Stephenson v. Segal
- Jerry Blackwell
- 0:23-cv-01301
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 3
In Stephenson v. Segal, Judge Blackwell denied habeas relief, ruling program credit counts days spent, not concurrent programs.
Bobbi Stephenson’s habeas petition was denied and the action was dismissed; the respondent warden prevailed.
What happened
Bobbi Stephenson challenged a recommendation to deny her petition asking for release-related credit based on time spent in a program. She objected to part of the recommendation’s reasoning, but not its main conclusion.
The court agreed that the governing statute clearly awards credit for the number of days spent in a program, rather than for the number of programs attended at the same time. The court also declined to consider Stephenson’s separate arguments about confinement conditions because those issues were not proper habeas claims and had not been raised earlier.
Judge Jerry W. Blackwell overruled Stephenson’s objection, accepted the recommendation, denied her habeas petition, and dismissed the action.
The detailed version
- Stephenson v. Segal · No. 0:23-cv-01301
- Jerry W. Blackwell
- June 27, 2023
Background
Bobbi Stephenson, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, a procedure used to challenge the legality of a person’s custody or the execution of a sentence. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright recommended denying and dismissing the petition. Stephenson objected to the recommendation.
Court’s analysis
The district court reviewed the parts of the recommendation to which Stephenson objected from the beginning, and reviewed the remaining parts for clear error. The court gave her objections a liberal reading because she was representing herself.
Stephenson challenged the recommendation’s alternative conclusion that a regulatory interpretation was reasonable if the statute were ambiguous. She did not challenge the recommendation’s primary conclusion that the statute’s language was unambiguous. The court therefore found her objection to the alternative analysis inconsequential and accepted the conclusion that the statute awards credit for the number of days spent in a program, not the number of programs attended concurrently.
Stephenson also raised arguments about conditions of confinement. The court stated that those arguments were not proper claims in a habeas proceeding and had been waived because she did not raise them in her original petition.
Disposition
Judge Jerry W. Blackwell overruled Stephenson’s objection, accepted the Report and Recommendation in its entirety, denied Stephenson’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and dismissed the action. The order did not state whether the dismissal was with or without prejudice.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.