Granados v. Marques

Background

Sergio J. Granados filed this petition without a lawyer, asking the court to immediately apply the First Step Act of 2018, including its rules for calculating good-conduct credits. A magistrate judge initially recommended denying the petition because the Act had not yet taken effect. Granados objected and later asserted that the Bureau of Prisons had recalculated his credits incorrectly, shorting him by 14 days.

The Bureau responded with a declaration and documents supporting its recalculation. Because of the changed circumstances and the new evidence, the court treated the response as a motion for summary judgment. Summary judgment is a decision entered when there is no genuine dispute over an important fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment under the law. The court gave Granados two weeks to respond, but he filed nothing further.

Court’s analysis

The Bureau’s records showed that Granados’s projected release date before the recalculation was April 15, 2020, based on a projection of 1,246 days of good-conduct time. On July 5, 2019, the Bureau updated the calculation under the First Step Act. It projected 54 days of good-conduct time for each year of his 28-year sentence, for a subtotal of 1,512 days. After subtracting 81 days lost through discipline, the Bureau projected 1,431 days of good-conduct time and a new release date of October 13, 2019.

The court found that Granados submitted no evidence showing that the calculation or the information supporting it was incorrect. It therefore concluded that no genuine dispute of material fact existed and that the respondent was entitled to summary judgment.

Disposition

Judge Eric C. Tostrud declined to adopt the magistrate judge’s June 26, 2019 Report and Recommendation because the factual circumstances had changed. The court construed the respondent’s response as a motion for summary judgment, granted that motion, and dismissed the petition.