Curry v. State Of New York

Background

John Curry filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute, against the State of New York and Rodney Young, Ms. Charvey, Ms. Clayburn, Lewis Robinson, and Tina Stanford. The opinion identifies the individual defendants as parole officials or employees of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision or the New York State Board of Parole. Curry was proceeding without a lawyer and had been granted permission to proceed without prepaying filing fees.

Curry alleged that he was released on parole on December 29, 2017. After he pleaded guilty to a parole violation in September 2020, he received a six-month parole-violation prison sentence with a release date of December 9, 2021. He alleged that officials did not release him back to parole on that date. According to the opinion, officials told him that New York’s Sexual Assault Reform Act required him to live in housing meeting specified location restrictions because of his prior kidnapping conviction and the age of the victim. Curry proposed residences, but none had been approved as compliant, and he remained incarcerated while officials sought suitable housing.

Curry sought damages, injunctive relief, release from custody, and restoration to parole. He had also filed state-court custody challenges, but the complaint did not show what happened in those proceedings.

Screening and claims against New York State

Because Curry was a prisoner proceeding without prepaying fees, the court screened the complaint under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The court was required to dismiss claims that were frivolous, failed to state a legally sufficient claim, sought money from an immune defendant, or fell outside the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. It also applied the rule that pleadings filed without a lawyer should be read generously, while still requiring enough facts to make a claim plausible.

The court dismissed Curry’s § 1983 claims for damages and injunctive relief against the State of New York. It held that the Eleventh Amendment generally protects states from suits in federal court for money damages, injunctive relief, and retrospective declaratory relief. The court found that Congress had not removed New York’s immunity for § 1983 claims and that New York had not waived its immunity. The court therefore dismissed those claims under the Eleventh Amendment, for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and because Curry sought monetary relief from an immune defendant.

Claims against the individual defendants

The court understood Curry’s claims against the individual defendants to challenge their alleged failure to secure compliant housing and their alleged failure to release him to parole after December 9, 2021. The court applied the favorable-termination rule from Heck v. Humphrey. That rule generally prevents a prisoner from using § 1983 to obtain damages or equitable relief when success would necessarily show that the prisoner’s conviction, sentence, or confinement is invalid, unless that confinement has already been invalidated through an appropriate legal proceeding.

The court concluded that Curry had not alleged that the basis for his current incarceration had been invalidated, including through a successful custody petition. It therefore dismissed his remaining § 1983 claims for failure to state a claim, under the favorable-termination rule. The dismissal was without prejudice to Curry’s reassertion of those claims after he obtained relief that would invalidate his current incarceration.

Claims seeking release and restoration to parole

The court held that a prisoner may not obtain release from custody through a § 1983 action. The proper vehicle for Curry’s claims seeking release and restoration to parole was a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, which allows a person held under a state-court judgment to challenge custody as violating federal law.

The court determined that it lacked jurisdiction to decide those custody claims in the Southern District of New York. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2241(d), the relevant federal courts were the district where Curry was held or the district where the state court that convicted and sentenced him was located. Curry was held in Marcy, in the Northern District of New York, and was convicted and sentenced in Kings County, in the Eastern District of New York.

Rather than dismiss the custody claims, the court found that the interests of justice favored transferring them to the Northern District of New York because Curry was challenging his continued incarceration at Marcy and the alleged failure to return him to parole. The court directed the Clerk to transfer those claims. The transferee court would decide whether Curry could proceed, including issues concerning withdrawal, timeliness, and exhaustion of state remedies.

Leave to amend and disposition

The court denied leave to amend because it concluded that the defects in Curry’s complaint could not be cured by amendment. It dismissed the § 1983 claims against the State of New York, dismissed the § 1983 claims against the individual defendants without prejudice on the stated condition concerning later invalidation of Curry’s incarceration, and transferred the claims seeking release and restoration to parole to the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York.

The order closed the action in the Southern District of New York. The court also stated that a certificate of appealability would not issue because Curry had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied, and it denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees because it certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.