Stevens v. Roy

Background

Brad Stevens, proceeding without a lawyer, brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law against Thomas Roy, Joan Fabian, Jeffrey Pederson, Bruce Reiser, Greg Smith, Joseph Wieneke, Victoria Otte-Phillips, Kori Korts, and unnamed defendants in their individual capacities. Stevens was civilly committed at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program’s Moose Lake facility, but his lawsuit concerned a 2003 criminal sentence for attempted fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Stevens alleged that the sentence improperly included a ten-year conditional-release term. He claimed that, after violating that term, he was held at the Rush Creek Minnesota correctional facility from November 3, 2006, through November 21, 2014, and that more than $50,000 was deducted from his prison wages for room and board. He sought damages for the alleged harm.

Stevens relied on a 2016 Minnesota Supreme Court decision holding that the state sentencing statute did not authorize a ten-year conditional-release term for attempts of certain sex offenses. He argued that the decision invalidated his own conditional-release term. A state court had denied his request for postconviction relief, stating that his sentence had expired and that there was no existing conditional-release term to vacate. In an earlier round of this case, the court had dismissed a similar civil-rights claim under the rule from Heck v. Humphrey because Stevens had not shown that his conviction or sentence had been invalidated.

Motion to Dismiss

The court applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim. The court accepted the complaint’s factual allegations as true for purposes of the motion and construed Stevens’s self-represented pleadings liberally, but explained that Stevens still had to allege facts making his right to relief more than speculative.

The court held that all of Stevens’s claims depended on establishing that the ten-year conditional-release term was invalid. Under Heck, a civil-rights plaintiff cannot obtain damages for conduct whose unlawfulness would necessarily invalidate a conviction or sentence unless that conviction or sentence has already been reversed, expunged, declared invalid by an authorized state tribunal, or called into question by a federal court’s writ.

The court concluded that Stevens had not alleged such a favorable termination. The Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision concerned the statutory authority for conditional-release terms in other circumstances, and the state-court orders Stevens cited concerned other individuals. Stevens also had not alleged that he personally received a letter or other executive action invalidating his conditional-release term. The court therefore held that Heck barred the § 1983 damages claims.

The court granted Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. It dismissed Stevens’s federal § 1983 claims without prejudice and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over his remaining state-law claims. The order separately dismissed those state-law claims without prejudice.

Judicial Notice and Other Motions

Stevens asked the court to take judicial notice under Federal Rule of Evidence 201 of the 2016 Minnesota Supreme Court decision and two state district court orders involving other individuals. He also referred to an alleged Department of Corrections list of offenders whose sentences might be affected by the decision and requested a formal hearing.

The court held that the magistrate judge had properly taken notice of the three judicial decisions but had not taken notice of the alleged list, which had not been provided to the court. The court further held that Stevens had received an opportunity to present his position through briefing and that a formal evidentiary hearing was not required. It therefore granted the judicial-notice motion in part and denied it in part.

The court also adopted the recommendations denying Stevens’s Motion for Attorney Misconduct Pursuant to the Court’s Inherent Powers and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and denying his Motion for a Stay of Proceedings. The court overruled Stevens’s objections and adopted the magistrate judge’s Report and Recommendation in full.