DNA Ex Post Facto Issues v. South Carolina Dep't Corrections ( 2012 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 10-6564
In Re: DNA EX POST FACTO ISSUES
-------------------------
ANTHONY EUBANKS,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; WILLIAM D. CATOE,
Individually and in his official capacity as Director, South
Carolina Department of Corrections; SOUTH CAROLINA LAW
ENFORCEMENT DIVISION,
Defendants - Appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
South Carolina, at Charleston. R. Bryan Harwell, District
Judge. (2:99-cv-05555-RBH)
Argued: December 6, 2011 Decided: February 15, 2012
Before TRAXLER, Chief Judge, and DUNCAN and AGEE, Circuit
Judges.
Reversed by unpublished opinion. Judge Agee wrote the opinion,
in which Chief Judge Traxler and Judge Duncan joined.
Andrew Lindemann, DAVIDSON & LINDEMANN, PA, Columbia, South
Carolina, for Appellants. Justin Kahn, KAHN LAW FIRM,
Charleston, South Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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AGEE, Circuit Judge:
The South Carolina Department of Corrections (“the State”)
appeals the district court’s award of attorneys’ fees and costs
to Anthony Eubanks. For the reasons set forth below, we reverse
the judgment of the district court because it erred in
concluding Eubanks qualified as a “prevailing party” under 42
U.S.C. § 1988.
I.
In 1999, Eubanks, a South Carolina inmate, brought suit
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging three requirements of the
State Deoxyribonucleic Acid Identification Record Database Act,
S.C. Code Ann. § 23-3-600 et seq. (“the Act”): that certain
prisoners submit their DNA to a state database; that those
prisoners pay a $250 processing fee; and that release or parole
from prison was conditioned upon payment of the fee by those
prisoners required to pay it. 1 At the time he brought suit,
Eubanks had already paid the $250 processing fee. The district
1
A total of ninety-one South Carolina inmates filed suits
challenging the Act similar to the proceeding filed by Eubanks.
The magistrate judge consolidated the cases, but appointed
counsel for Eubanks alone. No class was ever certified, and
Eubanks was the sole appellant to this Court when we decided the
prior appeal In re DNA Ex Post Facto Issues, 561 F.3d 294(4th Cir. 2009), upon which his § 1988 claim for attorneys’ fees
and costs is based.
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court granted summary judgment in favor of the State, finding
that the DNA collection and fee provisions of the Act were not
punitive and therefore did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause
of the U.S. Constitution. In addition, the district court
construed the statute not to require deferral of release or
parole of prisoners required to pay the fee who had not done so.
On appeal, we affirmed the judgment of the district court
with respect to its holding that the collection of DNA and the
fee payment provisions were not punitive, and did not violate
the Ex Post Facto Clause. In re DNA Ex Post Facto Issues, 561
F.3d 294, 299-300 (4th Cir. 2009). We reversed, however, the
court’s judgment with respect to its construction of the Act as
to the effect of nonpayment of the fee on a prisoner’s release
or parole. We reasoned that the language of the Act
unambiguously prohibits the parole or release of a
prisoner required to pay the fee until the fee is
paid. Since the statute is reasonably susceptible to
only this reading, the doctrine of constitutional
avoidance does not apply, and we need not defer to any
contrary agency construction. And, because the
requirement that an inmate not be paroled or released
until he has paid his $250 fee, that requirement is
unenforceable against [Eubanks] [sic].
Id. at 301 (citation omitted).
On remand, Eubanks sought attorneys’ fees pursuant to
section 1988. With limited analysis, the district court held
that Eubanks “can point to a resolution of the dispute that
altered the legal relationship of the parties” in this Court’s
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ruling on the release issue. J.A. 250. Accordingly, the
district court determined that Eubanks was a “prevailing party”
and awarded him $14,865.82 in fees and costs.
The State took a timely appeal from that judgment, and we
have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
II.
A.
The State’s sole contention on appeal is that the district
court erred in determining that Eubanks is a prevailing party
for purposes of section 1988. 2 Normally, our review of a
district court’s award of attorneys’ fees under section 1988 is
for abuse of discretion. Randall v. Prince George’s Cnty., Md.,
302 F.3d 188, 202 (4th Cir. 2002) (citation omitted). However,
whether a litigant qualifies as a “prevailing party” for the
purposes of that statute is a legal question that we review de
novo. Smyth ex rel. Smyth v. Rivero, 282 F.3d 268, 274
(4th Cir. 2002).
B.
Pursuant to section 1988, “[i]n any action or proceeding to
enforce [certain civil rights statutes], the court, in its
2
The State does not challenge the district court’s
calculation of attorneys’ fees and costs awarded to Eubanks.
Rather, it argues that Eubanks was not entitled to any award.
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discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the
United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the
costs[.]” The Supreme Court has supplied a comprehensive
definition of “prevailing party” for section 1988 purposes.
[A] civil rights plaintiff must obtain at least some
relief on the merits of his claim. The plaintiff must
obtain an enforceable judgment against the defendant
from whom fees are sought, or comparable relief
through a consent decree or settlement. Whatever
relief the plaintiff secures must directly benefit him
at the time of the judgment or settlement. Otherwise
the judgment or settlement cannot be said to affect
the behavior of the defendant toward the plaintiff.
Only under these circumstances can civil rights
litigation effect the material alteration of the legal
relationship of the parties and thereby transform the
plaintiff into a prevailing party. In short, a
plaintiff “prevails” when actual relief on the merits
of his claim materially alters the legal relationship
between the parties by modifying the defendant’s
behavior in a way that directly benefits the
plaintiff.
Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 111-12 (1992) (internal citations
and quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added).
Applying the Supreme Court’s clear directions to this case,
we have little difficulty concluding that Eubanks secured no
relief that directly benefitted him from our decision in In re
DNA Ex Post Facto Issues. There, we concluded that the $250 fee
and the DNA collection requirement of the Act were
constitutional. Eubanks obviously did not gain relief from that
aspect of our holding, and he does not claim that he did. The
only aspect of our decision that Eubanks has asserted granted
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him relief was our conclusion that “the statutory requirement
that the $250 fee must be paid before a prisoner is paroled or
released from confinement is unenforceable against [Eubanks].”
561 F.3d at 302.
At the time of our prior decision, however, Eubanks had
already paid the $250 fee. He did not seek return of the fee,
and we did not order the fee remitted to Eubanks. To the
contrary, we ruled that the fee was lawfully assessed. Because
he paid the fee, the State could not have withheld an otherwise
scheduled parole or release in any event, even if we had not
ruled that such a condition of release was unconstitutional.
Thus, Eubanks’ legal relationship with the State remained
unchanged.
We agree with the State that this case is controlled by
Rhodes v. Stewart, 488 U.S. 1 (1988). In that case, two
prisoners who challenged prison policies received a declaratory
judgment, finding that the prison policies violated their civil
rights. Rhodes, 488 U.S. at 2. The ruling was merely
declaratory in nature because, by the time of the judgment, one
of the plaintiffs had died and the other had been released from
confinement. Id. at 4. The Supreme Court reasoned that the
plaintiffs received no relief as a result of the judgment
purportedly in their favor because “[a] modification of prison
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policies . . . could not in any way have benefited either
plaintiff[.]” Id.Similarly, our decision in In re DNA Ex Post Facto Issues
did not “directly benefit [Eubanks] at the time of the judgment
or settlement.” Farrar, 506 U.S. at 111. Eubanks can point to
no benefit, direct or otherwise, that is sufficient to
constitute relief for the purpose of attaining prevailing party
status. Nor can he point to any “material alteration of the
legal relationship of the parties.” Id. Eubanks is simply not
a “prevailing party” 3 within the meaning of section 1988.
On appeal, Eubanks argues for the first time that there is
“nothing that supports the contention [that] Mr. Eubanks paid
the processing fee long before this Court’s ruling.” Br. of
Appellee at 16. This about-face on appeal flatly contradicts
representations he made to the district court in filings during
his initial challenge to the statute. In his Second Amended
Complaint, Eubanks stated that he “had his prison financial
3
Eubanks claims that this case is distinct from Rhodes
because other inmate plaintiffs in the original litigation were
affected by this Court’s judgment in In re DNA Ex Post Facto
Issues. At bottom his claim is highly speculative, and Eubanks
does not offer any evidence of any inmate who did not pay the
fee (and thus would have benefitted from our ruling). Moreover,
the mere potential that other inmates benefitted from our ruling
has no effect on whether Eubanks himself secured relief that
“directly benefitted him at the time of the judgment or
settlement.” Farrar, 506 U.S. at 111.
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account debited by [the State] pursuant to [the Act].” J.A. 19.
In his motion for summary judgment, Eubanks again stated that
the State “took money from [his] prison account.” J.A. 45. And
most importantly, in our prior opinion, we found that “[i]n 1999
[the State] began the process of obtaining the inmate samples
and collecting the fees from their prison trust funds. Pursuant
to this process, Eubanks was required to provide a sample and
[the State] deducted the full processing fee from his trust
account.” In re DNA Ex Post Facto Issues, 561 F.3d at 298(emphasis added).
It is clear that Eubanks may not now seek to relitigate the
issue of whether he had paid the processing fee. “Under the
‘law of the case’ doctrine, the ‘findings of fact and
conclusions of law by an appellate court are generally binding
in all subsequent proceedings in the same case in the trial
court or on a later appeal.” Heathcoat v. Potts, 905 F.2d 367,
370 (11th Cir. 1990) (citation omitted). 4 Eubanks has not come
forth with any new evidence, other than his own unsupported
assertion, that would require us to revisit a fact that he
actually pled in his initial complaint. That Eubanks paid the
4
Although the law of the case doctrine is not without
exception, see United States v. Aramony, 166 F.3d 655, 661
(4th Cir. 1999), none of the exceptions apply in this case to
prevent application of the facts of our prior ruling.
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processing fee is law of the case, and Eubanks may not now seek
to disturb that fact at this late date.
In short, Eubanks gained nothing from our opinion in In re
DNA Ex Post Facto Issues. Our ruling did not “alter[] the legal
relationship between [the State and Eubanks] by modifying the
defendant’s behavior in a way that directly benefitted the
plaintiff.” Farrar, 506 U.S. at 111-12. He is not a
“prevailing party” entitled to attorneys’ fees under section
1988, and the district court erred in finding otherwise.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district
court is reversed.
REVERSED
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