We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

MAGISTRATE THROWS OUT FCI SHERIDAN LOUSY-CONDITIONS HABEAS PETITIONS

An Oregon federal magistrate judge last week recommended that some 200 habeas corpus actions alleging insufficient medical care at FCI Sheridan be dismissed.

The magistrate judge ruled that the petitioners have been pursuing the wrong legal strategy. Rather than habeas corpus, the inmates “should have worked to address their concerns through other means.

The Opinion and Order stated that while

the Court is sympathetic to Petitioners’ difficult experiences at Sheridan during the pandemic, the Court cannot conclude that merely alleging that no conditions of confinement could satisfy the Eighth Amendment is sufficient to confer habeas jurisdiction under circumstances such as those present here… Petitioners insist that they are challenging the fact of their confinement, but they do not allege that their convictions or sentences are invalid in the first instance or that they are being held in excess of a lawfully imposed term of imprisonment. Instead, Petitioners allege that the harsh conditions at Sheridan place them at risk of serious harm from COVID-19, allegations premised on the conditions, and not the validity, of their confinement… Indeed, Petitioners’ claims “would not exist but for [the] current conditions” at Sheridan.

The Court ruled that the prisoners’ “argument that habeas jurisdiction exists simply because they allege that nothing short of their release may remedy the unconstitutional conditions at Sheridan thus improperly ‘conflates the nature of relief with the substance of the claim.’

Stirling v. Salazar, Case No. 3:20-cv-00712-SB, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 206892 (D. Or. Nov. 15, 2022)

Oregon Public Broadcasting, Federal judge dismisses claims of mistreatment in Oregon prison as wrong legal strategy (November 17, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root