ALMANZAR

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

RAFAEL ALMANAZAR, :

Petitioner, :

v. : Case No. 3:26-cv-152-KAP

PENNSYLVANIA PAROLE BOARD, et al., :

Respondents :

Report and Recommendation

Recommendation

Petitioner Almanazar’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus should be denied

without prejudice as unexhausted and without a certificate of appealability. In the

alternative the Court should summarily deny the petition on the merits without a

certificate of appealability under Habeas Rule 4. The Clerk shall draw a District Judge to

preside over this matter and shall add counsel for the Pennsylvania Parole Board to the

docket for notice purposes only, with no duty to respond.

Report

I submit this Report and Recommendation now because preservice dismissal is

appropriate. This case is on all fours with the recent decision in Bechdel v. Pennsylvania

Parole Board, 2025 WL 4080458 at *1 (W.D. Pa. Nov. 17, 2025), report and

recommendation adopted, 2026 WL 196454 (W.D. Pa. Jan. 26, 2026)(Fischer, J.).

Pursuant to Rule 4 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases (Habeas Rule 4), a district

court has the power and the duty to examine habeas petitions filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C.§

2254 before service, to screen out meritless applications and eliminate the burden on

respondents of assembling an unnecessary answer. See Kiser v. Johnson, 163 F.3d 326,

328 (5th Cir.1999), quoting Advisory Committee Notes to Habeas Rule 4. See also 28

U.S.C.§ 2243. One issue that can be raised sua sponte where the record is clear is a

petitioner's failure to exhaust state law remedies. Magouirk v. Phillips, 144 F.3d 348, 357

(5th Cir. 1998). That is the case here.

Almanazar submits an 8-paragraph fill-in-the-blanks form petition the Court has

seen many times from inmates at S.C.I. Houtzdale, asserting that the denial of parole to

him violates the rationale of Block v. Potter, 631 F.2d 233, 240 (3d Cir.1980), in which

the Court of Appeals held that the Virgin Islands could not deny parole “on the basis of

factors that are divorced from the policy and purpose of parole,” giving as examples “race,

religion, political beliefs, or another impermissible factor.” The dates of the parole

decision (January 2, 2026) and the habeas petition (January 25, 2026) show that

Almanazar cannot possibly have exhausted his remedies in state court. The form petition

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asserts that exhaustion is not required because DeFoy v. McCullough, 393 F.3d 439 (3d

Cir.2005) held that there is no remedy for Almanazar’s asserted constitutional wrong in

state court. Almanazar is wrong on both counts. To repeat what I wrote in Bechdel:

Petitions for habeas corpus, whether governed by the general provisions of 28

U.S.C.§ 2241(c)(3) or the specific provisions of 28 U.S.C.§ 2254(a) as amended by

the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub.L. No. 104-

132, 110 Stat. 1214, April 24, 1996 for petitions challenging custody under state court

sentences, allow a writ of habeas corpus only where the petitioner "is in custody in

violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States." Additionally,

AEDPA codifies the longstanding limit on the federal power to issue a writ of habeas

corpus to cases where there has been an exhaustion of remedies in the state courts.

See Castille v. Peoples, 489 U.S. 346, 349 (1989). Exhaustion requires the petitioner

to first present to the state courts the same legal arguments addressing the same

factual context that the petitioner presents to the federal court. See Baldwin v.

Reese, 541 U.S. 27, 29-33 (2004); Duncan v. Henry, 513 U.S. 364, 366 (1995) (per

curiam). Under 28 U.S.C.§ 2254(b)(1)(A) and (2), a federal court can deny a writ of

habeas corpus sought on an unexhausted claim that a petitioner’s custody is

unlawful, but it cannot grant a writ of habeas corpus unless the petitioner has

exhausted the remedies available for such claims in state court or has shown that

exhaustion is excused because there is an absence of available state corrective

process, or because circumstances exist that render such process ineffective to

protect the rights of the applicant. 28 U.S.C.§ 2254(b)(1)(B).

The citation of DeFoy v. McCullough for the proposition that there is no exhaustion

requirement in challenges to denials of parole has been rejected for about a decade. In

addition to Bechdel, see Bradley v. Wingard, No. 3:15-cv-235-KRG-KAP, 2017 WL

11476608, at *1–2 (W.D. Pa. Oct. 12, 2017), report and recommendation adopted, 2018

WL 10150909 (W.D.Pa. Sept. 5, 2018), certificate of appealability denied, No. 18-3196

(3d Cir. March 8, 2019). As I noted in Bechdel, the Commonwealth Court considers

petitions for mandamus presenting constitutional challenges to the denial of parole. Id.,

2025 WL 4080458 at *2, citing Short v. Barkley, No. 438 M.D. 2016, 2017 WL 1337557,

at *2 (Pa.Cmwlth. Apr. 12, 2017)(considering but rejecting as insufficient a constitutional

claim by Short that he was denied parole on the basis of his race and mental illness.) and

Toland v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole, 263 A.3d 1220, 1233 (Pa.Cmwlth.

2021)(“[U]nder our precedent, both ex post facto claims and due process challenges may

be raised in a mandamus action.”), adhered to in Toland v. Pennsylvania Board of

Probation and Parole, 311 A.3d 649 (Pa.Cmwlth. 2024). Because Almanazar makes no

effort to explain why a mandamus action in the Commonwealth Court is unavailable to

him the Court should summarily deny the petition as unexhausted.

If the Court wishes to reach the merits of the petition it should summarily deny the

petition on the merits without need of service or a response. Rule 2(c) of the Rules

governing Habeas Corpus Cases under Section 2254 in the United States District Courts,

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42 U.S.C.§, also made applicable to Habeas Corpus Cases under Section 2241 by Rule 1(b),

requires Almanazar to set forth all the claims he intends to present and the facts that

support those claims. See Mayle v. Felix, 545 U.S. 644, 655 (2005) (quoting with approval

the Advisory Committee's Note on Habeas Corpus Rule 4, that “[N]otice pleading is not

sufficient, for the petition is expected to state facts that point to a real possibility of

constitutional error.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). At page 5 of the 15-page

Appendix to the form petition, there is a single page in which Almanazar personally comes

through. Almanazar gives four reasons why he should be paroled: he attaches various

certificates that reflect his participation in programs, he produces a misconduct report

showing his last misconduct was in November 2024, he notes that in 2020 he acted to

assist a corrections officer who was having a seizure, and he says that he was told by

“parole” in 2025 that if he completed certain programs and remained misconduct free he

would be granted parole in 2026.

Almanazar argues that he has completed all programs and that the Notice of Board

Decision shows that the Board got the facts of his case wrong because, as he interprets it,

the language of the Notice of Board Decision falsely asserts that he was not misconduct

free in 2025 and had not completed his programs. Almanazar misreads the Board’s

Notice: it gives as reasons for denying parole that petitioner had misconducts on his

record and needed a longer misconduct-free period, not that petitioner committed

misconducts in 2025. And the explanation for the Board’s language about completion of

programs could be something as simple as the fact that the Notice issued on January 2,

2026 was based on an earlier interview (the date, probably in December 2025, is not

given) that may have been before the completion date of one of Almanazar’s programs

(the Violence Prevention High Intensity program ended on December 17, 2025, after

having been projected to end on January 13, 2026) or before the documentation of that

completion date.

But it is immaterial for purposes of habeas review whether the Board made a

factual error in one component of its decision or preprinted the Notice of Board Decision

and failed to update it before issuing it. Habeas corpus jurisdiction does not give a federal

court power to exercise plenary review of a state’s parole decisions, much less to proofread

their notices for style, since habeas review does not even require that there be an opinion

memorializing the state’s decision. See Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 98 (2011).

Because Almanazar points to no impermissible factor allegedly used by the Board such as

race, religion, or political beliefs, he states no claim under Block v. Potter. Almanazar asks

this court to re-weigh the same evidence considered by the Parole Board and come to a

result favorable to Almanazar.

What I wrote in Bechdel is even more starkly presented in this case: de novo review

of state parole decisions is not just bad constitutional law, it is beyond the institutional

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competence of federal judges who are currently straining to handle several hundred

habeas petitions under 28 U.S.C.§ 2241 challenging immigration detention to consider

thousands of challenges under 28 U.S.C.§ 2254 to Pennsylvania parole denials simply

because inmates can produces a form petition citing Block v. Potter and DeFoy v.

McCullough.

A certificate of appealability should not be issued unless the petitioner “has made

a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.” 28 U.S.C.§ 2253(c)(2).

Because there is no reasonable debate that on this record Almanazar’s petition is

unexhausted and his claim is meritless, no certificate of appealability should issue.

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C.§ 636(b)(1), the parties are advised that they have fourteen

days to file written objections to my recommendation. Failure to file timely and specific

objections may result in any appeal being severely hampered or entirely defaulted. See

EEOC v. City of Long Branch, 866 F.3d 93, 100 (3d Cir. 2017) (describing standard of

appellate review when no timely and specific objections are filed as limited to review for

plain error).

tee

DATE: February 9, 2026

Keith A. Pesto,

United States Magistrate Judge

Notice by ECF to counsel and by U.S. Mail to:

Rafael Almanazar QA-1391

S.C.I. Houtzdale

P.O. Box 1000

209 Institution Drive

Houtzdale, PA 16698-1000