DECISION AND ORDER
INTRODUCTION
Because these two complaints raise identical issues and were argued before the Court on the same day, the cases are consolidated for purpose of this decision.
The defendants now move pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 12(b)(1), (3) and (6) to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims, on the grounds that the defendants are, inter alia, entitled to qualified immunity. For the reasons set forth below, the defendants’ motions to dismiss (Johnson Dkt. # 21, Vincent Dkt. # 7, # 27)
DISCUSSION
I. Motion to Dismiss Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6)
In deciding a motion under Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6), a court must accept the allegations contained in the complaint as true, and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-movant. See Sheppard v. Beerman,
II. Qualified Immunity
Defendants chiefly urge that plaintiffs’ claims must be dismissed, because the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of law. The defense of qualified immunity shields public officials from an action for civil damages, to the extent that their challenged acts do not violate “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald,
The Supreme Court has identified two key inquiries for evaluating assertions of qualified immunity: (1) whether the facts, taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, show that the defendant violated a constitutional right; and (2) whether that constitutional right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation. See Pearson v. Callahan,
The primary issue here is whether the plaintiffs’ rights were so clearly established at the time defendants participated in the administrative imposition of a 5-year period of PRS following service of the plaintiffs’ determinate sentences, that the defendants should have been aware that their actions violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.
In summary, the relevant facts are these. Each of the plaintiffs was sentenced to a determinate sentence following a criminal felony conviction. Notwithstanding the provisions of New York Penal Law § 70.45 (commonly known as “Jenna’s Law”), which mandated a period of PRS as part of every determinate sentence for the plaintiffs’ crimes, the sentencing courts neglected or failed to specify a period of PRS. Each of the plaintiffs was released from incarceration sometime between March 2002 and June 2007. Upon each plaintiffs release, DOCS, construing Penal Law § 70.45 as requiring an automatic period of PRS, administratively imposed PRS on each of the plaintiffs. PRS was later revoked for most of the plaintiffs, who subsequently returned to DOCS custody.
It is now clear (in 2011) that both federal and state case law have found that the administrative imposition of PRS to be unconstitutional and unlawful. Defendants claim, though, that at the time that the terms of PRS were added, the law was not well settled.
Plaintiffs claim that at the time PRS was added to the plaintiffs’ respective sentences by DOCS officials, the defendants knew or should have known that doing so violated plaintiffs’ statutory and constitutional rights.
Initially, the Court revisits the state of the law on this issue as it stood in and before February 2005, by which time PRS had been administratively imposed on nine of the ten plaintiffs. At this point, the unconstitutionality of DOCS’ administrative imposition of PRS pursuant to Penal Law § 70.45 was far from well settled. To the contrary, in the seven years that had passed since Penal Law § 70.45’s enactment, New York appellate courts had consistently and uniformly endorsed the
The issue of whether Penal Law § 70.45 created a PRS requirement that could by applied only by sentencing judges, or whether it automatically built a period of PRS into applicable sentences in a manner that DOCS and/or the New York State Division or Parole could lawfully enforce regardless of the sentencing judge’s pronouncement, was not addressed at the federal level in this Circuit until June 2006. In the matter of Earley v. Murray,
Plaintiffs contend that a reasonable official should have taken “fair warning” of this conclusion prior to Earley, and that to the extent that defendant Annucci possessed legal training, he should have been able to forecast the sea change by applying lines of cases concerning related topics.
Whether a reasonable official would have known that the administrative imposition of PRS was unconstitutional after Earley, such as in June 2007 when PRS was administratively mandated for plaintiff Jimmie Johnson, is a slightly closer question. However, I reach the same conclusion as to defendants’ post-Earley conduct.
In assessing whether it was objectively reasonable for an official to believe that administratively imposed PRS passed statutory and constitutional muster even after Earley, I note that for two years after the Earley federal court case was decided, New York state courts did not always follow its holding. State courts ruled on occasion that DOCS could still administratively mandate periods of PRS pursuant to Jenna’s Law, even in the absence of an explicit imposition of PRS by a sentencing judge. In some cases, it was reasoned that Earley did not squarely apply to DOCS’s practices, because in administratively mandating PRS under Penal Law § 70.45, DOCS was “only enforcing, not imposing, a part of petitioner’s sentence which was automatically included by statute,” and thus was not unlawfully usurping any “judicial function.” Scott v. Fischer,
In April 2008, the New York Court of Appeals resolved the state conflict of authority in an appeal from Garner v. New York State Dept. of Correctional Services,
As the district court for the Southern District of New York recently observed on this very issue:
[T]he overwhelming consensus within the Second Circuit is that the protection of qualified immunity [in such circumstances] applied until April 2008, when the New York Court of Appeals resolved a split among the lower state courts and invalidated the administrative imposition of PRS. Until then, the courts have uniformly held, it would have been reasonable for Parole and DOC[S] officials not to have understood fully the constitutional problems created by imposition of PRS in such a manner.
Locantore v. Hunt,
Hindsight is always 20/20. Although the unconstitutionality and/or unlawfulness of defendants’ practice of administratively mandating PRS may be clear today, it was manifestly not so prior to April 2008, when New York state appellate courts remained split as to Earley’s import and scope, and had identified numerous well-seeming ways to distinguish it. See Ruffins v. Department of Correctional Servs.,
Because the defendants’ actions did not violate any constitutional right that was clearly established at the time of the alleged violations, they are entitled to qualified immunity.
For the foregoing reasons, I find that the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity against the plaintiffs’ claims, and that they are thus entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Defendants’ motions to dismiss the complaint (Johnson Dkt. # 21, Vincent Dkt. # 7, # 27) are granted, and the complaints in both of the above-referenced matters are dismissed in their entirety, with prejudice.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Notes
. Plaintiffs’ claims are asserted against defendants in their individual capacities. Although both originally asserted official capacity claims, those claims have been withdrawn. (Johnson Dkt. # 24 at 1 n. 1, Vincent Dkt. # 32 at 1 n. 1).
. The initial motion to dismiss in the Vincent matter (Vincent Dkt. # 7) preceded the filing of a second amended complaint.
. Plaintiffs place a special blame on defendant Annucci who is apparently an experienced counsel for DOCS and who allegedly participated in the legislative process that led to the enactment of Penal Law § 70.45.