noting that “BOP calculated that [defendant] had earned fifteen FSA credits, which it applied to accelerate her release date” (emphasis supplied)
How later courts described this case
- noting that “BOP calculated that [defendant] had earned fifteen FSA credits, which it applied to accelerate her release date” (emphasis supplied)
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 22-1945
SUZANNE M. BROWN,
Petitioner, Appellant,
v.
MICHAEL J. PENDERS, Chief U.S. Probation Officer for the
District of Maine; BUREAU OF PRISONS, NORTHEAST RESIDENTIAL
REENTRY MANAGEMENT,
Respondents, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE
[Hon. John A. Woodcock, Jr., U.S. District Judge]
Before
Kayatta, Lynch, and Montecalvo,
Circuit Judges.
Inga L. Parsons, by appointment of the Court, for
appellant.
Trevor Haruo Taniguchi, Assistant United States
Attorney, with whom Darcie N. McElwee, United States Attorney, was
on brief, for appellee Bureau of Prisons, Northeast Residential
Reentry Management.
May 17, 2024
LYNCH, Circuit Judge. Suzanne Brown appeals from the
November 23, 2022, denial of her petition for habeas corpus. Brown
v. Rieger, No. 22-cv-00259, 2022 WL 17184294 (D. Me. Nov. 23,
2022). As Brown has been released from confinement since she filed
this appeal, Brown now concedes that certain of her original claims
no longer provide any avenue for relief and that she does have an
alternate mechanism to seek relief under 18 U.S.C. § 3583. She
now argues only that her term of supervised release began on the
date the Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") transferred her to home
confinement and should be measured from that date.
We affirm the denial of habeas relief.
I. Background
Brown's petition originally argued that the BOP had both
failed to accurately calculate and then to apply time credits to
which she argues she was entitled under the First Step Act of 2018
("FSA"), Pub. L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194 (codified in scattered
sections of 18, 21, 34, and 42 U.S.C.).1 Brown concedes that her
original request to be released from imprisonment is now moot.
She also concedes that under controlling precedent other relief
Under the FSA federal prisoners can earn up to fifteen days
1
of time credit per month by participating in "evidence-based
recidivism reduction programming ["EBRR"] or productive
activities." 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(A). Such time credits "shall
be applied toward time in prerelease custody or supervised
release." Id. § 3632(d)(4)(C).
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requests originally made are no longer viable. We state only those
facts pertinent to our holding.
In January 2017 Brown was convicted after a jury trial
on twelve counts of making a materially false statement to a
federal agency in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). Brown was
sentenced to twelve months of imprisonment and a two-year term of
supervised release. This court affirmed her convictions. See
United States v. Brown, 945 F.3d 597, 599, 605-06 (1st Cir. 2019).
She did not challenge her sentence on appeal. See generally id.
Brown began her term of imprisonment on January 3, 2022,
with release scheduled for January 1, 2023 (assuming full time
served less credit for one day of incarceration in March of 2016).
In March 2022, BOP calculated that Brown had earned fifteen FSA
credits, which it applied to accelerate her release date to
December 17, 2022.
On August 2, 2022, BOP transferred Brown to home
confinement pursuant to the emergency measures of the CARES Act,
Pub. L. No. 116-136, § 12003(b)(2), 134 Stat. 281, 516 (2020),
still with a calculated release date of December 17, 2022. In an
August 8, 2022, email to BOP personnel, Brown contested her FSA
credit calculation and projected release date. BOP declined to
make any changes.
On August 24, 2022, Brown filed this petition for habeas
corpus in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine,
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arguing that she had earned enough FSA credits to qualify for
release on September 2, 2022, and that BOP's decision not to
correct her FSA credit calculation and apply FSA credits to
accelerate her release would result in her being held unlawfully
in custody.
On November 18, 2022, a magistrate judge recommended
that Brown's petition for habeas corpus be denied. The district
court adopted that recommendation and denied the petition on
November 23, 2022.
Brown timely appealed on December 1, 2022. On December
17, 2022, Brown was released from home confinement as planned.
II. Analysis
"We review the denial of a habeas petition de novo," and
may affirm "for any reason apparent in the record." Francis v.
Maloney, 798 F.3d 33, 36 (1st Cir. 2015).
At oral argument on May 6, 2024, Brown correctly conceded
that controlling precedent forecloses some of the relief she sought
earlier. She now asks only that we hold her term of supervised
release began on August 2, 2022, when she was transferred to home
confinement.
We could not backdate the start of Brown's supervised
release to account for a period of overincarceration even if we
concluded such overincarceration occurred (an issue we do not
reach). This is because, as the Supreme Court held in United
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States v. Johnson, 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e) states that "[t]he term of
supervised release commences on the day the person is released
from imprisonment," 529 U.S. 53, 56 (2000), and "by its own
necessary operation[] does not reduce the length of a supervised
release term by reason of excess time served in prison," id. at
60.
Instead Brown argues that "'[h]ome' is not
imprisonment," and from this she attempts to further argue that
she necessarily was released from imprisonment and began her term
of supervised release under Johnson on August 2, 2022, when BOP
transferred her to home confinement. Brown's position is
foreclosed by the text of the statute under which BOP exercises
custody over federal prisoners. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(a), "[a]
person who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment . . . shall
be committed to the custody of the [BOP] until the expiration of
the term imposed, or until earlier released for satisfactory
behavior pursuant to the provisions of section 3624." That custody
did not end when the BOP placed Brown on home confinement.2
2Brown incorrectly argues that according to "the BOP's brief
it appears that the BOP relinquished custody to the probation
department . . . on August 2, 2022, the transfer of which custody[]
legally triggered the commencement of Ms. Brown's supervised
release." In fact the BOP's brief states that "Brown was
transferred to home confinement under the supervision of the
District of Maine Probation Office." (Emphasis added.) Brown
does not identify any source of legal authority under which BOP
could have released Brown from a court-ordered sentence placing
her into its custody more than four months early.
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Although the BOP's authority to transfer inmates to home
confinement is codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3624, the statute referenced
in § 3621(a) as governing early release, the home confinement
elements of § 3624 pertain only to "[p]rerelease [c]ustody." 18
U.S.C. §§ 3624(c), (g) (emphasis added). That authority is
distinct from the "release[] for satisfactory behavior" provisions
§ 3621(a) refers to, which exist at § 3624(b). The home
confinement to which Brown was transferred was a form of BOP
custody -- that is, imprisonment under § 3621(a) -- and her term
of supervised release could not begin under Johnson until the BOP
released her from that custody.3
The district court's denial of Brown's habeas corpus
petition is affirmed. We express no view as to whether Brown could
receive relief under other procedural mechanisms, such as 18 U.S.C.
§ 3583. The appellees' pending motion to amend the caption in
this case is denied as moot.
3Brown cites a DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memorandum for the
proposition that BOP does not have the authority to place
individuals in its custody in home confinement, attempting to infer
from that memorandum that BOP custody over Brown must have ceased
when she was placed on home confinement. While that document did
conclude that the BOP lacks the authority to place inmates in home
confinement under the general placement authority of 18 U.S.C. §
3621(a) and (b), more to the point it also concluded that the BOP
possesses the authority to place inmates in its custody in home
confinement pursuant to other specific statutory authority to do
so, such as § 3624(c)(2). See generally Home Confinement of Fed.
Prisoners After the Covid-19 Emergency, 2021 WL 222748 (O.L.C.
Jan. 15, 2021).
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