Seventeen Years Pending Re-trial Fails to State Speedy Trial Violation under § 1983

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a pretrial detainee did not suffer a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial despite being imprisoned for 17 years after a state appellate court reversed his conviction and remanded the case to the trial court.

In 1988, Buxton Craig Heyerman was found guilty in Calhoun County, Michigan of one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison, but the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed his conviction on June 8, 1989. Heyerman was advised of the ruling by his appellate counsel, and the trial court and prosecutor were informed by the appellate court the day the opinion was released.

However, nothing further occurred with Heyerman's case until he filed a habeas petition in 2007. Court and prosecutorial officials had no idea the case had slipped through the cracks of the judicial system. In the wake of his petition, Heyerman was appointed counsel and his attorney moved to dismiss the charge on speedy trial grounds. Following a series of hearings, the trial court entered an order on May ...

In an April 19, 2012 decision, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a federal district court that Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994) [PLN, Sept. 1994, p.12] barred a Minnesota prisoner's claim that prison officials unlawfully confined him for 375 days beyond his supervised release eligibility date.

In 2002, Brian Lee Marlowe pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct and was sentenced to 108 months in prison, including a term of supervised release.

Several months before Marlowe's December 6, 2007 supervised release date, he was designated a level two predatory sex offender; this required that he serve "intensive supervised release ... [and] a standard condition of intensive supervised release is that the offender live in a residence approved" by the Department of Corrections (DOC).

Prior to Marlowe's supervised release date, he and his prison case manager were unable to find a suitable post-release residence. Marlowe was assigned a supervising agent who picked him up at the prison on his supervised release date. "Marlowe used the agent's cell phone to make a last attempt to find a residence. When Marlowe was unable to find one, the supervising agent took him to the county jail and explained that his ...

The Oregon Court of Appeals held that prison officials are not immune from suit for miscalculating a prisoner's sentence by 13 months.

In 2000, Chester Westfall was convicted of charges in Jackson County, Oregon, and sentenced to 34 months in prison. After escaping in Marion County, Westfall was sentenced to another 20 months in prison.

In 2002, Westfall was convicted of several Josephine County offenses. He was sentenced to 36 months on two counts, consecutive to his other sentences. The court imposed concurrent 13 month sentences on two other convictions.

Eventually, Westfall's 20 month Marion County sentence was vacated on appeal. ODOC then recalculated Westfall's sentences, adding 13 months to his sentence, by incorrectly treating one of his concurrent 13 month Josephine County sentences, consecutively.

After Westfall's release from prison, he sued prison officials in state court for negligence and false imprisonment. The trial court granted Defendants summary judgment, finding that their calculation of his sentences was a discretionary function for which they were entitled to tort liability under ORS 30.265(3)(c).

While ORS 30.265(3)(c) "insulates public bodies from tort liability for acts or decisions that constitute ‘a choice among alternative public policies by persons to whom responsibility for such policies ...

Everyone in Virginia's criminal justice system knew that Johnathan Christopher Montgomery was innocent of the crimes for which he’d been convicted.

His accuser had recanted her testimony and admitted she lied to police about being molested by Montgomery more than a dozen years earlier. And yet the state continued to deny him his freedom until an advocacy organization for the wrongly convicted petitioned for his release.

Finally, on November 20, 2012, more than four years after he was sent to prison for aggravated sexual battery and lesser charges – and two days before Thanksgiving –Montgomery was conditionally pardoned by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and walked out of the Greensville Correctional Center.

“The truth sets you free,” Montgomery told reporters outside the facility.

His accuser, Elizabeth Paige Coast, had told police that Montgomery sexually abused her in 2000 when she was 10 years old and he was 14 and lived across the street from Coast’s grandmother in Hampton. Coast invented the story, she reportedly told investigators, because she was embarrassed and panicked when her parents caught her looking at pornographic websites.

Coast said she didn’t think anyone would pursue her allegations against Montgomery because he and his family had moved to ...

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Heck v. Humphrey does not bar a released federal prisoner's false imprisonment claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held on July 6, 2010.

Anthony Morrow sued the United States under the FTCA after his release from federal prison claiming that his incarceration had been prolonged unlawfully by ten extra days due to a miscalculation of his sentence.

The district court dismissed Morrow's suit, holding that Heck precluded relief. Heck held that a prisoner could not pursue monetary damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 if a favorable judgment on those claims would necessarily imply the invalidity of the prisoner's conviction or sentence. Although decided in the § 1983 context, Heck has been held to apply to FTCA claims as well.

While Heck may apply to FTCA claims, the Eleventh Circuit held that Heck did not apply in Morrow's case because (1) Morrow was no longer in custody and (2) a favorable judgment would "in no way impl[y] the invalidity of his conviction or of the sentence imposed by his conviction," the court wrote.

The court seemed to intimate, though, that its decision might have ...

The Kentucky Supreme Court has held that prison officials lack authority to modify presentencing custody credit.

Peter Bard was charged with murdering a deputy sheriff in 1993 but the charges were dismissed when he was found incompetent to stand trial. Bard was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for 1,637 days. When he regained competency in 2000, Bard was charged again with the deputy's murder. A jury found him guilty but mentally ill of first degree manslaughter.

The Division of Probation and Parole (P&P) credited Bard with 3,086 days in presentencing custody, including his unindicted involuntary mental commitments.

On April 8, 2002, the trial court sentenced Bard to 20 years with 3,086 days of time served credit. Six years later, the Department of Corrections (DOC) released Bard. However, Bard was again involuntarily hospitalized on a mental inquest warrant.

Several days later, DOC claimed that P&P erroneously granted Bard too much presentencing credit and he should not have been released. As a result, Bard was returned to prison due to "inadvertent release."

P&P then issued an amended time credit sheet, granting credit only for time when he was actually under indictment. This reduced Bard's credit from 3,086 to 1,449 days.

The ...

The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed the statute of limitations dismissal of a former prisoner's false imprisonment suit.

In three separate judgments, Loren MacNab was convicted of four counts of failing to register as a sex offender and sentenced to jail time on each conviction. MacNab appealed and each sentence was stayed pending resolution of the appeal, under ORS 138.135(1).

In August 2002, MacNab was convicted in a fourth case of failing to register. The Oregon Supreme Court also affirmed his earlier convictions that month, in State v. MacNab, 334 Or 469, 51 P.3d 1249 (2002).

In October 2002, the trial court lifted the stays and ordered "sentence to be executed immediately." It imposed all four sentences consecutively and MacNab was released from custody in October 2003.

MacNab appealed the fourth conviction and, in May 2005, the court granted the parties' joint motion to vacate and remand for reconsideration. MacNab was then reconvicted and appealed again. He finally won that appeal because the state failed to prove venue. State v. MacNab, 222 Or.App 332, 194 P.3d 164 (2008).

In December 2009, MacNab filed a pro se false imprisonment suit in state court, alleging that he was unlawfully imprisoned on the ...

Shane Holloway was arrested without a warrant in 2009 and confined to the Delaware County Jail, where he was denied his pre-detention medication, and was prescribed non-narcotic pain medication by prison medical staff instead. Holloway was released from jail after nine days, and was admitted to a hospital, where he resumed his regimen of narcotic medication, including Oxycontin, for relief of chronic pain.

In August of 2010, Holloway filed his 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 action against the jail physician and his attending nurses, alleging that they had “violated his constitutional rights by acting with deliberate indifference as to his serious medical condition,” and against the Delaware County Sheriff, “by detaining him without charges for nine days...”according to the opinion.

The 7th Circuit first reviewed the claims against the Sheriff. The district court had held that Holloway did not suffer a constitutional deprivation “because he has a probable cause determination within twenty-four hours of his arrest, he had an initial hearing via video conference within three days of his arrest, and the Sheriff released him within seventy-two hours of his initial hearing,” when the prosecutor failed to file charges.
The plaintiff was not able to put forth evidence to establish that ...

by Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica, and Sergio Hernandez, Special to ProPublica

The murder case against Tony Bennett seemed pretty straightforward.

Shortly before midnight on May 7, 1994, police found a 26-year-old man in the foyer of an apartment building near Flushing, Queens. Jake Powell was near death, blood pouring from a gunshot wound, but he managed to speak the name of the man who had shot him: "Tony Bennett."

Bennett, a two-time felon, was eventually captured, convicted of murder, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

But Bennett never served anywhere near that sentence. He has, in fact, been free since 2008 because Claude Stuart, the former Queens assistant district attorney who handled his case, violated a basic rule of law by withholding critical evidence from Bennett's attorney. A state appeals court overturned Bennett's conviction and released him after 13 years in prison.

That early release has freed Bennett to describe his role in a crime he had insisted for two decades he did not commit.

"He was wrapped up in a shower curtain in the corner of the bathroom, shivering and shaking," Bennett recalled of Powell, who Bennett said had terrorized his family for years. "He was saying ...

ProPublica

Among the thousands of prosecutors who have tried cases in the name of the people of New York City, Claude Stuart came to hold a handful of unfortunate distinctions:

• He was a serial abuser of his authority. State appellate courts reversed three convictions based on his wrongdoing.

• His misconduct actually led to disciplinary action by his superiors. He lost his job, and eventually his law license, after an appellate court determined he had lied to a judge about the whereabouts of a key witness.

• The particulars of his disciplinary proceedings became public, opening a window into the typically secretive panels that are supposed to police the state’s lawyers.

Stuart declined repeated requests for comment for this story.

It’s worth it, then, to appreciate the impact of Stuart’s career in greater detail, how the misconduct took place, how it has complicated the continuing pursuit of justice, and how the consequences of Stuart’s misconduct still linger, years after the man himself was exposed and disgraced.

The People v. Tyronne Johnson, Stuart’s last trial as a prosecutor in Queens, is a perfect case to trace those issues.


The Crime:

On Feb. 24, 2000, Queens prosecutors charged 23-year-old Tyronne Johnson ...