Jammi v. Conley ( 1997 )

ABDULLAH JIHAD ABDUL JAAMI, )
)
Petitioner/Appellant, )
) Appeal No.
) 01-A-01-9609-CH-00425
VS. )
) Davidson Chancery
) No. 95-3539-II
ROBERT CONLEY, WARDEN, et al., )
Respondents/Appellees.
)
)
FILED
June 11, 1997
COURT OF APPEALS OF TENNESSEE
MIDDLE SECTION AT NASHVILLE Cecil W. Crowson
Appellate Court Clerk
APPEALED FROM THE CHANCERY COURT OF DAVIDSON COUNTY
AT NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
THE HONORABLE ELLEN HOBBS LYLE, CHANCELLOR
ABDULLAH JIHAD ABDUL JAAMI, #73179
Lake County Regional Prison
Route 1, Box 330
Tiptonville, Tennessee 38079
Pro Se/Plaintiff/Appellant
JOHN KNOX WALKUP
Attorney General and Reporter
PATRICIA C. KUSSMANN
Assistant Attorney General
404 James Robertson Parkway
Suite 2000
Nashville, Tennessee 37243
Attorney for Defendant/Appellee
AFFIRMED AND REMANDED
BEN H. CANTRELL, JUDGE
CONCUR:
TODD, P.J., M.S.
KOCH, J.
OPINION
A prisoner in the custody of the Department of Correction petitioned the
chancery court for a Writ of Mandamus to compel the Department to change his
security classification, so that he might be transferred to a minimum security annex
or to a community corrections center. The chancellor dismissed the petition. We
affirm.
I.
In 1975, the petitioner Abdullah Jaami1 was convicted of committing a
rape while on parole from a conviction for another sexual offense. He received a
sentence of sixty years, with parole eligibility after completion of 50% of his sentence.
Mr. Jaami was sent to the Lake County Regional Correctional Facility, where he has
been ever since. The Department of Corrections apparently had a policy at the time
he was sentenced that allowed all inmates to be considered for minimum custody
classification if they were within ten years of their earliest release date, and met
certain other conditions.
In June of 1994, the above-mentioned policy was changed. The new
policy (Admin. Pol. & Proc. of the Dept. Of Correction #404.07) did not permit the
transfer of sex offenders to minimum custody until they were within ten years of the
expiration of their sentences. Those convicted of other crimes could still be
considered for reclassification if they were within ten years of their earliest release
dates. The petitioner claimed that his scheduled classification review was deliberately
1
In her affidavit, Faye Claud, the Manager of Sentence Information Services for the Department
of Correction refers to the petitioner as Jerome S. Barrett ak a Abdullah Jihad Abdul Jaami. Presum ably
the petitioner cha nge d his n am e after he w as s ente nce d.
-2-
delayed until the new policy went into effect, and that he was therefore unfairly denied
the possibility of being granted minimum custody status and placement.
On November 9, 1995, Mr. Jaami filed a Petition in the Chancery Court
of Davidson County for a Writ of Mandamus, for a Declaratory Order, and for
Injunctive Relief. He named as respondents the Warden of the Lake County Regional
Prison, and several other Department of Corrections officers and employees, including
the Manager of its Sentence Information Services, the Director and Assistant Director
of the Department’s Classification Programs, and two counselors at the Lake County
facility.
The petition asked the court among other things to declare the
Department’s 1994 policy change to be unconstitutional because lacking a rational
basis, and to order the respondents to conduct an immediate reclassification which
would take into account his unblemished institutional record. The chancellor
dismissed the petition, finding the policy at issue not to be in violation of any
constitutional provision. The chancellor also found that the inmate’s classification was
a matter of internal state regulation, and that the court was therefore without
jurisdiction to hear his claim for declaratory relief. This appeal followed.
II. Constitutional Issues
The appellant has designated forty-seven issues on appeal, and
grouped them under three different headings. In order to eliminate redundancy, we
will treat the issues under a slightly different organizational scheme, and consolidate
them into Constitutional issues and Jurisdictional issues. First we will deal with the
Constitutional issues.
-3-
a. The Ex Post Facto Argument
The appellant contends that the Department’s policy is unconstitutional
as it applies to him because it amounts to ex post facto punishment, forbidden under
both the U.S.and Tennessee Constitutions. In the case of Weaver v. Graham, 450
U.S. 24, 28, 101 S. Ct. 960, 964, 67 L.Ed 2d 17, 22 (1991) the United States Supreme
Court said “[t]he ex post facto provision forbids the Congress and the State to enact
any law which imposes a punishment for an act which was not punishable at the time
it was committed; or imposes an additional punishment to that then prescribed.” The
Tennessee Supreme Court has defined one type of ex post facto law as that which
“changes punishment or inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the
crime when committed.” Miller v. State, 584 S.W.2d 758, 761 (1979). Since the
length of Mr. Jaami’s sentence was unchanged by the new regulation, the chancellor
concluded that it could not be considered an ex post facto law.
The relevant case law appears to support the chancellor’s reasoning.
Eligibility for parole consideration, for example, is normally part of the law annexed to
the crime when committed, and thus a change of parole eligibility standards to the
possible detriment of prisoners sentenced under the earlier law may implicate ex post
facto concerns. See Kaylor v. Bradley, 912 S.W.2d 728 (Tenn. App. 1995). But also
see California Dept of Corrections v. Morales, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S. Ct. 1597, 131
L. Ed. 2d 588 (1995).
In the Weaver case, mentioned above, the United States Supreme Court
held that a Florida law which decreased the rate at which a prisoner could earn good
time credits, and which was enacted after his conviction, constituted an ex post facto
violation as to him, because it effectively extended the length of his sentence. 450
U.S. at 33, 101 S.Ct. At 967, 67 L.Ed.2d at 26.
-4-
Though regulations for the classification of prisoners normally take into
account the inmate’s crime and sentence, their primary purpose is not punishment,
but security. We do not therefore believe that such regulations are “part of the law
annexed to the crime when committed.” There appears to be no Tennessee case
where a change in the security classification of a prisoner has been found to be in
violation of the ex post facto prohibition. The need for correctional officials to remain
in control of their institutions may explain that negative result.
“A state prison inmate has no right to a particular
classification under state law, and prison officials must have
broad discretion, free from judicial intervention, in classifying
prisoners in terms of their custodial status.”
60 Am.Jur. 2d Penal and Correctional Institutions § 34 (1979).
Though the “broad discretion,” referred to above cannot mean unlimited
discretion, we conclude that no ex post facto violation has resulted from the
department’s decision to make a change in the regulations for the security
classifications of sex offenders.
b. Equal Protection
The appellant also contends that the change of regulation treats sex
offenders differently from other offenders, makes inequitable distinctions between two
different classes of sex offender, and lacks a rational basis. We do not believe,
however, that Mr. Jaami has stated a constitutional claim under the equal protection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The equal protection clause requires that persons similarly situated
receive the same treatment under the law. Laws classifying individuals for disparate
treatment will be upheld if they can be shown to be “rationally related to a legitimate
state interest” unless they affect a fundamental constitutional right, or create a
-5-
classification based upon “inherently suspect distinctions such as race, religion or
alienage.” New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303, 96 S. Ct. 2513, 49 L. Ed. 2d 511(1976).
The appellant has not shown that he has been deprived of a
fundamental constitutional right, nor that he has been treated as a member of any
suspect class. Treating prisoners differently based on their offenses does not violate
the equal protection clause if the treatment is related to a legitimate state interest. As
the trial court observed,
“It was the obvious judgment of the legislature and the
Department of Corrections that sex offenders, especially sex
offenders who commited more serious crimes and have more
than ten years remaining on their sentence, are more likely to
be a security threat. As a result, such offenders are only
eligible for minimum security if they meet several additional
criteria enunciated by the Board. This concern about the
additional risk posed by serious sex offenders such as the
petitioner is reasonable, and the steps taken to protect
against this risk is (sic) clearly supported by a rational basis
in fact.”
As for the alleged distinction between those sentenced under the
harsher provisions of the earlier law, and those sentenced later, the disputed
regulation is applied to all sex offenders in the same manner, so it would not seem to
be susceptible to an equal protection challenge at all. However Mr. Jaami contends
that the regulation has a disparate effect on the two classes of sexual offender, and
we will concede, for the sake of argument, that this creates equal protection concerns.
However the challenged regulation will pass constitutional muster if it
can be shown to have a rational relationship to any legitimate state interest. Mr.
Jaami’s argument is that there can be no rational reason for linking the eligibility of
sexual offenders for minimum security placement to the expiration dates of their
sentences rather than to their release eligibility dates.
-6-
He claims that under the regulation, prisoners like himself who received
longer sentences under the prior law than would be possible for those later convicted
of the same offenses become eligible for relaxation in the conditions of their
confinement later than do more recent offenders. He argues that the more recent
offenders pose the greater security risk, because they have not yet had enough time
to reflect on the wrongfulness of their acts, or to prove that they can abide by the
terms of their punishment.
His analysis may well be correct, but we cannot conclusively state that
it is, nor can we state that the regulation has no rational basis. It appears to us that
its purpose is to protect the public, and its effect is to keep all those convicted of
sexual crimes confined for a longer period under conditions of rigorous security,
regardless of the lengths of their sentences.
It is possible that a regulation that calls for a more particularized inquiry
into the circumstances and institutional record of each individual offender would serve
the same purpose, and would lead to a more equitable result for those sentenced
under the prior law. But a regulation or statute is not deemed to be irrational just
because a more precisely focused one could have been drafted. See Massachusetts
Board of Retirement v. Murgia, (Marshall, J., dissenting) 427 U.S. 307, 316, 96 S. Ct.
2562, 49 L. Ed. 2d 520 (1976). We therefore believe that Mr. Jaami’s equal protection
argument must also fail.
III. Jurisdictional Issues
The trial court dismissed that portion of the appellant’s petition that
asked for a declaratory judgment under the Uniform Administrative Procedures Act
(UAPA), Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-5-322(h). The court held that it did not have jurisdiction
-7-
to review the regulation in question because Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-5-102(10)(A)
excludes from the provisions of the UAPA “[s]tatements concerning only the internal
management of state government and not affecting private rights, privileges, or
procedures available to the public.”
The chancellor also found there to be no evidence that the petitioner had
first sought a declaratory order from the Department of Correction or that he
exhausted his administrative remedies, as would be required under the UAPA. In his
reply brief, Mr. Jaami has submitted as exhibits ten unauthenticated documents, which
appear to show a lengthy course of administrative appeals on the same questions that
he raised in his petition.
However in view of our finding that none of Mr. Jaami’s theories entitle
him to relief, and our belief that the trial court was correct in holding that regulations
for the classification of prisoners do not fall within the ambit of the UAPA, we pretermit
the question of whether Mr. Jaami exhausted his administrative remedies before filing
his petition.
IV.
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed. Remand this cause to the
Chancery Court of Davidson County for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion. Tax the costs on appeal to the appellant.
_________________________________
BEN H. CANTRELL, JUDGE
CONCUR:
_______________________________
HENRY F. TODD, PRESIDING JUDGE
MIDDLE SECTION
-8-
_______________________________
WILLIAM C. KOCH, JR., JUDGE
-9-