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DO YOUR JOB, JUDGE

While Larone Elijah was serving a second federal sentence for drug distribution, the First Step Act was passed in 2018, increasing the maximum good time available to prisoners from 47 to 54 days annually. The BOP gave Larone an additional seven additional days of good time for his second possession sentence towards his release date, but Larone wanted  extra good time for his prior sentence, too, the one he had already served.

The BOP declined (which was the correct response, but the merits of Larone’s claim are irrelevant to this case).

After exhausting his administrative remedies with the BOP (an exercise in futility akin to a Cleveland Browns fan picking out Super Bowl seats for next February’s game in Las Vegas), Larone filed a 28 USC § 2241 petition for writ of habeas corpus, arguing that the BOP erred by not retroactively applying the First Step Act to his original already-completed drug sentence. In the summer of 2021, a magistrate judge issued a Report and Recommendation (R&R) concluding that Larone’s petition should be summarily dismissed.

Magistrate judges are assistants to U.S. district court judges, authorized by statute to undertake a variety of preliminary tasks (subject to supervision) that are necessary to adjudication but serious time-wasters for a district court judge.  Magistrate judges may perform arraignments, hear evidentiary admission motions, or even decide what we call “dispositive motions,” motions that may terminate a case.

When a magistrate judge rules on a matter, the losing party has the right to object to the decision, triggering an independent review by the U.S. district judge.  District judges are known as “Article III judges,” because they are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate as required by Article III of the Constitution. Because only an Article III judge may make a final disposition on any issue before the district court, the magistrates’ decisions are considered recommendations.  Hence the term “Report and Recommendation.”

Of course, district judges – who almost always work with the same magistrate judges – generally are loathe to crush the spirits and work products of their assistants by declining to adopt the MJs’ “recommendations.”  That disinclination is on full-throated display in Larone’s case.

Larone filed a timely objection to the R&R, again advancing his claims but developing his arguments with new case law and discussion. The district judge, however,  found that because Larone was attempting to “reargue his case,” his objection was nonspecific. Applying a “clear error” standard, the district judge concluded that the magistrate wasn’t clearly wrong and adopted her R&R.

Last week, the 4th Circuit reversed the decision. The Circuit observed that “the authority of magistrate judges is narrowly limited by Article III… Magistrate judges were not intended to replace Article III judges, but to increase the efficiency of the court by providing a neutral ‘preliminary evaluation’ for the judge’s consideration.”

To trigger mandatory de novo review of objections, the Circuit held, an objecting party must object to the magistrate’s finding “with sufficient specificity so as reasonably to alert the district court of the true ground for the objection.”

Here, the 4th said, Larone’s objections easily exceeded the sufficiency standard, setting out enumerated, detailed legal claims disagreeing with the magistrate’s recommendation. The district court concluded that because Larone repeated his previous arguments, he did not object with sufficient specificity to warrant de novo review. However, the Circuit said, Larone’s objection was enough to “alert the district court that he believed the magistrate judge erred in recommending dismissal of those claims… At bottom, we must recognize that the pro se construction owed to Larone makes his grounds even clearer.”

Because Larone alerted the district court to the grounds on which he objected, the court was obligated to review his objections de novo. “By adopting the recommendation after only clear error review,” the 4th held, “the district court improperly elevated the magistrate’s opinion and failed to satisfy its obligations under 28 USC § 636(b) and Article III.”

Elijah v. Dunbar, Case No 21-7352, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 9592 (4th Cir. April 21, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root