Sabo v. Erickson

100 F.4th 880

John SABO, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Megan ERICKSON, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 21-3332

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Argued September 8, 2022

Decided April 30, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. No. 20-CV-718 — William E. Duffin, Magistrate Judge.

Jeff Scott Olson, Attorney, Jeff Scott Olson Law Firm, S.C., Waunakee, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Karla Z. Keckhaver, Attorney, Office of the Attorney General, Wisconsin Department of Justice, Madison, WI, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before Wood, St. Eve, and Jackson-Akiwumi, Circuit Judges.

Jackson-Akiwumi, Circuit Judge.

John Sabo received a probation sentence that exceeded the Wisconsin statutory maximum for his offense. Months after his probation should have been over, he was imprisoned for violating the conditions of that probation. Sabo sued two sets of defendants under 42 U.S.C. § 1983: Sheri Hicks and Debra Haley, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections officials who failed to correct his unlawful term of probation; and Megan Erickson and Barb Hanson, the probation officers who enforced it. He alleged that all four defendants violated his right of due process and showed deliberate indifference to his unjustified imprisonment, and the two probation officers committed an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment by failing to release him after they became aware of the sentencing error. The district court dismissed all claims against Hicks and Haley, the corrections officials, and most against Erickson and Hanson, the probation officers, before entering summary judgment for Erickson and Hanson on the deliberate indifference and unreasonable seizure claims. But because Sabo's complaint¹ stated claims of deliberate indifference against Hicks and Haley, and because, assuming all facts and inferences in Sabo's favor, the record as it stands does not compel a finding of qualified immunity, we vacate the district court's dismissal of those claims. We affirm in all other respects.

I. Background

A. Sabo's Conviction, Sentence, and Incarceration

We accept as true all well-pleaded facts and draw reasonable inferences in Sabo's favor with regard to his dismissed claims against Hicks and Haley. Peterson v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 986 F.3d 746, 751 (7th Cir. 2021). As to Sabo's claims against Erickson and Hanson, we recount the facts in the light most favorable to Sabo, the nonmoving party. Figgs v. Dawson, 829 F.3d 895, 902 (7th Cir. 2016).

In 2004, Sabo pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated and was sentenced to five years' probation. The parties agree that this was an error, as the statutory maximum for Sabo's offense was three years' probation. At the time of Sabo's sentencing, Hicks and Haley worked at the Department's Central Records Unit, where they reviewed and corrected sentences that exceeded the statutory maximum. The judgments they corrected were filed in the Department with copies sent to probation officers and sentencing judges "as a courtesy." Sabo's sentence underwent this review, with no corrections to his sentence.

In 2005, the year after Sabo's sentencing, Hicks and Haley discovered that they had been overstating maximum terms of probation since 2003. They apparently received a chart—from whom the record is unclear—listing the correct maximum probation sentences for various offenses. Despite their realization that some probation sentences they had reviewed were unlawfully long, neither Hicks nor Haley took any steps to investigate or remedy the errors. The defendants estimate that between 1,000 and 1,500 of the sentences reviewed by Hicks and Haley had errors in the probation terms and concede that no action was taken to correct this problem.

Sabo began his probation in July 2014 (it was consecutive to other sentences), with Erickson as his probation officer. In December 2017—approximately five months after a three-year term of probation would have ended—Sabo was arrested in the aftermath of a domestic dispute. Erickson believed Sabo violated the rules of his probation by resisting arrest and consuming alcohol, so she began proceedings to revoke his probation. Erickson also put a "hold" on Sabo requiring that he be jailed pending his revocation hearing. Erickson consulted with Hanson, the assistant regional probation supervisor, before recommending the hold, though the parties disagree on the extent to which Hanson was involved in that decision.

While in jail—he does not say when—Sabo discovered that his term of probation was longer than the law allowed. Sabo was unable to contact Erickson about the error (probation officers do not accept collect calls, and Erickson refused his request for a jail visit and his fiancée's calls about the matter), so Sabo's attorney informed Erickson. On April 13, 2018, Erickson inquired at the Department about the legality of Sabo's sentence, and was told by Janelle Nehring, a corrections official who specialized in sentencing, that Sabo's attorney "appears to be correct on this one." But Erickson was also informed that the Department's legal counsel had advised that Department officials were "no longer commuting terms of probation per [section] 973.09(2m) [of the Wisconsin Statutes]," the statutory provision governing excessive terms of probation. Nehring offered to send the sentencing court a letter indicating Sabo's probation term was excessive but warned that the Department could do nothing if the court took no action. Erickson forwarded Nehring's email to Sabo's attorney, and both the attorney and Nehring wrote letters to the sentencing court regarding the error. Sabo was finally released on May 3, 2018, the day the sentencing court amended his judgment with the correct term of probation. In total, he spent 291 days on probation beyond the statutory maximum for his conviction, 133 of those in jail.

B. District Court Proceedings

In May 2020, Sabo sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. His complaint identified two sets of defendants whose inaction, he believed, had violated his constitutional rights. First, Sabo asserted that Hicks and Haley were deliberately indifferent under the Eighth Amendment when they failed to investigate and correct his sentence after realizing their error. Hicks and Haley conceded that they failed to review any of the judgments to which they had applied the erroneous standards, but moved to dismiss, arguing that they had no duty to correct Sabo's sentence and, alternatively, that they were entitled to qualified immunity for not doing so.

Second, Sabo argued that Erickson and Hanson were obliged to release him from jail once they became aware of his erroneous sentence. By failing to do so, Sabo asserted, they were deliberately indifferent to his unjustified imprisonment under the Eighth Amendment and subjected him to an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment. In moving to dismiss, Erickson and Hanson contended that, because they were merely enforcing a then-valid judgment and took prompt action to inform the sentencing court of the error, there was no constitutional violation, and they were also entitled to qualified immunity.

Finally, Sabo alleged that Erickson and Hanson violated his constitutional rights by failing to discover and correct his sentencing error when he began probation and that all the defendants were negligent under state law and violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. Because Sabo does not challenge the dismissal of these claims on appeal, we do not discuss them further.

The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The district court acknowledged that Sabo's sentence was unlawful and that Hicks and Haley took no action after discovering their mistake, but granted the motion after concluding that they had not violated Sabo's Eighth Amendment rights. The district court understood Sabo to have alleged that "Haley and Hicks knew that it was essentially certain that, due to their misunderstanding of the law, many probationers were subject to unlawfully long sentences," but not "that Haley or Hicks knew of any likely problem specific to Sabo." Citing Perrault v. Wisconsin, No. 15-CV-144-BBC, 2016 WL 126918 (W.D. Wis. Jan. 11, 2016), aff'd sub nom. Perrault v. Wis. Dep't of Corr., 669 F. App'x 302 (7th Cir. 2016), involving a similar § 1983 suit alleging an unlawfully long term of probation, the district court concluded that "simply alleging that defendants were aware of the general possibility that prisoners' sentences may be inconsistent with Wisconsin law does not state a claim for deliberate indifference."

The district court allowed the Fourth and Eighth Amendment claims against Erickson and Hanson to proceed, however, because Sabo had alleged that the Department allowed administrative employees like Hicks and Haley to amend sentences they found to exceed the statutory maximum, and the inference that probation officers like Erickson and Hanson could also do so was plausible.

Sabo moved to reconsider the dismissal of the Eighth Amendment claim against Hicks and Haley. The district court denied the motion after concluding that the Department's policy of reviewing sentences for error did not create a constitutional duty for Hicks and Haley to either identify or correct judges' sentencing errors.

Erickson and Hanson then moved for summary judgment on the remaining Eighth and Fourth Amendment claims against them. The district court granted the motion, concluding that the primary error was that of the sentencing judge and Sabo had not presented evidence that Erickson or Hanson had the authority to unilaterally correct sentencing errors. Because of this, Erickson and Hanson "had no choice but to enforce the judgment" until it was corrected by the sentencing judge and, therefore, had not been deliberately indifferent to Sabo's constitutional rights.

II. Discussion

A. Sabo's complaint alleges a claim of deliberate indifference against...