CLINTON ELDRIDGE V. CATRICIA HOWARD, ET AL, No. 21-15616 (9th Cir. 2023)
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Petitioner filed the instant habeas petition in district court. In the amended petition, Petitioner challenges, among other things, the United States Parole Commission’s 2019 decision to issue a three-year “set-off,” the time he must wait until his next parole hearing. The district court for the District of Columbia transferred the case to the District of Arizona, where Petitioner was incarcerated. That court dismissed Petitioner’s petition as an impermissible second or successive petition under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and denied Petitioner’s motion to reconsider.
The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment. The panel held that Petitioner need not obtain a certificate of appealability (COA) to appeal the denial of the instant petition because Congress did not define or include the District of Columbia Superior Court as a “State court” in 28 U.S.C. Section 2253(c), where it had expressly done so in that and other statutes. The panel held that Section 2253(c)(1)(A)’s language, “in which the detention complained of arises out of process issued by a State court,” does not include the District of Columbia Superior Court. The panel further held that the district court erred in dismissing the petition as an abuse of the writ when Petitioner could not have possibly raised the same claims in prior petitions. Thus, because no court has addressed Petitioner’s three-year set-off claims regarding his 2016 parole denial, he did not abuse the writ by raising the 2019 denial issue in his instant habeas petition.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus The panel reversed the district court’s judgment dismissing Clinton Eldridge’s amended habeas corpus petition, which the district court construed as brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, and remanded to the district court to decide the petition on the merits.
Eldridge filed the instant habeas petition in the District Court for the District of Columbia in February 2020. In the amended petition, Eldridge challenges, among other things, the United States Parole Commission’s 2019 decision to issue a three-year “set-off,” the time he must wait until his next parole hearing. The District Court for the District of Columbia transferred the case to the District of Arizona, where Eldridge was incarcerated. That court dismissed Eldridge’s petition as an impermissible second or successive petition under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and denied Eldridge’s motion to reconsider. Relying on the abuse of the writ doctrine, the district court concluded that Eldridge’s claims were substantially similar to the claims he raised in at least two other § 2241 petitions.
The panel held that Eldridge need not obtain a certificate of appealability (COA) to appeal the denial of the instant petition because Congress did not define or include the District of Columbia Superior Court as a “State court” in 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c), where it had expressly done so in that and other statutes. The panel held that § 2253(c)(1)(A)’s language, “in which the detention complained of arises out of process issued by a State court,” does not include the District of Columbia Superior Court. Prisoners whose detention arises out of process issued by a District of Columbia court are not required to obtain a COA to appeal the denial of habeas relief; thus, the COA jurisdictional requirement does not pose a barrier to Eldridge’s appeal.
The panel further held that the district court erred in dismissing the petition as an abuse of the writ when Eldridge could not have possibly raised the same claims in prior petitions. Looking to the substance of Eldridge’s claim—that the Parole Commission acted arbitrarily and capriciously in 2019 when it issued a three-year set-off—the panel concluded that Eldridge did not have a fair opportunity to raise this claim in 2016 or 2018 because the alleged violation occurred only after the denial of his 2016 and 2018 habeas petitions. Additionally, the district court did not address the merits of the set-off issues in its decision denying Eldridge’s habeas petition in 2016, even though Eldridge raised the issue. Thus, because no court has addressed Eldridge’s three-year set-off claims regarding his 2016 parole denial, he did not abuse the writ by raising the 2019 denial issue in his instant habeas petition.
Judge Bumatay dissented. He wrote that this court should have stuck with the consensus, embraced by the five circuit courts to consider the question, that the D.C. Superior Court is a “State court” under habeas law and prisoners challenging detention arising from a D.C. Superior Court conviction must obtain a COA before appealing. He wrote that, all told, textual and contextual evidence supports that overwhelming consensus. He wrote that the panel should therefore have required Eldridge to obtain a COA before exercising jurisdiction over this appeal, and that he would conclude that Eldridge does not deserve one. He wrote that in scheduling Eldridge’s 2010 and 2013 parole rehearings, the Parole Commission’s erroneous use of the longer (three-year) 2000 guidelines set-off period, rather than the shorter (one-year) 1972 guidelines set-off period, did not result in any increase in Eldridge’s incarceration, and that his ex post facto constitutional challenge to those denials therefore fails. He wrote that Eldridge’s claims related to his 2016 and 2019 rehearings, for which the Commission plainly used the appropriate 1972 guidelines, fare no better. He concluded that, even if the Commission had applied an ex post facto law, which it did not, Eldridge still can’t succeed because there was no basis to conclude that the longer set-offs under the new law would extend his actual period of confinement.
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