Sichting v. Rardin

Background

Shane Douglas Sichting pleaded guilty to using a facility of interstate commerce in the attempted commission of a murder-for-hire scheme and received a 135-month prison sentence. He is serving that sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota.

Sichting filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under the First Step Act of 2018. He said he had participated in evidence-based recidivism-reduction programming and had received a full year off his sentence through earned time credits. He argued that he had earned enough additional credits to be transferred immediately to prerelease custody, either home confinement or a residential reentry center. He asked the court to order the Bureau of Prisons to make that transfer.

Jurisdiction and analysis

The court explained that habeas review is available for a challenge to the fact or duration of custody, such as a claim that a prisoner should spend less time in custody. It is not available for a claim challenging only the conditions or location of custody, such as a request to serve the remainder of a sentence in home confinement or a residential reentry center.

The court determined that Sichting’s petition challenged only the location where he would serve the remainder of his custodial term. The First Step Act allows qualifying prisoners to use earned time credits to reduce custodial time by up to 365 days and to become eligible for prerelease custody. According to the opinion, Sichting had already received the full one-year reduction. The only additional benefit he sought was a transfer to a different custody location. Because that request concerned the conditions of confinement rather than the length of confinement, the court concluded that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over the habeas petition.

The court rejected Sichting’s argument that the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo changed that result. It explained that the rule limiting habeas petitions to challenges to the fact or duration of custody comes from judicial interpretations of the federal habeas statute, not from an agency’s interpretation of the First Step Act. The court also stated that decisions from other federal districts allowing similar First Step Act claims did not override the controlling interpretation of habeas jurisdiction in the Eighth Circuit.

The court considered whether the petition could be treated as a non-habeas civil complaint. It noted that Sichting appeared to acknowledge that he had not exhausted administrative remedies, which the court said would be required for a viable non-habeas claim. The court also noted that a prisoner filing a civil action would remain responsible for the statutory filing fee even if permitted to proceed without prepaying it.

Recommendation and current status

Magistrate Judge Dulce J. Foster recommended that the habeas petition be denied without prejudice for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. She also recommended that Sichting’s motion for expedited briefing be denied and that the matter be dismissed.

The document is a report and recommendation, not an order or judgment of the District Court. It states that it is not directly appealable to the Eighth Circuit and that the parties may file specific written objections within 14 days after being served with the recommendation.