Ayers v. Burton
- Beth Freeman
- 5:21-cv-05806
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Ayers v. Burton, Judge Freeman dismissed Ayers’s habeas petition, granted his judgment motion, and denied a certificate of appealability.
Bobby Ray Ayers, whose federal habeas petition challenging the denial of parole was dismissed; Robert Burton was the respondent.
What happened
Ayers v. Burton involved Bobby Ray Ayers, a state prisoner representing himself, who challenged the denial of parole after a May 13, 2020 hearing. He claimed that he was denied due process and an expert psychologist, and sought placement with the Department of Mental Health instead of continued incarceration.
The court had previously allowed Ayers to amend his petition to identify a violation of the basic procedural protections required in parole proceedings. Instead, he filed a motion for judgment and said he wanted to appeal. The court concluded that he had not alleged a federal habeas claim because the alleged denial of an expert witness was not one of those basic protections.
The court dismissed the petition for failure to state a claim, granted Ayers’s motion to the extent it sought a judgment so he could pursue an appeal, and denied a certificate of appealability. Judge Beth Freeman also explained that the motion itself was not a notice of appeal.
The detailed version
- Ayers v. Burton · No. 5:21-cv-05806
- Beth Freeman
- May 20, 2022
Background
Bobby Ray Ayers, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging the denial of parole. The petition stated that he had been convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison. Ayers challenged the denial of parole following a May 13, 2020 hearing and sought discharge from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to the Department of Mental Health as a patient under a civil-commitment arrangement.
The court previously dismissed the petition with permission to amend so Ayers could identify a violation of procedural protections during the parole proceedings. The court also granted him additional time to amend. Ayers did not file an amended petition. Instead, he filed a motion for judgment, arguing that he should not have to amend because the merits of his claim were already clear and stating that he wanted to appeal.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that California prisoners have a protected liberty interest in parole and therefore must receive basic procedural protections when parole is denied. Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Swarthout v. Cooke, those protections are an opportunity to be heard and a statement of the reasons for denying parole.
The court found that Ayers did not allege that he was denied either of those protections. His specific allegation was that he was denied a psychologist as an expert witness at the parole hearing. The court held that an expert witness was not one of the minimal procedural protections required by Swarthout, so the allegation did not state a claim eligible for federal habeas relief.
The court also addressed Ayers’s argument that the parole board abused its discretion by denying parole and declining to issue a commitment order placing him with the Department of Mental Health. It stated that a convicted prisoner has no constitutional right to civil commitment instead of incarceration and that Ayers provided no legal basis for that claim.
Disposition
The court dismissed the petition for failure to state a cognizable claim for federal habeas relief. Because Ayers made clear that he would not file an amended petition, the court dismissed the matter rather than allowing another amendment. To the extent Ayers’s motion sought a judgment so he could pursue an appeal, the court granted the motion. The court denied a certificate of appealability because Ayers had not made the required substantial showing of a constitutional violation and had not shown that reasonable judges could debate the court’s assessment. The court stated that Ayers could seek a certificate from the Court of Appeals, that his motion was not itself a notice of appeal, and that the order terminated Docket No. 11.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.