ROBINSON v. STATE OF NEW JERSEY et al

Filing 23

OPINION. Signed by Judge Noel L. Hillman on 5/6/2019. (dmr)(n.m.)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
______________________________
:
ALBERT THEODORE ROBINSON,
:
:
Plaintiff,
:
Civ. No. 17-7135 (NLH)(JS)
:
v.
:
OPINION
:
STATE OF NEW JERSEY DRUG
:
COURT, DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS, :
et al.,
:
:
Defendants.
:
______________________________:
APPEARANCES:
Albert Theodore Robinson, No. 41659
Hansen House
411 Aloe Street
Galloway, NJ 08215
Plaintiff Pro Se
Ashley L. Costello, Esq.
Office of the Attorney General
25 Market Street
Trenton, NJ 08625
Counsel for Defendants

HILLMAN, District Judge
Plaintiff Albert Theodore Robinson filed a Complaint
pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the State of New Jersey
Drug Court, the New Jersey Department of Corrections, the
Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office, and the Cumberland County
Prosecutor Jennifer Webb McRae.

ECF No. 1 at 7.

Plaintiff

moved to voluntarily dismiss the claims against the Cumberland
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County Prosecutor and the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Court
granted a motion to dismiss as to the remaining defendants
because they were not amenable to suit under § 1983.

Plaintiff

has since filed an Amended Complaint, which he brings against
the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office, the Cumberland County
Prosecutor Jennifer Webb McRae, and assistant prosecutor Walter
Schulz.

ECF No. 18.

Presently before the Court is Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss
the Amended Complaint, which is ripe for adjudication.
21.

Plaintiff has filed no opposition to the Motion.

ECF No.
For the

reasons that follow, the Court will grant the Motion and dismiss
the Amended Complaint, with leave to amend granted.
I.

Factual Background
Plaintiff Albert Theodore Robinson is presently housed in a

treatment program at Hansen House, in Galloway, New Jersey, and
was previously incarcerated at the Cumberland County Jail in
Bridgeton, New Jersey. 1

According to the Amended Complaint, as a

result of certain state criminal charges, Plaintiff entered into
an agreement with Defendants Prosecutor Jennifer Webb McRae,
Walter Schulz, and the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office for
a negotiated term of imprisonment, including an eight-year

1

Plaintiff’s current detention in a treatment program appears to
be unrelated to the incarceration he challenges in his
Complaint.
2

aggregated term comprised of 2 four-year consecutive sentences
with an additional three-year flat concurrent sentence for a
total eight-year sentence, and a jail credit agreement of 1,095
days, 25 gap credits, both of which are to be subtracted from
the four year sentences.

ECF No. 18 at 1; 33-35; 42.

Plaintiff’s maximum expiration of sentence including projected
work and good time credits was on or about June 1, 2012.

Id.

About a year after Plaintiff arrived at South Woods State
Prison in April 2012, Plaintiff noticed on his account statement
that his maximum expiration of sentence was extended to 2018,
which prompted him to investigate the application of his jail
credits with the classifications department for the commissioner
of the State of New Jersey.

Id. at 2.

He received a certified

response from that office informing him that the sentencing
judge had removed jail credits as the Department of Corrections
suggested that they were duplicate credits.

Id.

Plaintiff then filed an appeal to the New Jersey Superior
Court’s Appellate Division for “the unlawful conspired removal
of jail credit which extended his sentence from 2012 to 2018.”
Id. at 3.

It appears this appeal was filed in 2012 and oral

argument in the appeal was held on February 5, 2013.
42.

See id. at

The Appellate Division remanded for reconsideration of the

jail credits and the concurrent application of the three-year
sentence for Indictment No. 11-07-622.
3

Id. at 3; 42 (remand

order filed Feb. 8, 2013).

Plaintiff alleges that on remand,

the Defendants held a hearing without the notice or presence of
Plaintiff, which caused him undue stress because they only
applied “a partial of what the order commanded.”

Id. at 3.

As a result of receiving only partial relief, he filed a
second appeal to the Appellate Division some time in 2013.
at 4.

Id.

During the pendency of the appeal, it appears that

Plaintiff’s counsel negotiated with the attorney representing
the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office to agree to a remand
for reconsideration and application of all jail credits for all
indictments, which is reflected in the transcript of the appeal
proceedings and the remand order, dated July 28, 2014.
at 45-50.

See id.

After the second remand, Plaintiff’s jail credits

were recalculated and correctly applied as intended in the plea
agreement.

With all credits applied to his sentence, he was

released on December 15, 2014.

Id. at 4.

As for his claims for relief, Plaintiff alleges that the
“Defendants deprived the Plaintiff of his constitutional rights
while acting under color of state law,” because the Plaintiff
and Defendants had a verbal and written agreement that
Defendants unlawfully withdrew, which caused Plaintiff harm.
Id.

Plaintiff requests monetary relief and explains that as a

result of the Defendants’ actions, he suffered cruel and unusual
punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment, that he was
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wrongfully incarcerated in violation of his Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendment rights, and that he was falsely imprisoned and
prosecuted maliciously.
II.

Id. at 5.

Standard of Review
In a motion to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil

Procedure 12(b)(6), the defendant bears the burden of showing
that no claim has been presented.

Rule 8 of the Federal Rules

of Civil Procedure provides that a pleading must set forth a
claim for relief which contains a short and plain statement of
the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief; the
complaint must provide the defendant with fair notice of the
claim.
(2007).

See Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555
When considering a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the

court must accept as true all factual allegations.
v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (per curiam).

See Erickson

The issue in a motion

to dismiss is whether the plaintiff should be entitled to offer
evidence to support the claim, not whether the plaintiff will
ultimately prevail.

See Phillips v. County of Allegheny, 515

F.3d 224, 232 (3d Cir. 2008) (the Rule 8 pleading standard
“‘simply calls for enough facts to raise a reasonable
expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of’ the
necessary element.”); Nami v. Fauver, 82 F.3d 63, 65 (3d Cir.
1996).

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The onus is on the plaintiff to provide a well-drafted
complaint that alleges factual support for its claims.

“While a

complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not
need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to
provide the ‘grounds' of his ‘entitle[ment] to relief requires
more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of
the elements of a cause of action will not do.”

Twombly, 550

U.S. at 555 (alteration in original and internal citations
omitted).

The court need not accept unsupported inferences,

Cal. Pub. Employees Ret. Sys. v. The Chubb Corp., 394 F.3d 126,
143 (3d Cir. 2004), nor legal conclusions cast as factual
allegations, Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556.

Legal conclusions

without factual support are not entitled to the assumption of
truth. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)
(“Threadbare recitals of elements of a cause of action,
supported by mere conclusory statements, do not” satisfy the
requirements of Rule 8).
Once the court winnows the conclusory allegations from
those allegations supported by fact, which it accepts as true,
the court must engage in a common sense review of the claim to
determine whether it is plausible.

This is a context-specific

task, for which the court should be guided by its judicial
experience.

The court must dismiss the complaint if it fails to

allege enough facts “to state a claim for relief that is
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plausible on its face.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (quoting Twombly,
550 U.S. at 570).

A “claim has facial plausibility when the

plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw a
reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the
misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678.

The complaint that

shows that the pleader is entitled to relief--or put another
way, facially plausible--will survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion.
See Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2); Mayer v. Belichick, 605 F.3d 223,
229 (3d Cir. 2010).
III. Discussion
A.

The Immunity of the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s
Office

The Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office must be dismissed
because it is immune from suit.

The Eleventh Amendment

provides:
The Judicial power of the United States shall not be
construed to extend to any suit in law or equity,
commenced or prosecuted against one of the United
States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or
Subjects of any Foreign State.
U.S. Const. amend. XI.

“‘That a State may not be sued without

its consent is a fundamental rule of jurisprudence having so
important a bearing upon the construction of the Constitution of
the United States that it has become established by repeated
decisions of this court that the entire judicial power granted
by the Constitution does not embrace authority to entertain a

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suit brought by private parties against a State without consent
given.’”

Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S.

89, 98 (1984) (quoting Ex parte State of New York No. 1, 256
U.S. 490, 497 (1921)).

The Supreme Court in Hans v. Louisiana,

134 U.S. 1 (1890), “extended the Eleventh Amendment’s reach to
suits by in-state plaintiffs, thereby barring all private suits
against non-consenting States in federal court.”

Lombardo v.

Pa. Dep’t of Pub. Welfare, 540 F.3d 190, 194 (3d Cir. 2008).
“The State of New Jersey has not waived its sovereign immunity
with respect to § 1983 claims in federal court.”

Mierzwa v.

United States, 282 F. App’x 973, 976 (3d Cir. 2008) (citing
Ritchie v. Cahall, 386 F. Supp. 1207, 1209–10 (D.N.J. 1974)).
The Eleventh Amendment protects state agencies when “‘the
state is the real party in interest.’”

Beightler v. Office of

Essex County Prosecutor, 342 F. App’x 829, 832 (3d Cir. 2009)
(quoting Fitchik v. New Jersey Transit Rail Operations, 873 F.2d
655, 658 (3d Cir. 1989) (en banc).

Courts consider three

factors to determine whether Eleventh Amendment immunity applies
to a state agency: “(1) the source of the agency's funding-i.e., whether payment of any judgment would come from the
state's treasury; (2) the status of the agency under state law;
and (3) the degree of autonomy from state regulation.”
(quoting Fitchik, 873 F.2d at 659).

Id.

When evaluating whether

immunity applies, “it is the entity’s potential legal liability,
8

rather than its ability or inability to require a third party to
reimburse it, or to discharge the liability in the first
instance, that is relevant” to the Eleventh Amendment inquiry.
Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Doe, 519 U.S. 425, 431 (1997).
Courts considering these three factors have found that in
New Jersey, the office of the county prosecutor is immune under
the Eleventh Amendment.

See, e.g., Beightler v. Office of Essex

County Prosecutor, 342 F. App’x at 832; Briggs v. Moore, 251 F.
App'x 77, 79 (3d Cir. 2007); Sabatino v. Union Twp., 2012 WL
313986 (D.N.J. Jan. 31, 2012); Palmerini v. Burgos, No. 10–cv210, 2011 WL 3625104 at * 8 (D.N.J. Aug. 15, 2011) (“[C]ourts
within the Third Circuit have consistently and uniformly held
that the Eleventh Amendment precludes federal suits against New
Jersey county prosecutors, as well as their offices and staff,
arising out of their law enforcement functions on the basis that
the real party in interest in these suits is the State of new
Jersey”); Watkins v. Attorney General of New Jersey, No. 06–cv1391, 2006 WL 2864631, at * 3 (D.N.J. Oct. 4, 2006) (“[A county
prosecutor's office] is not subject to suit under § 1983 because
the Prosecutor's Office is not a government entity which can be
sued under § 1983 separate from the individual who is the county
prosecutor or the governmental entity that the county prosecutor
serves”).

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This Court agrees that the State of New Jersey is the real
party in interest when the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office
is sued under § 1983 in the Amended Complaint.

Therefore, the

Court will dismiss with prejudice the Cumberland County
Prosecutor’s Office from this action because it is immune under
the Eleventh Amendment from Plaintiff's claims for damages.
B.

Failure to State a Claim Against Defendants McRae and
Schulz

Plaintiff has brought his constitutional claims against
Defendants Prosecutor McRae and Assistant Prosecutor Schulz
pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides in pertinent part:
Every person who, under color of any statute,
ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State
or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any
citizen of the United States or other person within
the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any
rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the
Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party
injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other
proper proceeding for redress.
“To establish a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, [a plaintiff] must
demonstrate a violation of a right secured by the Constitution
and the laws of the United States [and] that the alleged
deprivation was committed by a person acting under color of
state law.”

Moore v. Tartler, 986 F.2d 682, 685 (3d Cir. 1993).

“The first step in evaluating a section 1983 claim is to
‘identify the exact contours of the underlying right said to
have been violated’ and to determine ‘whether the plaintiff has

10

alleged a deprivation of a constitutional right at all.’” Nicini
v. Morra, 212 F.3d 798, 806 (3d Cir. 2000) (quoting County of
Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 841 n.5 (1998)).
“A defendant in a civil rights action ‘must have personal
involvement in the alleged wrongs to be liable,’ and ‘cannot be
held responsible for a constitutional violation which he or she
neither participated in nor approved.’” Baraka v. McGreevey, 481
F.3d 187, 210 (3d Cir. 2007).

See Evancho v. Fisher, 423 F.3d

347, 353 (3d Cir. 2005); Rode v. Dellarciprete, 845 F.2d 1195,
1207 (3d Cir. 1988).

Further, supervisory liability cannot be

imposed under § 1983 by respondeat superior.

See Ashcroft v.

Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009); Monell v. Department of Social
Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978); Rizzo v. Goode, 423 U.S. 362
(1976); Durmer v. O'Carroll, 991 F.2d 64, 69 n.14 (3d Cir.
1993).

“Absent vicarious liability, each Government official,

his or her title notwithstanding, is only liable for his or her
own misconduct.”

Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 677.

A plaintiff must show

that an official's conduct caused the deprivation of a federally
protected right.

See Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 166

(1985); Gittlemacker v. Prasse, 428 F.2d 1, 3 (3d Cir. 1970) (A
plaintiff “must portray specific conduct by state officials
which violates some constitutional right.”).
Here, Plaintiff alleges that he was detained past his term
of imprisonment.

An inmate’s detention after his term of
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imprisonment can, under certain circumstances, constitute cruel
and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Wharton v. Danberg, 854 F.3d 234, 241 (3d Cir. 2017); Montanez
v. Thompson, 603 F.3d 243, 250 (3d Cir. 2010).

Continued

incarceration beyond the sentencing term is punitive and serves
no penological justification.

See Wharton, 854 F.3d at 241;

Sample v. Diecks, 885 F.2d 1099, 1108 (3d Cir. 1989).

To state

an over-detention claim, a plaintiff must allege that “(1) a
prison official had knowledge of the prisoner’s problem and thus
of the risk that unwarranted punishment was being, or would be,
inflicted; (2) the official either failed to act or took only
ineffectual action under the circumstances, indicating that his
response to the problem was a product of deliberate indifference
to the prisoner’s plight; and (3) a causal connection between
the official’s response to the problem and the unjustified
detention.” 2

Montanez, 603 F.3d at 252.

2

To the extent that Plaintiff alleges a due process claim under
the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court finds that such a claim is
subsumed within the Eighth Amendment claim under the “morespecific-provision rule.” See, e.g., Wharton, 854 F.3d at 246.
“That rule holds that ‘if a constitutional claim is covered by a
specific constitutional provision, such as the Fourth or Eighth
Amendment, the claim must be analyzed under the standard
appropriate to that specific provision, not under the rubric of
substantive due process.’” Id. (quoting United States v.
Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 272 n.7 (1997)). Because the Court of
Appeals for the Third Circuit analyzes over-detention claims
under the Eighth Amendment, Plaintiff cannot bring a parallel
claim under the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
See Wharton, 854 F.3d at 246.
12

In such cases, rather than the judges or prosecutors
involved in the matter who typically have absolute or partial
immunity for such claims, the usual defendants are individuals
employed by the state corrections department or the prison that
caused or failed to correct the over-detention they knew of or
had reason to know of.

See, e.g., Upshaw v. Michigan Dep’t of

Corrs., No. 12-cv-1300, 2016 WL 6518263 (W.D. Mich. Nov. 3,
2016) (denying summary judgment in over-detention case brought
against various individuals employed by the Michigan Department
of Corrections and the state prison at which the plaintiff was
housed).

The Court has not found a case in which a prosecutor

has been found liable for over-detention although such a claim
may be possible if there were sufficient allegations against the
prosecutor to support the elements of the cause of action
outlined in Montanez, thus stating a claim for relief.

Although

there may be other elements, at a minimum to state such a claim
against a prosecutor, the prosecutor must have personal
knowledge of the over-detention and have the legal ability to
remedy it.
The only case the Court could find involving such a
posture, Dommer v. Crawford, 653 F.2d 289 (7th Cir. 1981),
concluded that the plaintiff, a pre-trial detainee, failed to
state a claim for over-detention against the prosecutor as the
prosecutor had no involvement in the alleged over-detention and
13

had no statutory authority over the plaintiff’s detention.

Id.

at 291 (“since [prosecutor] in his capacity as a prosecutor has
no authority under Indiana law to order city police to detain
arrestees past the statutory time limits, the complaint fails to
state a cause of action against him.”).

Plaintiff’s factual

allegations here similarly fail to state a claim, and the Court
must dismiss without prejudice Defendants McRae and Schultz for
failure to allege personal involvement.
Here, Plaintiff alleges in the Amended Complaint that his
sentence was wrongly recalculated because the Department of
Corrections suggested to his sentencing judge that he had
duplicate credits, which were subsequently removed by the
sentencing judge.

Plaintiff makes no allegation as to how

either Defendant McRae or Defendant Schultz were involved in the
alleged over-detention action at all, and his allegations
suggest that they had no involvement beyond his original
sentencing.
The exhibits that Plaintiff attaches to his Amended
Complaint support this conclusion, as does Plaintiff’s prior
request to withdraw any claim against the prosecutorial
defendants in his original Complaint because he did not intend
to name them as parties.

See ECF No. 14 at 26-27.

Plaintiff

very clearly states that it was the Department of Corrections
who suggested to the sentencing judge that the jail credits may
14

be duplicates, and it was the sentencing judge who removed the
application of certain jail credits.

It is not clear to the

Court why Plaintiff sought to reinstate the prosecutorial
defendants in his Amended Complaint after he agreed to
voluntarily dismiss them.

In light of the Court’s prior order

and opinion dismissing the claims against the New Jersey
Department of Corrections and the New Jersey Drug Court because
such state agencies cannot be sued under § 1983, it may be that
Plaintiff is unclear as to the proper individual defendants in
his suit.
Generally, “plaintiffs who file complaints subject to
dismissal . . . should receive leave to amend unless amendment
would be inequitable or futile.”

Grayson v. Mayview State

Hosp., 293 F.3d 103, 114 (3d Cir. 2002).

The Court will grant

leave to amend in order to allow Plaintiff an opportunity to
amend his Complaint in conformance with this Opinion.

In any

amended complaint, Plaintiff should include factual allegations
to support the elements of an over-detention claim as described
by the Third Circuit in Montanez, see supra.
IV.

Conclusion
As set forth above, it appears that Plaintiff discovered

the change in his release date in April 2012.

He alleges he

acted diligently in an effort to seek a correction, exhausting
his administrative remedies and then filing not one, but two
15

appeals.

It also appears that he was correct that an error

occurred as his appeals were wholly or partially successful in
that he was released in 2014 long before the adjusted release
date of 2018.
What is not clear is whether the final determination of the
appeals and administrative process was that he should have been
released as he originally contended in June 2012 (in which case
an over-detention occurred) or whether his December 2014 release
represented his actual properly calculated release date (in
which case no over-detention occurred).
What is also not clear, if the former occurred, is whether
that over-detention was the result an unfortunate delay in the
judicial and administrative process (in which case there may be
harm but no remedy) or whether some individual, not immune from
suit and personally involved, caused some or all of the overdetention in violation of the standard set forth in Montanez.
What is clear, as set forth above and in the Court’s
previously ruling, is that Plaintiff to date has failed to
identify such an individual or individuals as party defendants.
However, in light of the important constitutional right at issue
and the inherent harm in any over-detention at all, Plaintiff
should be given another opportunity to do so.

16

Accordingly, the Court will grant Defendants’ Motion to
Dismiss, with leave to amend granted.

An appropriate order

follows.

Dated: May 6, 2019
At Camden, New Jersey

s/ Noel L. Hillman
NOEL L. HILLMAN, U.S.D.J.

17