Inmates whose detentions were prolonged by attorneys for the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ erroneous analysis of state sentencing law won’t be able to bring a civil rights lawsuit against those attorneys because the attorneys were shielded by the doctrine of qualified immunity, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled.
Marion Campbell was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to distributing crack cocaine. In South Carolina, inmates are allowed to earn work and good-time credits to shorten the duration of their sentences, but certain offenses are deemed no-parole offenses for which inmates must serve as at least 85 percent of their nominal sentence. When Campbell was indicted in 2011, distributing crack cocaine was a no-parole offense. Prior to his sentencing, state lawmakers passed a law making first-time offenders eligible for credits to shorten their sentences, but failed to amend the law regarding no-parole offenses, creating an ambiguity in the law.
The SCDC’s deputy general counsel, Chris Florian, was tasked with sorting out this contradiction. Florian concluded that the 85-percent rule still applied to inmates convicted of no-parole offenses, and the SCDC’s general counsel, David Tartarsky, signed off on that interpretation. The South Carolina Administrative Law Court agreed, but in 2016 the state’s Court of Appeals disagreed and ruled that the law extending the good-time benefits to first-time offenders took precedence. The SCDC declined to appeal and started recalculating inmates’ release dates, including Campbell’s.
Campbell was released in March 2016 after having served about five years of his sentence. Had the law been applied according to the Court of Appeals’ interpretation, he would have gotten out about 16 months sooner.
Campbell filed a class action lawsuit against Florian and Tatarsky on behalf of himself and other inmates whose releases were delayed because of the SCDC’s reading of the laws, arguing that the delay violated the Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against excessive punishments. Florian and Tatarsky argued that they were entitled to qualified immunity, but a U.S. District Court judge disagreed and ruled that the case could proceed to trial.
But Judge Julius N. Richardson, writing for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel in an Aug. 28 opinion, said that Campbell had failed to present evidence showing that his Eight Amendment rights had been violated because he’d failed to show that Florian and Tatarsky had been “deliberately indifferent” to his plight—a state of mind comparable to recklessness that plaintiffs must clear in order to bring an Eighth Amendment claim against state officials. Although the SCDC’s interpretation of the conflicting laws ultimately proved to be incorrect, legal error alone is not enough to show deliberate indifference, the judges said.
In this case, Richardson wrote, Florian had acted reasonably and carefully in attempting to resolve the thorny statutory interpretation problem set before him. Campbell contended that the fact that the state’s Court of Appeals had found Florian’s conclusion to be unreasonable suggested that Florian must have acted with deliberate indifference, but Richardson said that the courts could not infer criminal recklessness merely from a legal conclusion that was later deemed to be unreasonable.
“An incorrect legal opinion often occurs without some negligent (much less reckless) act or omission. In our adversarial legal system, roughly 50% of litigants lose—and thus have pressed an incorrect legal opinion,” Richardson wrote. “Competent administrative agencies and lower courts are often overturned despite careful and thoughtful legal interpretations. Indeed, the South Carolina Administrative Law Court (an independent body) first upheld Florian’s reading of the Omnibus Act … That the South Carolina Court of Appeals reached a different statutory interpretation than Florian does not make out a violation of the Eighth Amendment.”
Richardson also rejected Campbell’s argument that the SCDC should have turned to outside sources to interpret the law, either by seeking a declaratory judgment or seeking counsel from the Attorney General or an outside law firm. In this case, the SCDC was the foremost authority on South Carolina’s sentencing law, and Florian was its subject matter expert, so not only was it not reckless for the SCDC to rely on its own expertise, it actually might have been unreasonable for Florian to defer to someone less qualified.
“Campbell’s argument would require administrative agencies to abnegate their designated role in favor of courts or consultants whenever the agencies’ interpretations potentially bear on a federal right. We see this requirement as unreasonable, particularly where aggrieved parties—like [the inmate who suit prompted the Court of Appeals’ ruling]—have recourse to the agency and the courts to advance their preferred statutory interpretations,” Richardson wrote.
Cliff Rollins and Gene Matthews of Richardson Plowden in Columbia represented Florian and Tatarsky. Rollins declined to comment on the ruling, noting that the plaintiffs have filed a petition for rehearing.
Chris Kenney and Dick Harpootlian of Richard A. Harpootlian Law Firm in Columbia, Charles Whetstone Jr. and Cheryl Perkins of Whetstone Perkins & Fulda in Columbia, and Philip Berlinsky of Berlinsky and Ling in North Charleston represented the class. Kenney declined to comment on the court’s ruling.
The 24-page decision is Campbell v. Florian (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-097-20). The full text of the opinion is available online at sclawyersweekly.com.
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