Date | 24 April 1980 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 79-1223,79-1224,s. 79-1223 |
| Citation | 624 F.2d 455 |
| Parties | WRIGHT, Thomas, Appellant, v. CUYLER, Julius T. et al., Individually and in his official capacity as Superintendent of the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, Appellees. WRIGHT, Thomas, Appellant, v. ROBINSON, William B., Commissioner of the Bureau of Corrections of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; Cuyler, Julius T., Superintendent of the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, Pa.; Sims, Daniel T., Deputy Superintendent of Treatment of the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, Pa.; Reid, Lawrence, Director of Treatment of the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, Pa., Appellees. . Submitted Under Third Circuit Rule 12(6) |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Carl Vaccaro, John O. J. Shellenberger, Asst. Attys. Gen., Eastern Regional Director, Edward G. Biester, Jr., Atty. Gen., Philadelphia, Pa., for appellees.
Robert T. Cohen, John W. Morris, Pierson, Jones, Nelson & Shalita, P. C., Philadelphia, Pa., for appellant.
Before ALDISERT, WEIS and GARTH, Circuit Judges.
These are two consolidated appeals taken by Thomas Wright from the district court's dismissal of his two civil rights actions. The district court determined that Wright, a prisoner, was attempting to challenge the duration of his confinement, and was therefore required, under Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), to exhaust state remedies. We reverse.
Wright is a prisoner in the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institute at Graterford. He applied in June 1977 for admission to the home furlough program 1 but was rejected. According to Wright, he was told initially, contrary to fact, that he was not accepted for prerelease furlough because he had not yet served the necessary time on his sentence. App. at 54. 2 Wright applied again in August 1977, and again his application was denied. This time he was told that the prison authorities believed that he would still be a security risk if released on furlough, and that he should reapply after he had served another year in confinement. Id. at 55.
Wright thereupon filed two actions in district court, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The two actions were consolidated. 3 Wright alleged that he was denied due process because his application for home furlough was arbitrarily and capriciously denied. Named as defendants were Julius Cuyler, the Graterford superintendent; Daniel Sims, the deputy superintendent; Lawrence Reid, the Graterford director of treatment; and William B. Robinson, Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Corrections. Wright sought compensatory and punitive damages, as well as declaratory and injunctive relief to require the standards for admission to the home furlough program to be applied fairly to him, to require his admission to the program, and to prevent retaliation against him. The defendants moved to dismiss his complaints or in the alternative for summary judgment. On January 3, 1979, the district court dismissed Wright's equitable claims without prejudice to Wright's reasserting them in a petition for habeas corpus following the exhaustion of available state remedies, and similarly dismissed Wright's damages claims without prejudice to a later section 1983 action following the exhaustion of state remedies. This appeal followed.
The district court did not write any opinion setting forth its reasons for dismissing Wright's actions. However, the basis for the district court's disposition can be gleaned from the case citations appearing in its January 3, 1979 order from which appeal is taken. 4 The district court apparently The Supreme Court held in Preiser that:
based its dismissals on its conclusion that Wright, by seeking to secure admission to the home furlough program, was thereby affecting or attempting to reduce the duration of his confinement. Citing the rule announced in Preiser, therefore, the district court held that Wright must exhaust state remedies before bringing any federal action. We disagree.
when a state prisoner is challenging the very fact or duration of his physical imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a determination that he is entitled to immediate release or a speedier release from that imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is a writ of habeas corpus.
411 U.S. at 500, 93 S.Ct. at 184. The program into which Rodriguez was denied entry, which denial the Court held could not be challenged directly under section 1983, was described as follows:
(A) prisoner serving an indeterminate sentence may elect to participate in a conditional-release program by which he may earn up to 10 days per month good-behavior-time credit toward reduction of the maximum term of his sentence. Rodriguez elected to participate in this program. Optimally, such a prisoner may be released on parole after having served approximately two-thirds of his maximum sentence (20 days out of every 30); but accrued good-behavior credits so earned may at any time be withdrawn, in whole or in part, for bad behavior or for violation of the institutional rules.
411 U.S. at 477-78, 93 S.Ct. at 1830 (citation omitted). Thus Preiser involved a program that would enable the prisoner to be granted early parole and to be released from prison before the end of his sentence.
The Court distinguished cases that had allowed direct actions under section 1983 challenging the conditions in prisons:
The respondents place a great deal of reliance on our recent decisions upholding the right of state prisoners to bring federal civil rights actions to challenge the conditions of their confinement. Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.S. 546, 84 S.Ct. 1733, 12 L.Ed.2d 1030 (1964); Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U.S. 639, 88 S.Ct. 2119, 20 L.Ed.2d 1319 (1968); Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U.S. 249, 92 S.Ct. 407, 30 L.Ed.2d 418 (1971); Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972). But none of the state prisoners in those cases was challenging the fact or duration of his physical confinement itself, and none was seeking immediate release or a speedier release from that confinement the heart of habeas corpus. In Cooper, the prisoner alleged that, solely because of his religious beliefs, he had been denied permission to purchase certain religious publications and had been denied other privileges enjoyed by his fellow prisoners. In Houghton, the prisoner's contention was that prison authorities had violated the Constitution by confiscating legal materials which he had acquired for pursuing his appeal, but which, in violation of prison rules, had been found in the possession of another prisoner. In Wilwording, the prisoners' complaints related solely to their living conditions and disciplinary measures while confined in maximum security. And in Haines, the prisoner claimed that prison officials had acted unconstitutionally by placing him in solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure, and he sought damages for claimed physical injuries sustained while so segregated. It is clear, then, that in all those cases, the prisoners' claims related solely to the States' alleged unconstitutional treatment of them while in confinement. None sought, as did the respondents here, to challenge the very fact or duration of the confinement itself. Those cases, therefore, merely establish 411 U.S. at 498-99, 93 S.Ct. at 1840.
that a § 1983 action is a proper remedy for a state prisoner who is making a constitutional challenge to the conditions of his prison life, but not to the fact or length of his custody. Upon that understanding, we reaffirm those holdings.
We believe that a prisoner in Wright's position, who is challenging his failure to be admitted to the Pennsylvania home furlough program, is attacking not the ultimate duration of his confinement but rather the conditions under which he is confined. The administrative regulations define a home furlough as:
authorized leave of an inmate . . . for a period not to exceed seven (7) consecutive days for the purpose of furthering an inmate's rehabilitative programs (after which t)he inmate is required to return . . . at a designated time.
App. at 26. Although a prisoner's total number days actually spent behind bars can technically be reduced by the number of days during which he is out of prison on furloughs, it cannot be said that occasional short furloughs such as these reduce the duration of confinement in the same way as did the good time credits at issue in Preiser, where the credits would have had the effect of terminating the prisoner's sentence at an earlier calendar date. We therefore hold that the eligibility or lack of eligibility for temporary home furloughs in Pennsylvania is a condition of one's confinement, 5 which may be challenged directly in a section 1983 action without resort to habeas corpus and its attendant requirement for exhaustion of state remedies. 6
While the district court clearly rested its judgment on Preiser, see note 4 supra, the defendants also argued that Wright had failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. We will not reach the merits of this contention at this time because it is for the district court to resolve in the first instance.
We therefore hold that under the facts presented here failure of appellant to gain admission to the home furlough program was a condition of a prisoner's confinement, which can be challenged in a direct action under section 1983 without exhausting state remedies or suing in habeas corpus. Accordingly, we will reverse the judgment of the district court and therefore remand this case to the district court for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.
APPENDIX
The following are the relevant portions of the administrative regulations governing all the Pennsylvania prerelease programs, including home furlough, BC-ADM 805 (1977):
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...at 734-35. Other circuits, too, have interpreted the applicability of Preiser narrowly. Notably, the Third Circuit, in Wright v. Cuyler, 624 F.2d 455 (3rd Cir.1980), rejected a Preiser argument in a case in which a Pennsylvania prisoner brought two § 1983 actions alleging that "he was denie......
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