Cooper v. Davis

Background

Dan Cooper, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He paid the filing fee. Cooper claimed that fabricated information had been placed in his prison files. The information concerned a report that his wife was found carrying contraband when she visited him at San Quentin State Prison on August 8, 2017. Cooper stated that he was not challenging the result of his parole hearing, but was challenging the unfairness of placing the information in his files without timely notice, which prevented him from challenging it.

The opinion states that Cooper filed an inmate grievance about the information on June 24, 2019, and that he appears to have been denied parole sometime before then in 2019.

Court’s Analysis

The court distinguished between habeas petitions and civil-rights actions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Habeas is the exclusive remedy when a prisoner seeks immediate or earlier release from confinement. A civil-rights action is the proper remedy when success would not necessarily shorten the prisoner’s confinement.

Cooper expressly said he was not challenging the denial of parole. Instead, he challenged information in his file that might affect his eligibility in the future. The court concluded that even removing the report would not necessarily result in earlier release. Therefore, the claim did not fall within the central scope of habeas relief, and Cooper’s remedy for removing the information was a civil-rights action under § 1983.

The court considered but declined to treat the habeas petition as a civil-rights complaint. It explained that the two forms request different information, and the habeas petition did not identify all information that might be needed in a civil-rights case, including intended defendants, the connection between each defendant and the claims, and an adequate request for relief. The court also noted uncertainty about whether Cooper was willing to pay the $350 civil-action filing fee and concluded that converting the petition would not promote efficient use of court resources.

Disposition

The court dismissed the action for a writ of habeas corpus without prejudice to Cooper filing a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, preferably using the court’s civil-rights complaint form. The clerk was instructed to provide Cooper with two copies of that form and an application to proceed without paying the filing fee.

This was a procedural ruling about the proper legal vehicle for Cooper’s claim. The court did not decide whether the information in his files was fabricated or whether he was entitled to have it removed.