We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
NOTHING HAPPENS FAST – PART 1
Remember that Greek guy who kept rolling the rock up the hill, only to have it roll back down, and then he’d have to do it again? Yeah, that Sisyphus character… Legal combat with the Bureau of Prisons over the agency’s glacial pace in updating sentences to add the additional 7 days-a-year good time credit is something like that.
Last December, the First Step Act amended the wording of 18 USC 3624(b)(1) to correct a Congressional oversight. Congress had always intended that federal inmates get 54 days per year good-conduct credit, but it had written the statute so badly that the BOP was able to interpret 54 days to really mean 47 days. No fooling. The First Step Act was to fix that.
But trust Congress to screw up a one-car parade… even the “fix” was messed up. Congress meant that inmates would immediately retroactively receive seven extra days for every year they had served in their sentences, the be only 47. But the statute was unclear, and the BOP took the position that the extra seven days would only be effective on July 19th (180 days after the statute passed).
Even that hasn’t worked. Since July 19th, I have been bombarded with emails from inmates that the BOP has yet to correct their sentences to add the extra seven days per year. The BOP complains that the process is labor-intensive, and it’s moving as fast as it can.
Attempts to address the problem judicially has thus far come to naught. Case in point: Tim Greene, doing a long sentence for bank robbery, was due to be released August 9th. But with the additional 7 days a year, his release date would be moved back to March 29. He filed a habeas corpus petition in the Northern District of Texas last February, arguing that he was due the extra good time right away, and should be released at the end of March.
The District Court dismissed the petition as premature, because July 19th had not yet come around, and Tim appealed. By now, it was early June. He filed his brief, a motion for expedited consideration, and a request for conditional release. But nothing happened fast. The government filed its brief a month later, and Tim replied on July 18. The next day, the BOP kicked him out the door, which is exactly what would have happened had Tim done nothing.
Last week, the 5th Circuit finally ruled. It held the BOP was right that the extra goodtime only became effective on July 19, making Tim’s petition premature. Because Tim got out July 19, the requests for expedited consideration and conditional release were dismissed as moot.
There are undoubtedly habeas cases in the pipeline over the BOP’s failure to update release dates by applying the extra goodtime, a failure that messes with release plans and halfway house/home confinement placement. But as Tim’s case – which took seven months start to finish – shows, nothing happens fast.
Greene v. Underwood, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 28512 (5th Cir. Sept. 20, 2019)
– Thomas L. Root