holding that although California’s state parole scheme had been held to create a liberty interest in parole, the Ninth Circuit erred in reviewing the state courts’ parole denials on the merits; whatever liberty interest existed was a state interest created by California law, and “[tjhere is no right under the Federal Constitution to be conditionally released before the expiration of a valid sentence, and the States are under no duty to offer parole to their prisoners.”
How later courts described this case
- holding that although California’s state parole scheme had been held to create a liberty interest in parole, the Ninth Circuit erred in reviewing the state courts’ parole denials on the merits; whatever liberty interest existed was a state interest created by California law, and “[tjhere is no right under the Federal Constitution to be conditionally released before the expiration of a valid sentence, and the States are under no duty to offer parole to their prisoners.”
- explaining that "standard analysis under [the Due Process Clause] proceeds in two steps: We first ask whether there exists a liberty or property interest of which a person has been deprived, and if so we ask whether the procedures followed by the State were constitutionally sufficient"
- holding that determining 13 whether petitioners were allowed an opportunity to be heard and a statement of reasons for denial 14 of parole “should have been the beginning and the end of the federal habeas courts’ inquiry into 15 whether petitioners received due process”
- holding that federal 20 review of a California inmate’s challenge to parole consideration is limited to whether he 21 received the minimal procedural protections afforded by the Due Process Clause, not 22 whether the state reached the correct result on the merits
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SEPARATE OPINION
Justice Ginsburg,
concurring.
In Superintendent, Mass. Correctional Institution at Walpole v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 455 , 105 S. Ct. 2768 , 86 L. Ed. 2d 356 (1985), this Court held that, to comply with due process, revocation of a prisoner’s good time credits must be supported by “some evidence.” If California law entitled prisoners to parole upon satisfaction of specified criteria, then Hill would be closely in point. See In re Rosenkrantz, 29 Cal. 4th 616, 657-658 , 59 P.3d 174, 205 (2002). The Ninth Circuit, however, has determined that for California’s parole system, as for Nebraska’s, Greenholtz v. Inmates of Neb. Penal and Correctional Complex, 442 U.S. 1 , 99 S. Ct. 2100 , 60 L. Ed. 2d 668 (1979), is the controlling precedent. Hayward v. Marshall, 603 F.3d 546, 559-561 (2010) (en banc). Given that determination, I agree that today’s summary disposition is in order.