Biggs v. King

Background

Donald Courtney Biggs filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, the federal statute used to challenge certain unlawful custody decisions. He also filed a motion asking the court to expedite the case and set a briefing schedule.

Biggs pleaded guilty in February 2018 to transporting an individual with intent to engage in criminal sexual conduct, violating 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a). Later that year, he received a 188-month prison sentence. At the time of the recommendation, he was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota.

Biggs alleged that the Bureau of Prisons was keeping him in prison past his First Step Act prerelease-custody transfer date. He claimed that authorities should have transferred him to prerelease custody in April 2024 and asked the court to order a transfer to a prerelease-custody location and out of prison custody.

Court’s Analysis

The court explained that a § 2241 custody challenge is available, as relevant here, when a prisoner claims that the fact or duration of custody violates federal law or the Constitution. The court concluded that Biggs’s petition did not challenge whether he was in custody or how long his custody lasted. Instead, it challenged the location of his confinement.

The recommendation treated prerelease custody, including home confinement, as a change in the place of custody rather than an end to custody. Because Biggs challenged the conditions or location of his confinement, the court concluded that his request fell outside the scope of relief available through § 2241.

The court considered whether to treat the filing as an ordinary civil lawsuit instead. It declined to recommend that approach. The recommendation noted that a civil prison-conditions case would generally require exhaustion of available administrative remedies before filing. Biggs had not answered the petition form’s questions about efforts to use the Bureau of Prisons’ administrative process, suggesting that he had not done so. The court also noted that such a lawsuit would require a $350 filing fee regardless of whether Biggs qualified to proceed without prepaying the fee, and that the case would likely be dismissed for failure to exhaust.

Recommendation and Procedure

Judge Dulce J. Foster recommended that Biggs’s § 2241 petition be DENIED; that the matter not be reinterpreted as a standard civil lawsuit; that his motion to expedite be DENIED as moot; and that the action be DISMISSED.

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