Scott v. Superintendent ( 2010 )

09-1451-cv
Scott v. Superintendent
1 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
2 FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
3 August Term, 2009
4 (Argued : March 25, 2010 Decided: August 2, 2010)
5 Docket No. 09-1451-cv
6 -------------------------------------
7 CHOICE SCOTT,
8 Plaintiff-Appellant,
9 - v -
10 SUPERINTENDENT BRIAN FISCHER, GLENN GOORD, RICHARD DE SIMONE,
11 AUDREY THOMPSON, JOHN DOES, Nos. 1-10 (members of the New York
12 State Department of Correctional Services whose names are
13 presently unknown to plaintiff),
14 Defendants-Appellees.
15 -------------------------------------
16 Before: SACK, RAGGI, and HALL, Circuit Judges.
17 Appeal from a judgment of the United States District
18 Court for the Southern District of New York (Naomi Reice
19 Buchwald, Judge) granting the defendants' motion to dismiss
20 plaintiff Choice Scott's action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C.
21 § 1983 and the Fourteenth Amendment. Scott alleges that the
22 defendants deprived her of liberty without due process of law
23 both by placing her on mandatory post-release supervision without
24 a proper judicial sentence and by failing to take action to
25 remove the supervision before or after she was rearrested for
26 violating the terms thereof. The district court granted the
27 defendants' motion to dismiss on the ground that all of the
1 defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. We agree that the
2 defendants are entitled to qualified immunity for all actions
3 they took prior to our decision in Earley v. Murray, 451 F.3d 714 (2d Cir. 2006), and further conclude that the plaintiff has not
5 pleaded sufficient facts to state a claim upon which relief can
6 be granted for any actions the defendants took thereafter.
7 Affirmed.
8 ROBERT THOMAS PERRY, Brooklyn, NY, for
9 Plaintiff-Appellant.
10 LAURA R. JOHNSON, Assistant Solicitor
11 General (Barbara D. Underwood, Richard
12 Dearing, of counsel), for Andrew M.
13 Cuomo, Attorney General of the State of
14 New York, New York, NY, for Defendants-
15 Appellees.
16 SACK, Circuit Judge:
17 Shortly before her release from prison, having served
18 all but a few days of her three-year sentence by a New York State
19 court for armed robbery, the plaintiff Choice Scott was informed
20 by the New York Department of Corrections that she would be
21 subject to a five-year period of post-release supervision
22 ("PRS"). PRS had neither been mentioned in her plea agreement
23 nor imposed by a judge, at sentencing or otherwise. It was
24 prescribed administratively, instead, by the Department of
25 Corrections, acting pursuant to N.Y. Penal Law § 70.45, a New
26 York State statute that required that sentences for specified
27 violent felonies be accompanied by a mandatory term of PRS.
28 This is an appeal from a judgment of the United States
29 District Court for the Southern District of New York (Naomi Reice
2
1 Buchwald, Judge) granting the defendants' motion to dismiss an
2 action brought by Scott pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the
3 Fourteenth Amendment. Scott seeks compensatory and punitive
4 damages for being given a term of PRS that was not imposed by
5 judicial sentence, and for her subsequent arrest and
6 incarceration for non-compliance with the PRS.
7 The district court granted the defendants' motion to
8 dismiss on the ground that each defendant is entitled to
9 qualified immunity because the right that Scott asserts was
10 violated was not clearly established at the time of the alleged
11 violation.
12 It is now indeed clearly established that such an
13 administrative imposition of PRS is unconstitutional. The
14 questions presented by this appeal are therefore whether that was
15 so at the time the Department of Corrections defendant-employees
16 administratively imposed PRS on Scott, and whether, following her
17 arrest and re-incarceration for violation of that PRS, Scott has
18 pleaded sufficient facts to set forth a viable claim that the
19 defendants violated clearly established constitutional law by
20 failing to take action to remove her administratively-imposed PRS
21 or to release her from custody. We conclude in the negative as
22 to both questions and therefore affirm.
23 BACKGROUND
24 On August 6, 1998, the New York State Legislature
25 enacted what is known as "Jenna's Law," N.Y. Penal Law
3
1 § 70.45(1). Under the law, certain violent felonies that had
2 theretofore been punished by the imposition of indeterminate
3 sentences1 were to be punished with a combination of a
4 determinate sentence and a mandatory term of PRS.2 Although PRS
5 was mandatory at all times relevant to this appeal, the statute
6 that so provided contained no requirement that a sentencing judge
7 impose the PRS or announce it, at sentencing or otherwise.3
8 Scott pleaded guilty to armed robbery in the second
9 degree on July 12, 1999. In accordance with a plea agreement,
10 she was sentenced to a determinate sentence of three years, with
11 no mention by the sentencing judge at the time of sentencing,
12 either orally or in writing, of a term of PRS. Not until July 1,
13 2002, a few days prior to her release from prison, did the
14 Department of Corrections inform Scott that she would be subject
15 upon release to a five-year period of PRS.
1
A law enacted in 1995 had abolished indeterminate
sentences for certain felony offenses, but did not require PRS.
Act of June 10, 1995, ch. 3, 1995 McKinney's N.Y. Laws 107, 108.
2
The terms and conditions of mandatory PRS can include
curfews, travel restrictions, substance-abuse testing and
treatment, and placement in residential facilities. People v.
Catu, 4 N.Y.3d 242, 245, 825 N.E.2d 1081, 1082, 792 N.Y.S.2d 887,
888 (2005). Violations of PRS can result in re-incarceration for
five years or the remaining period of PRS, whichever is less.
N.Y. Penal Law § 70.45(1).
3
Section 70.45(1) was subsequently amended in 2008 to
require that a sentencing court "shall in each case state not
only the term of imprisonment, but also an additional period of
post-release supervision determined pursuant to this article."
N.Y. Penal Law § 70.45(1) (2008).
4
1 On March 12, 2004, after Scott failed to comply with
2 the terms of her PRS, defendant Thompson, a parole officer,
3 recommended the issuance of a parole violation warrant for her
4 arrest. In October 2006, Scott was arrested in New Jersey
5 pursuant to that warrant, and extradited to New York. Following
6 a parole revocation hearing held on January 16, 2007, Scott was
7 sentenced to an 18-month term of imprisonment for violation of
8 her PRS.
9 Scott filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in
10 state court to challenge her parole revocation. On August 7,
11 2007, after she had been incarcerated at Rikers Island
12 Correctional Facility for some ten months, the writ was granted.
13 Scott was released shortly thereafter. She then brought the
14 instant action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that her
15 ten-month incarceration for violation of her PRS constituted a
16 deprivation of her liberty in violation of the Due Process Clause
17 of the Fourteenth Amendment. She named as defendants Audrey
18 Thompson, the parole officer who requested the arrest warrant for
19 violation of the PRS; Brian Fischer, then-Commissioner of the New
20 York State Department of Correctional Services ("DOC"); Glenn
21 Goord, the former Commissioner of DOC; Richard de Simone, the
22 Associate Counsel in Charge of the Office of Sentencing Review at
23 DOC; and John Does Nos. 1-10, described as agents, employees,
24 officers and servants of DOC who actively participated in the
25 actions alleged in the complaint. The allegations against
26 defendant Thompson were based on Thompson's procurement of the
5
1 arrest warrant against Scott, while those against the DOC
2 officials were premised on their role in adopting, approving, or
3 ratifying the policy of administrative imposition of PRS pursuant
4 to which individuals such as Scott were administratively
5 sentenced.
6 The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint on four
7 grounds: (1) that abstention was appropriate under the Younger,
8 Pullman, and Colorado River abstention doctrines; (2) that Scott
9 failed to exhaust her state remedies, as required by Heck v.
10 Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994); (3) that Scott's claims were
11 barred by the statute of limitations; and (4) that the defendants
12 were entitled to qualified immunity.
13 The District Court Decision
14 The district court rejected the first three of the
15 defendants' arguments. First, the court found abstention
16 inappropriate because, Scott having completed her sentence by the
17 time she filed the complaint, there was no possible State
18 resentencing proceeding from which to abstain. Next, the court
19 rejected the defendants' exhaustion arguments because Scott's
20 conviction had been vacated and the time to resentence had
21 passed, so there were no more actions to be taken in her criminal
22 case. Finally, the court rejected the defendants' statute of
23 limitations argument both because the statute of limitations was
24 tolled under Heck, supra, and because, even if it had not been,
25 the statute of limitations did not begin to run until Scott's PRS
26 was vacated in 2007.
6
1 The district court nevertheless granted the defendants'
2 motion to dismiss because it concluded that all of the defendants
3 were entitled to qualified immunity. The court based that
4 conclusion on the ground that the law governing administrative
5 imposition of PRS was not clearly established until this Court
6 decided Earley v. Murray, 451 F.3d 71 (2d Cir. 2006), cert.
7 denied, 551 U.S. 1159 (2007), noting that, prior to that time,
8 New York state courts had repeatedly ratified administrative
9 imposition of PRS. The defendants were therefore entitled to
10 qualified immunity for all actions taken prior to the Earley
11 decision.
12 The district court decided that defendant Thompson was
13 entitled to qualified immunity because the issuance of the parole
14 violation warrant in 2004 occurred before Earley was decided and,
15 even had it occurred afterwards, it would have been reasonable
16 for Thompson to rely on government computer records to determine
17 that Scott was on and had violated the terms of her PRS, and to
18 procure an arrest warrant. According to the court, defendants
19 Fischer, Goord, and de Simone, all then-current or former
20 officials of DOC, were entitled to qualified immunity because the
21 DOC policy of imposing administrative PRS that was applied to
22 Scott was implemented prior to 2002, and therefore prior to
23 Earley, and because Scott had not alleged personal involvement by
24 these defendants in any claimed constitutional violation after
25 Earley was decided.
7
1 Scott appeals from the district court's judgment with
2 respect to the DOC defendants, although she does not challenge
3 the court's grant of qualified immunity to defendant Thompson.
4 She makes two principal arguments. First, she contends that it
5 was error for the district court to conclude that the
6 administrative imposition of PRS was not clearly established to
7 be unconstitutional until Earley was decided. Rather, Scott
8 argues, the law has been clearly established since the Supreme
9 Court's 1936 decision in Hill v. United States ex rel. Wampler,
10 298 U.S. 460, 464 (1936), and therefore the defendants are not
11 entitled to qualified immunity with respect to any of the actions
12 alleged in the complaint. In the alternative, she argues that
13 her complaint alleges sufficient personal involvement in the
14 post-Earley period by defendants Fischer, Goord, De Simone, and
15 other high-level DOC officials, that dismissal was inappropriate
16 in any event.4
17 DISCUSSION
18 I. Standard of Review
19 We review a district court's grant, on qualified
20 immunity grounds, of a motion to dismiss made pursuant to Federal
21 Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) de novo, accepting as true all
4
Neither Scott nor the defendants ask us to review the
district court's ruling as to the Younger, Pullman, and Colorado
River abstention doctrines, exhaustion of her state remedies, or
the application of the statute of limitations. Accordingly, we
deem any such arguments waived and do not address those issues
further below. See Norton v. Sam's Club, 145 F.3d 114, 117 (2d
Cir. 1998).
8
1 material allegations of the complaint and drawing all reasonable
2 inferences in favor of the plaintiff. See Pena v. DePrisco, 432
3 F.3d 98, 107 (2d Cir. 2005); see also Slayton v. Am. Express Co.,
4 604 F.3d 758, 766 (2d Cir. 2010). We may affirm a district
5 court's dismissal of a complaint on any basis supported by the
6 record. Thyroff v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 460 F.3d 400, 405
7 (2d Cir. 2006); see also Leecan v. Lopes, 893 F.2d 1434, 1439 (2d
8 Cir. 1990) ("[W]e are free to affirm an appealed decision on any
9 ground which finds support in the record, regardless of the
10 ground upon which the trial court relied."), cert. denied, 496
11 U.S. 929 (1990).
12 II. Qualified Immunity
13 "[G]overnment officials performing discretionary
14 functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages
15 insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established
16 statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person
17 would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818
18 (1982); accord Pearson v. Callahan, 129 S.Ct. 808, 815 (2009).
19 To determine whether a right is clearly established, we look to
20 (1) whether the right was defined with reasonable specificity;
21 (2) whether Supreme Court or court of appeals case law supports
22 the existence of the right in question, and (3) whether under
23 preexisting law a reasonable defendant would have understood that
24 his or her acts were unlawful. See Shechter v. Comptroller of
25 City of N.Y., 79 F.3d 265, 271 (2d Cir. 1996). Even if this or
9
1 other circuit courts have not explicitly held a law or course of
2 conduct to be unconstitutional, the unconstitutionality of that
3 law or course of conduct will nonetheless be treated as clearly
4 established if decisions by this or other courts "clearly
5 foreshadow a particular ruling on the issue," Varrone v. Bilotti,
6 123 F.3d 75, 79 (2d Cir. 1997) (internal quotation marks
7 omitted), even if those decisions come from courts in other
8 circuits, see, e.g., id.; Weber v. Dell, 804 F.2d 796, 801 n.6,
9 803-04 (2d Cir. 1986) (relying on decisions by seven other
10 circuits finding similar searches unconstitutional, even though
11 this Circuit had not yet reached the issue, in concluding that
12 the defendant was not entitled to immunity), cert. denied, 483
13 U.S. 1020 (1987).
14 A. When the Law Governing Administrative
15 PRS Became Clearly Established
16 1. "Clearly Established" Law Prior to Earley. In
17 Earley, we held that if a sentencing court does not explicitly
18 impose a term of PRS on a criminal defendant, it is
19 unconstitutional for DOC subsequently to impose one, irrespective
20 of whether DOC is acting pursuant to a statute that makes such
21 PRS a mandatory part of the sentence of the crime for which that
22 defendant has been convicted. Earley, 451 F.3d at 76.
23 Before Earley was decided, New York State courts had
24 routinely upheld the administrative imposition of mandatory PRS
25 under Jenna's Law. See, e.g., Deal v. Goord, 8 A.D.3d 769, 769-
26 70, 778 N.Y.S.2d 319, 320 (3d Dep't 2004); People v. Crump, 302
10
1 A.D.2d 901, 902, 753 N.Y.S.2d 793, 793 (4th Dep't 2003); People
2 v. Lindsey, 302 A.D.2d 128, 129, 755 N.Y.S.2d 118, 119 (3d Dep't
3 2003). The New York Court of Appeals, though, cast some doubt on
4 the practice in its 2005 decision in People v. Catu, 4 N.Y.3d
5 242, 244-45, 792 N.Y.S.2d 887, 888-89 (2005). There it held that
6 a defendant who was not informed by the court of his PRS
7 obligation at the time of his plea was entitled to have his plea
8 vacated. However, because its decision rested on the
9 constitutional obligation of the courts to inform a defendant of
10 the direct consequences of a plea, of which it held PRS was one,
11 the Catu court did not directly address the question of whether
12 the administrative imposition of PRS was itself unconstitutional.
13 Scott argues that the law was clearly established, more
14 than 70 years prior to Earley, by the Supreme Court's decision in
15 Hill v. United States ex rel. Wampler, 298 U.S. 460, 464 (1936)
16 (Cardozo, J.). She relies on the Court's observation there that
17 "[t]he only sentence known to law is the sentence or judgment
18 entered upon the records of the court." We are not persuaded.
19 In Earley, we did indeed rely on Wampler and the quoted
20 passage to decide that administrative sentencing to PRS is
21 unconstitutional. Earley, 451 F.3d at 75-76 & n.1. We said that
22 "[t]he state court's determination that the addition to Earley's
23 sentence by DOCS was permissible is [] contrary to clearly
24 established federal law as determined by the United States
25 Supreme Court." Id. at 76. And in denying a motion for
26 rehearing by the panel, we further noted that "Wampler undeniably
11
1 stands for the proposition that the only valid terms of a
2 defendant's sentence are the terms imposed by the judge." Earley
3 v. Murray, 462 F.3d 147, 149 (2d Cir. 2006) (denying petition for
4 panel rehearing).
5 But Earley was a habeas proceeding governed by the
6 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA").
7 And "[u]nder AEDPA, an application for a writ of habeas corpus
8 may not be granted unless the state court's adjudication of the
9 claim was 'contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application
10 of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme
11 Court of the United States.'" Earley, 451 F.3d at 74 (emphasis
12 added) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)). The conclusion, in the
13 course of such a section 2254 review, that a legal proposition
14 was "clearly established" for purposes of its application by
15 professional state court judges does not require a conclusion
16 that it was "clearly established" in the qualified immunity
17 context, which governs the conduct of government officials who
18 are likely neither lawyers nor legal scholars. See Williams v.
19 Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 380 n.12 (2000) ("We are not persuaded by
20 the argument that because Congress used the words 'clearly
21 established law' . . . it meant in [AEDPA] to codify an aspect of
22 the the doctrine of executive qualified immunity. . . .");
23 Walczyk v. Rio, 496 F.3d 139, 154 n.16 (2d Cir. 2006) (noting
24 that "considerations informing limitations on habeas review are
25 sufficiently distinct from those prompting recognition of
26 qualified immunity to preclude easy analogy"); see also
12
1 McCullough v. Wyandanch Union Free Sch. Dist., 187 F.3d 272, 278
2 (2d Cir. 1999) ("The question [for qualified immunity purposes]
3 is not what a lawyer would learn or intuit from researching case
4 law, but what a reasonable person in the defendant's position
5 should know about the constitutionality of the conduct.").
6 Moreover, Wampler involved the non-judicial imposition
7 of a sentence that was ordinarily reserved to the discretion of
8 the sentencing judge but that the sentencing judge had not in
9 that case imposed, not the imposition of a mandatory term of
10 supervision that was explicitly required by statute. See Earley,
11 451 F.3d at 74 ("recogniz[ing] differences between the facts of
12 Wampler and those before us [in this case]," viz., that Wampler
13 involved a sentencing decision that was "by law, within the
14 discretion of the sentencing judge"). A reasonable state
15 official could therefore conclude, as did many New York courts in
16 the pre-Earley decisions cited above, that inasmuch as the
17 sentences were mandated by law rather than being in the
18 discretion of the courts to impose, it was not unconstitutional
19 under Wampler to impose such sentences administratively. Cf.
20 Richardson v. Selsky, 5 F.3d 616, 623 (2d Cir. 1993) ("If the
21 district judges in the Southern District of New York, who are
22 charged with ascertaining and applying the law, could not
23 determine the state of the law with reasonable certainty, it
24 seems unwarranted to hold prison officials to a standard that was
25 not even clear to the judges, especially since prescience on the
13
1 part of prison officials is not required with respect to the
2 future course of constitutional law.").
3 Jenna's Law made PRS a mandatory part of sentences for
4 specified crimes of violence. See N.Y. Penal Law § 70.45. There
5 is a well-established "general principle that, absent contrary
6 direction, state officials and those with whom they deal are
7 entitled to rely on a presumptively valid state statute, enacted
8 in good faith and by no means plainly unlawful." Lemon v.
9 Kurtzman, 411 U.S. 192, 208-09 (1973); accord Vives v. City of
10 N.Y., 405 F.3d 115, 117 (2d Cir. 2005). In the presence of a
11 statute that requires all sentences for certain crimes to be
12 accompanied by mandatory PRS, and New York cases that routinely
13 upheld the administrative imposition of that PRS, we conclude
14 that it was not clearly established for qualified immunity
15 purposes prior to Earley that the administrative imposition of
16 PRS violates the Due Process Clause.
17 2. "Clearly Established" Law after Earley. Whether
18 Earley itself sufficed clearly to establish the
19 unconstitutionality of administratively imposed PRS for a
20 reasonable New York State correctional official may be open to
21 question inasmuch as two Departments of the New York Appellate
22 Division thereafter continued to find the practice
23 constitutional, conclusions that appear to reflect oversight
24 rather than defiance of Earley. See Garner v. N.Y. State Dep't
25 of Corr. Servs., 39 A.D.3d 1019, 831 N.Y.S.2d 923 (3d Dep't
26 2007); People v. Thomas, 35 A.D.3d 192, 826 N.Y.S.2d 36 (1st
14
1 Dep't 2006). It was not until 2008 that the New York Court of
2 Appeals held that administrative imposition of PRS by DOC
3 violated the Due Process Clause. See Garner v. N.Y. State Dep't
4 of Corr. Servs., 10 N.Y.3d 358, 859 N.Y.S.2d 590 (2008); People
5 v. Sparber, 10 N.Y.3d 457, 859 N.Y.S.2d 582 (2008). In
6 circumstances of such apparent judicial confusion as to the
7 constitutional propriety of a statutory mandate, qualified
8 immunity might well continue to shield state officials acting
9 pursuant to that statute. See generally Wilson v. Layne, 526
10 U.S. 603, 617 (1999) (holding that state officials "cannot have
11 been expected to predict the future course of constitutional
12 law." (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also id. at 618
13 ("If judges thus disagree on a constitutional question, it is
14 unfair to subject police to money damages for picking the losing
15 side of a controversy."); Vives, 405 F.3d at 118 (refusing to
16 find the law clearly established where "several courts have
17 specifically declined to find [it] unconstitutional").5
18 To resolve this appeal, however, we need not and
19 therefore do not decide precisely when it became clearly
20 established that the administrative imposition of PRS, even when
21 statutorily mandated, is unconstitutional. It suffices for us to
5
It was two months after Garner and Sparber were decided
that the New York State Legislature created a statewide statutory
"framework" for resentencing or otherwise handling the cases of
inmates who had received administrative imposition of PRS,
thereby imposing an affirmative duty on the part of government
officials to resentence or release such inmates. N.Y. Corr. Law.
§ 601-d (2008).
15
1 conclude, as we do, that the law was not clearly established
2 before our decision in Earley, the period during which PRS was
3 imposed by DOC on Scott.
4 B. When Defendants' Allegedly Unconstitutional Conduct Took Place
5 On appeal, Scott advances two separate theories as to
6 when the defendants' allegedly unconstitutional conduct took
7 place, only one of which appears to have been asserted in her
8 complaint. First, she argues that in 2002, four years before
9 Earley, the DOC defendants violated her constitutional rights by
10 taking part in the administrative imposition of her PRS,
11 presumably through their role in the creation or ratification of
12 DOC policies governing PRS. For the reasons we have already
13 rehearsed, because any conduct on the defendants' part that led
14 to the imposition of Scott's PRS occurred some four years before
15 Earley, the law as to the unconstitutionality of such acts was
16 not clearly established when they took place and the defendants
17 are therefore entitled to qualified immunity.
18 Scott argues further, however, that even after Earley,
19 the DOC defendants violated her constitutional rights (1) by not
20 seeking to remove her PRS or quash her warrant in light of
21 Earley, (2) by revoking her PRS and sentencing her to ten months'
22 incarceration, and (3) by not releasing her while she remained in
23 custody or seeking to have her resentenced in light of Earley.
24 The only allegation contained in the complaint that
25 addresses the DOC defendants' purportedly unconstitutional
26 actions with respect to Scott's PRS is that they "adopted,
16
1 approved, and/or ratified the imposition of mandatory [PRS] on
2 individuals such as plaintiff sentenced to determinate terms of
3 imprisonment in New York State courts but not sentenced to
4 mandatory [PRS]." Compl. ¶ 16. This allegation does not appear
5 to include Scott's second, tripartite argument advanced on appeal
6 concerning actions taken after our decision in Earley. Reading
7 the allegation in the complaint liberally, as we are required to
8 do when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss, the challenge
9 is directed at the administrative imposition of PRS, not the
10 failure to take action to remove it after it was imposed.
11 Nevertheless, because we recognize that "[a]
12 supervisory official may be liable [under section 1983 not only]
13 because he or she created a policy or custom under which
14 unconstitutional practices occurred, [but also because he or she]
15 allowed such a policy or custom to continue," Williams v. Smith,
16 781 F.2d 319, 323 (2d Cir. 1986), we consider Scott's claims to
17 the extent that she is arguing that the defendants
18 unconstitutionally allowed her administrative PRS to continue
19 after the practice was clearly established to be
20 unconstitutional.
21 We conclude that the facts pleaded are insufficient to
22 make out such a claim. None of Scott's allegations with respect
23 to the DOC defendants include assertions that affirmative actions
24 taken by these defendants after Earley violated her rights; they
25 refer only to the DOC defendants' failure to act. And Scott has
26 not pleaded facts giving rise to a clearly established
17
1 affirmative legal obligation on the part of the DOC defendants to
2 take any of the actions that Scott alleges they failed to take.
3 A claim for failure to act is cognizable only in the presence of
4 a corresponding duty to have acted. See, e.g., Benzman v.
5 Whitman, 523 F.3d 119, 132 (2d Cir. 2008) (finding no violation
6 of law where Environmental Protection Agency allegedly failed to
7 consider certain factors pertaining to air quality after the 9/11
8 attacks because "there is no allegation of any failure to carry
9 out a mandatory duty to take a discrete action required by the
10 [National Contingency Plan]"); cf. Musso v. Hourigan, 836 F.2d
11 736, 743 (2d Cir. 1988) ("As a general rule, a government
12 official is not liable for failing to prevent another from
13 violating a person's constitutional rights, unless the official
14 is charged with an affirmative duty to act."). In the absence of
15 such an allegation, this claim must fail.
16 1. Failure to Seek to Remove Scott's PRS or Quash Her
17 Warrant after Earley. Scott asserts in her brief that the DOC
18 defendants violated her due process rights by failing to take
19 action to remove her PRS and quash her warrant after Earley was
20 decided. See, e.g., Appellant's Br. at 19 (noting that "DOC[]
21 did not seek to have any criminal defendants re-sentenced to PRS
22 until July 2008"). Thus the argument seems to be that after
23 Earley was decided but before Scott was arrested by the New York
24 State Division of Parole, DOC should have searched its records
25 for people who had PRS imposed administratively and purged the
18
1 PRS. But this argument fails because no facts are alleged in the
2 complaint that would support a finding that DOC had the power,
3 through its employees, unilaterally to revoke Scott's PRS despite
4 the conceded fact that DOC had imposed it.
5 Indeed, it was not until June 2008, some ten months
6 after Scott's release from her parole violation sentence, that
7 the New York State Legislature provided a statutory method by
8 which government officials could seek to resentence or otherwise
9 handle the cases of inmates who had received administrative
10 imposition of PRS, also thereby imposing an affirmative duty on
11 the part of such officials to do so. See N.Y. Corr. Law § 601-d
12 (2008). And Scott herself concedes that "New York law prohibits
13 DOC[] from unilaterally correcting sentences -- even illegal
14 ones." Appellant's Br. at 16 (citing Murray v. Goord, 298 A.D.2d
15 94, 97, 747 N.Y.S.2d 492 (1st Dep't. 2002)).
16 Even if there were a basis for a conclusion that DOC
17 officials had the power unilaterally to revoke her PRS, moreover,
18 there is no pleaded basis on which to conclude that DOC would
19 have been obligated under Earley to do so. Scott provides no
20 authority for the proposition asserted on appeal that DOC, as
21 opposed to the District Attorney, the sentencing court, the
22 Division of Parole, or any other state actor with
23 responsibilities with respect to criminal sentencing,6 had such
6
Earley explicitly recognized the right of the state
officials to seek resentencing for persons serving terms of
administratively-imposed PRS. Earley, 451 F.3d at 77.
19
1 an affirmative legal duty at the time, much less a clearly
2 established one. See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526
3 (1985) ("Unless the plaintiff's allegations state a claim of
4 violation of clearly established law, a defendant pleading
5 qualified immunity is entitled to dismissal."); accord Pearson,
6 129 S.Ct. at 815.
7 2. Revocation of Scott's PRS. Scott also asserts, in
8 her brief if not in her complaint, that the DOC defendants
9 violated her constitutional rights in connection with her parole
10 violation hearing after her arrest for non-compliance with her
11 PRS. But that hearing was conducted entirely by and before the
12 New York State Division of Parole. See Appellant's Br. at 19
13 (arguing that DOC "allowed perhaps thousands of criminal
14 defendants, including appellant, to be arrested and re-
15 incarcerated for violating their administratively-imposed PRS").
16 Scott does not plead facts that, if proven, could establish that
17 the DOC defendants were aware of, let alone participated in, the
18 hearing.7 To the contrary, Scott herself asserts that "appellees
19 may not have known of appellant's arrest or participated in
20 appellant's parole revocation hearing." Appellant's Br. at 25.
21 This lack of alleged personal involvement or knowledge bars any
22 claim that the DOC defendants can be held liable for what
23 occurred at the hearing. See McKinnon v. Patterson, 568 F.2d
7There is no evidence in the record that the DOC defendants
had any contact at all with Scott during this period. Quite to
the contrary, it appears that Scott was being held at Riker's
Island, a non-DOC facility.
20
1 930, 934 (2d Cir. 1977) ("In this Circuit personal involvement of
2 defendants in alleged constitutional deprivations is a
3 prerequisite to an award of damages under [section] 1983."),
4 cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1087 (1978); accord Colon v. Coughlin, 58
5 F.3d 865, 873-74 (2d Cir. 1995). To be sure, "[t]he personal
6 involvement of a supervisory defendant may be shown by evidence
7 that: . . . the defendant created a policy or custom under which
8 unconstitutional practices occurred, or allowed the continuance
9 of such a policy or custom," Colon, 58 F.3d at 873, but the
10 practice of re-incarcerating persons who violated their
11 administratively-imposed PRS was a practice of the Division of
12 Parole, and not of DOC, and was not a practice over which Scott
13 has alleged the DOC defendants had any knowledge or control.
14 3. Failure To Release Scott from Incarceration or To
15 Move to Have Her Resentenced. Finally, Scott asserts that the
16 DOC defendants violated her Due Process rights by not taking
17 action to release her from custody after she was sentenced to
18 eighteen months' incarceration for violating the terms of her
19 PRS. See, e.g., Appellant's Br. at 26 (arguing that "appellees
20 could have rescinded appellant's administratively-imposed PRS and
21 requested parole officials to issue any necessary release
22 orders"). But there is no allegation of a failure to release or
23 failure to seek resentencing in her complaint,8 nor indeed does
8
Scott did, however, appear to make an argument to this
effect in her opposition to defendants' motion to dismiss. See
Appellant's Reply Br. at 8.
21
1 the complaint assert that the DOC defendants themselves knew
2 whether her PRS had been imposed administratively or judicially.
3 There is nothing in the complaint, then, that would support a
4 conclusion that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to
5 known violations of Scott's rights. See Colon, 58 F.3d at 873-
6 74.
7 And again, Scott has failed to point to any clearly
8 established affirmative duty on the part of the DOC defendants to
9 make a motion to correct her sentence. Mitchell, 472 U.S. at10 526; Pearson, 129 S.Ct. at 815. Under New York law, DOC was not
11 obligated affirmatively to seek resentencing for defendants with
12 administratively-imposed PRS until 2008, when New York Correction
13 Law § 601-d became effective, N.Y. Corr. Law § 601-d(1),(2)
14 (2008), but after Scott's incarceration had ended.
15 Scott would in any event have had doubtful standing to
16 pursue this claim because of the absence of any pleaded injury-
17 in-fact to her arising from the DOC defendants' failure to act in
18 this regard. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555,
19 560 (1992) (requiring, as an "irreducible constitutional minimum
20 of standing," that "the plaintiff must have suffered an 'injury
21 in fact'"). If, as Scott has conceded, DOC could not have
22 unilaterally released her from custody after the Administrative
23 Law Judge or the Division of Parole had issued an order revoking
24 her parole, the only injury Scott could be alleging arises from
25 the DOC defendants' failure to make a motion for her release.
26 But Scott herself made that motion -- successfully -- through her
22
1 habeas petition and was thereupon released. Her complaint does
2 not allege that she would have been released earlier had DOC made
3 the motion, and, even had such an argument been made, we are
4 skeptical of the viability of an argument that a DOC motion for
5 release in light of Earley would result in an earlier release
6 date than a defendant-initiated motion. Absent an allegation
7 that the failure to make the motion for her release resulted in
8 increased time spent incarcerated, we fail to understand how
9 injury in fact has been pleaded in this regard.
10 CONCLUSION
11 For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of
12 the district court.
23