United States District Court, District of Columbia
MICHAEL D. HURD, JR., Plaintiff,
v.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Defendant
MEMORANDUM OPINION
ELLEN
S. HUVELLE United States District Judge
Plaintiff
Michael D. Hurd, Jr. brings this action against the District
of Columbia for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for
“wrongful deprivation of liberty.” (Am. Compl. at
9 [ECF 7].) Before the Court are Hurd's and the
District's cross-motions for summary judgment. For the
reasons stated herein, the District's motion for summary
judgment will be granted, and Hurd's will be denied.
BACKGROUND
I.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND[1]
Plaintiff
Michael Hurd was stopped by the Metropolitan Police
Department in August 2005 (id. ¶ 9), and charged with
five crimes to which he pled guilty in January 2006:
“one count of carrying a pistol without a license[, ] .
. . one count of possession of a prohibited weapon, two
counts of possession of unregistered firearms and one count
of possession of a quantity of cocaine.” (Id.
¶¶ 10-11.) He was sentenced to 42 months in prison
and three years of supervised release with the execution of
all but 45 days suspended, as well as a $1, 000 fine and one
year of probation. (Id. ¶ 11.) The sentence
consisted of 15 months of imprisonment and three years of
supervised release for the felony gun charge, and several
consecutive, shorter sentences adding up to an additional 27
months of imprisonment for the four misdemeanor charges.
(See 2006 Superior Court Judgment [ECF 38-3].)
Several months later Hurd violated the terms of his probation
by testing positive for both cocaine and marijuana, and at a
show cause hearing in September 2006, his parole was revoked.
(See Pl.'s Resp. to D.C.'s Statement of
Material Facts (“Pl.'s Resp.”) at 1-2 [ECF
40].) He was ordered to serve his 42-month prison sentence,
to be followed by three years of supervised release.
(See Am. Compl. ¶ 12.)
On June
11, 2007-i.e., less than a year after his parole was revoked
and he was sent to serve his full sentence-Hurd was released
from the federal facility at which he was being held in West
Virginia and sent to Hope Village, a halfway house in the
District. (See Id. ¶ 15.) He was released from
the halfway house in July 2007, and thereafter began his
three-year term of supervised release. (See Id.
¶ 17.) Hurd thus served only the felony part of his
sentence. He should have served the remaining misdemeanor
time at the jail that is run by the D.C. Department of
Corrections (“DOC”), but instead BOP discharged
him “under circumstances that he reasonably believed
reflected a deliberate sentence reduction.”
Hurd, 864 F.3d at 674. “During this time, he
had regular contact with the District of Columbia Court
Services & Offender Supervision Agency officers who were
monitoring his supervised release, and was never found to
have violated the terms of his supervised release.”
(Am. Compl. ¶ 20.) Although he tested positive for
marijuana and cocaine “on more than 50 separate
occasions” throughout his term of supervised release,
the Parole Commission never revoked his supervised release.
(Pl.'s Resp. at 5-6.)
Hurd
appeared in D.C. Superior Court several times during this
period. (See Id. at 4-5.) He was charged with simple
assault in 2007, but found not guilty following a trial in
2008. (See Id. at 4.) He was charged “with
possession with intent to distribute cocaine while armed,
possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of an
unregistered firearm and possession of unregistered
ammunition” in late 2008, but this case was dismissed,
and all charges were dropped. (Id.) Hurd was again
charged with simple assault in 2009, but the charge was
dismissed; another assault charge in 2010 was not papered.
(See Id. at 5.)
In
September 2011, Hurd pled guilty to possession of marijuana.
(See Am. Compl. ¶ 25.) Because he had been
participating in a sheet metal apprenticeship since his
release from federal prison and was working towards his
journeyman certification with the union (see
Def.'s Resp. to Pl.'s Statement of Material Facts
(“Def.'s Resp.”) at 7-8 [ECF 43-1]), he was
permitted to serve his 9-day sentence over three consecutive
weekends. (See Am. Compl. ¶ 25.) Hurd
surrendered to the DOC for his first weekend of incarceration
on September 23, 2011, and was released on September 25.
(See Id. ¶ 26.) He surrendered to serve his
second weekend on September 30; however, at the end of the
weekend, on October 2, DOC did not release him as expected.
(See Id. ¶¶ 27-28.)
The DOC
Records Office employs Legal Instruments Examiners
(“LIEs”) who, at the time of any inmate's
potential discharge, “conduct the review of an
inmate's file to look for other pending charges and other
matters to determine whether he is eligible for release and
also run[] a check for any outstanding warrants, detainers or
other holds.” (Def.'s Resp. at 10.) Mark Sibert was
the LIE in charge of plaintiff's case, and the one who
denied his release. (See Pl.'s Resp. at 9.)
According to Sibert, he denied Hurd's release in reliance
on Hurd's 2006 judgment and commitment, which showed that
he had 27 months left to serve on his sentence. (See
Sibert Dep. at 65-66 [ECF 39-8].) Hurd filed a complaint with
the DOC Records Office after he was not released on October
2; on October 26, 2011, he received a response asserting that
he was being held because he “was erroneously released
from the Bureau of Prisons on July 18, 2007.”
(Pl.'s Resp. at 7.)
Hurd
filed a habeas petition on November 16, 2011, under his
original case number in Superior Court. (See Am.
Compl. ¶ 31.) Inexplicably, he did not receive a hearing
until July 27, 2012, at which time Judge Holeman-who
sentenced Hurd in 2006 to the original 42 months of
imprisonment-orally denied the habeas petition. (See
Id. ¶¶ 34-35.) Judge Holeman concluded that
Hurd had not stated a due process claim, because “a
convicted person will not be excused from serving his
sentence [merely] because someone in a ministerial capacity
makes a mistake with respect to the execution of the
sentence” (Habeas Hearing Transcript at 67 [ECF
38-12]), and Hurd's case was materially different from
other cases in which relief had been granted. (See
Id. at 69 (“Now, to the extent that when we hold
up United States v. Merritt to be factually similar to
this case, it is, in fact, factually distinguishable
from this case.”).) Although Hurd appealed that denial,
the D.C. Court of Appeals did not rule on the appeal prior to
his release from DOC custody on September 30, 2013; following
his release, the D.C. Court of Appeals dismissed Hurd's
appeal as moot. (See Am. Compl. ¶¶ 36-39.)
II.
PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Hurd
filed his complaint with this Court on May 1, 2015, and
amended the complaint on July 10, 2015. (See Compl.
[ECF 1]; see also Am. Compl.) His complaint consists
of a single claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violation
of his substantive and procedural due process rights, based
on the District's choice to “suddenly and unjustly
re-incarcerate[] him without a hearing, four years after he
was mistakenly released from a federal prison.”
Hurd, 146 F.Supp.3d at 59. The District moved to
dismiss the amended complaint on July 27, 2015, and on
November 19, 2015, this Court granted that motion. See
Id. at 72 (“[T]he Court concludes that plaintiff
cannot, as a matter of law, state a constitutional claim for
damages based on a violation of his due process rights, and
therefore, the District's motion to dismiss will be
[granted].”).
Plaintiff
appealed, and on July 28, 2017, the Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit vacated this Court's
dismissal and remanded for further proceedings. See Hurd
v. District of Columbia, 864 F.3d 671 (D.C. Cir. 2017).
The Circuit concluded that Hurd's substantive due process
claim was not precluded by the earlier habeas proceedings
before Judge Holeman, see Id. at 679-82, and that
Hurd's amended complaint stated a claim for procedural
due process because, under the particular facts of his case,
he alleged “a liberty interest crystallized
sufficiently by the close of the period of supervision to
entitle him to some kind of process before
re-incarceration.” Id. at 683. The Court also
revived Hurd's substantive due process claim based on its
determination that this Court had considered materials
outside the amended complaint. See Id. at 686-87. On
remand, the panel counseled this Court to consider whether
County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998),
and its “shock the conscience” test should be
employed along with, or instead of, the multi-factor test
used in United States v. Merritt, 478 F.Supp. 804
(D.D.C. 1979), to determine whether the re-incarceration
violated Hurd's substantive due process rights.
On
remand, after attempting without success to negotiate a
settlement, the parties began fact discovery, which was
completed in early 2019. The District filed for summary
judgment on April 5, 2019, and Hurd filed a cross-motion for
summary judgment on April 26. Argument was held on the
motions on November 18, 2019. (See November 18, 2019
Minute Entry.)
ANALYSIS
The
first issue is whether the District can be held liable under
§ 1983. This was not previously addressed by this Court
or by the Circuit. This Court concludes that the District
cannot be held liable under § 1983, and therefore it
does not reach the issue of whether there was a procedural or
substantive due process violation under the Fifth
Amendment.[2]
I.
LEGAL STANDARDS
A.
Summary Judgment
Summary
judgment should be granted to the movant if it has shown that
there are no genuine issues of material fact and that the
movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a); see generally Celotex
Corp. v. Catrett,477 U.S. 317 (1986). The mere
existence of some factual dispute will not preclude the entry
of summary judgment. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby,
Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247-48 (1986). “Only disputes
over facts that might ...