Demille v. Jenkins

Background

Julie Ann Demille, a federal prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, the statute allowing a person in federal custody to challenge custody that violates federal law or the Constitution. She paid the filing fee and proceeded without a lawyer. She later moved for appointment of counsel.

Demille alleged that she was sentenced in the District of Oregon on March 26, 2019, to 48 months in federal prison. She filed a motion for emergency compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582 in the District of Oregon based on her medical condition and conditions at the prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. That court denied the motion on June 4, 2020. Demille asserted that her attorney had not filed under what she called the additional “§ 3579.”

Claims and Analysis

Demille challenged her transfer from the Dublin Satellite Camp Prison to the Federal Correctional Institution on March 27, 2020. She argued that the transfer placed her in harsher conditions and made her sentence excessive. She also claimed eligibility for compassionate release under the “Cares Act § 3579, under the First Step Act Elderly Home Confinement Program,” and challenged the conditions of confinement, including alleged exposure to life-threatening illness and dangerous custody conditions. She further alleged that Bureau of Prisons staff were not prepared to respond to a COVID-19 outbreak.

The court explained that Demille correctly filed her compassionate-release motion in the sentencing court, the District of Oregon. But it held that she could not use a § 2241 petition in the Northern District of California to bypass that court’s rejection of her § 3582 motion. The court concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to hear compassionate-release claims under § 2241 when the court considering the petition was not the sentencing court. The court stated that Demille’s recourse was to seek an appeal of the District of Oregon’s decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The court treated the challenges to prison conditions differently. It held that such claims must be brought in a federal civil-rights action rather than a habeas case. The court noted that Demille had begun an internal Bureau of Prisons administrative remedy but had not received a decision when she filed this case. Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a prisoner must exhaust available administrative remedies concerning prison conditions before bringing a federal civil-rights claim.

Disposition

The court dismissed the federal habeas action for lack of jurisdiction. It dismissed the claims concerning conditions of confinement without prejudice to filing a federal civil-rights action after Demille exhausted her administrative remedies. In light of the dismissal, Judge Edward J. Davila denied Demille’s motion for appointment of counsel as moot and terminated the docket entry for that motion.