Long v. U.S.

312 A.3d 1247

Colie L. LONG, Appellant,

v.UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 22-CO-0342

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued January 30, 2024

Decided April 11, 2024

Appeal from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (1996-FEL-002346), (Hon. Lynn Leibovitz, Trial Judge)

Matthew B. Kaplan, Arlington, VA, for appellant.

Mark Hobel, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Matthew M. Graves, United States Attorney, and Chrisellen R. Kolb and Nicholas P. Coleman, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Zoé Friedland, with whom Samia Fam and Alice Wang were on the brief for Public Defender Service, amicus curiae.

Before Blackburne-Rigsby, Chief Judge, and Easterly and Shanker, Associate Judges.

Shanker, Associate Judge:

In the early morning hours of March 19, 1996, appellant Colie L. Long shot and killed fourteen-year-old Ronald Williamson. After nearly two decades of subsequent litigation regarding his convictions and sentence, the trial court ultimately sentenced Mr. Long to life in prison. See Long v. United States, 163 A.3d 777, 779 (D.C. 2017).

In November 2021, Mr. Long requested that the trial court reduce his sentence under the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act ("IRAA"), D.C. Code § 24-403.03. During the pendency of his motion, Mr. Long was released from prison on parole. Two days after his release, the trial court denied his IRAA motion due to concerns about Mr. Long’s release plan and his disciplinary history while incarcerated. Mr. Long now appeals.

This appeal requires us to decide, among other issues, whether parolees are ineligible for relief under the IRAA due to their release from prison. We conclude that a parolee’s release from prison does not automatically render them ineligible for a sentence reduction under the IRAA. We further conclude that the trial court committed legal error in denying Mr. Long’s IRAA motion. We therefore vacate the order and remand to the trial court for reconsideration in light of this opinion.

I. Background

In 1996, Mr. Long, then eighteen years old, shot and killed fourteen-year-old Ronald Williamson. See Long v. United States, 83 A.3d 369, 372 (D.C. 2013). A jury convicted Mr. Long of first-degree premeditated murder while armed, among other crimes. Id.. at 373. Mr. Long was initially sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. This court, however, twice vacated Mr. Long’s sentence, and he was ultimately sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Long v. United States, 163 A.3d 777, 779, 781, 790 (D.C. 2017). Mr. Long became parole-eligible on October 12, 2021.

On November 3, 2021, Mr. Long filed a "Motion to Reduce Sentence Under the [IRAA]" in which he asked the trial court to "reduce his sentence so that he may immediately be released from confinement." The IRAA provides that the Superior Court "shall reduce a term of imprisonment imposed upon a defendant for an offense committed before the defendant’s 25th birthday if’ the defendant "has served at least 15 years in prison" and the court finds, after considering the factors set forth in subsection (c) of the statute, that "the defendant is not a danger to the safety of any person or the community and that the interests of justice warrant a sentence modification." D.C. Code § 24-403.03(a).

As discussed in more detail below in Part II.D.1., the trial court held a hearing on the motion, at which Mr. Long presented testimony from five witnesses, including himself.

During the pendency of the trial court’s consideration of his motion, Mr. Long separately sought parole from the United States Parole Commission. The Parole Commission granted his request and scheduled his release for July 29, 2022. On April 19, 2022, the trial court received the Parole Commission’s decision to release Mr. Long on parole. Two days later, on April 21, 2022, the trial court issued its order denying Mr. Long’s IRAA motion, from which Mr. Long now appeals. The government represents that Mr. Long was released from prison on parole on July 29, 2022.

II. Analysis

On appeal, Mr. Long asserts that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his IRAA motion. Before reaching that argument, however, we must address the government’s three preliminary arguments that speak to whether we can afford Mr. Long the relief he seeks. In particular, the government asserts that: (1) Mr. Long’s appeal is moot; (2) to the extent that Mr. Long seeks justiciable relief, he failed to preserve that relief by requesting it in Superior Court; and (3) the IRAA does not extend relief to parolees. We consider each issue in turn.

A. Mootness

[1–5] Although this court is not constitutionally bound by the "cases" or "controversies" limitation of Article III of the United States Constitution, we generally adhere to it for prudential reasons. Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Hormel Foods Corp., 258 A.3d 174, 181 (D.C. 2021). Moot cases do not satisfy the "cases" or "controversies" limitation of Article III, Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 577 U.S. 153, 160-61, 136 S.Ct. 663, 193 L.Ed.2d 571 (2016), and "this court does not normally decide [such] cases," Cropp v. Williams, 841 A.2d 328, 330 (D.C. 2004) (per curiam). The "case-or-controversy requirement subsists through all stages of federal judicial proceedings, trial and appellate." Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1, 7, 118 S.Ct. 978, 140 L.Ed.2d 43 (1998) (internal quotation omitted). "This means that, throughout the litigation, the plaintiff must have suffered, or be threatened with, an actual injury traceable to the defendant and likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision." Id. (internal quotation omitted). An appeal is moot when it is "impossible or unnecessary" for the court to grant relief. Classic CAB v. D.C. Dep’t of For-Hire Vehicles, 244 A.3d 703, 705 (D.C. 2021). "The burden of demonstrating that a case is moot falls heavily upon the party asserting mootness." Jackson v. George, 146 A.3d 405, 416 (D.C. 2016) (internal quotation and brackets omitted).

The government asserts three separate "mootness" arguments, the latter two of which do not properly implicate mootness. We address them seriatim.

1. Whether Mr. Long’s release on parole rendered his appeal moot

[6] The government first contends that Mr. Long’s "release from prison mooted his appeal." In particular, the government argues that "[t]he relief [Mr.] Long seeks on appeal—vacatur of the trial court’s order and remand ‘with instructions that [Mr.] Long be resentenced’ "—is both "impossible" and "unnecessary" due to his release on parole.

If Mr. Long only sought "release" from prison, the government would be indisputably correct that his appeal is now moot. Such relief would be impossible for this court to grant because it has already occurred.

[7, 8] But because Mr. Long seeks a sentence reduction, his appeal presents an "actual injury traceable to" his sentence, Spencer, 523 U.S. at 7, 118 S.Ct. 978, that is redressable by this court. Despite his release from prison, Mr. Long continues to suffer at least two redressable injuries. First, the conditions of release imposed by the parole process constitute an injury under Article III. "[P]arolees are on the continuum of state-imposed punishments."

Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 850, 126 S.Ct. 2193, 165 L.Ed.2d 250 (2006) (internal quotation omitted). Although parolees are released from "immediate physical imprisonment, [parole] imposes conditions which significantly confine and restrain [a parolee’s] freedom." Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236, 243, 83 S.Ct. 373, 9 L.Ed.2d 285 (1963). Parole is "an established variation on imprisonment of convicted criminals." Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 477, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972); In re Dortch, 860 A.2d 346, 362 (D.C. 2004) ("Parole is a continuation of an offender’s sentence; it is a state of conditioned liberty; a prison without walls.") (internal quotations omitted). We therefore agree with Mr. Long that he still faces significant restrictions on his liberty imposed by parole, which constitute a cognizable Article III injury. See Spencer, 523 U.S. at 7, 118 S.Ct. 978 (restrictions on liberty imposed by the terms of parole "constitute[ ] a concrete injury").

Second, Mr. Long’s sentence remains operative despite his release on parole and itself constitutes an independent injury. In the District, a parolee continues to serve his or her sentence despite a conditional release from prison. Parolees "remain in the legal custody and under the control of the Attorney General of the United States or his or her authorized representative until … [t]he expiration of the maximum term or terms specified in his or her sentence" or the sentence is otherwise terminated, D.C. Code § 24-404(a), and may be arrested and re-imprisoned for a violation of parole conditions "at any time within the term or terms of [the parolee's] sentence," id. § 24-405. The very existence of an operative sentence of imprisonment is therefore injurious for Article III purposes because it is under that sentence that the individual must surrender his or her legal custody to the state and from which flows a risk of re-incarceration.¹ See Brian R. Means, Post-Conviction Remedies § 8:4 (2023) ("[A] challenge to a sentence that the individual is presently serving satisfies the case-or-controversy requirement."); cf. Spencer, 523 U.S. at 7, 118 S.Ct. 978 ("Once the convict’s sentence has expired, however, some concrete and continuing injury other than the now-ended incarceration or parole—some ‘collateral consequence’ of the conviction—must exist if the suit is to be maintained.").²

Both of these injuries are redressable by this court as any other challenge to a convict’s sentence or parole conditions would be. See Spencer, 523 U.S. at 7, 118 S.Ct. 978 ("An incarcerated convict’s (or a parolee’s) challenge to the validity of his conviction always satisfies the case-or-controversy requirement, because the incarceration (or the...