Coultas v. Payne et al
Filing
71
OPINION and ORDER - For the reasons stated, Coultas's motion to supplement 66 is GRANTED and Coultas's motion for reconsideration 68 is DENIED. IT IS SO ORDERED. Dated this 19th day of September 2012, by U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta. (copies of opinions and orders (#70 and #71) mailed to plaintiff this date. (peg)
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON
LYLE MARK COULTAS,
Civ. No. 3:11-cv-45-AC
Plaintiff,
OPINION AND
ORDER
v.
STEVEN PAYNE, individually and in his
Official Capacity as Oregon State Crime
Laboratory Detective; CARROLL
TICHENOR, Yamhill County Judge;
DEPARTMENT OF THE OREGON
STATE POLICE; YAMHILL COUNTY
DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE; CURT
GILBERT, individually and in his Official
Capacity as Yamhill County Jail
Commander; YAMHILL COUNTY JAIL;
RUSSEL LUDWIG, individually and in his
Official capacity as a Yamhill County
Sheriff Detective; YAMHILL COUNTY
SHERIFF DEPARTMENT; THE STATE
OF OREGON,
Defendants.
___________________________________
ACOSTA, Magistrate Judge:
OPINION AND ORDER
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Introduction
Plaintiff Lyle Mark Coultas (“Coultas”) has filed two motions relevant to the present case.
First, Coultas moved to supplement the evidentiary record and, second, for the court to reconsider
its ruling with respect to application of the Heck doctrine. Defendants did not respond to either
motion. For the reasons stated, Coultas’s motion to supplement is granted and his motion for
reconsideration is denied.
Discussion
I.
Motion to Supplement
Coultas’s Motion to Supplement Evidence In Support of Complaint (#66) seeks admission
of two forensic reports. The first is a report prepared by Peter Constantine, a forensic examiner with
Data Discovery Computer Forensics and comes in the form of a letter to Coultas’s attorney, Frank
Stoller. The report states that the unlawful images upon which Coultas’s arrest and prosecution were
premised were not on Coultas’s hard drive, nor had they been previously deleted from the hard drive.
It also refers to several diskettes, none of which contained the images in question. The second report
is an excerpt of the findings of Detective Steven Payne of the Oregon State Police based on a review
of Constantine’s report. It states that his findings corroborate those of Constantine and refers to the
diskettes seized in conjunction with Coultas’s arrest.
Coultas argues that this evidence is relevant because it supports his claims for fraud on the
court and illegal destruction of evidence, and that it stands for the proposition that the missing
diskettes were in evidence in 2006. The court agrees that this evidence may be relevant to Coultas’s
remaining claim in that it speaks to the existence and possession of Coultas’s personal property.
Accordingly, Coultas may supplement the record with this evidence and the motion is granted.
OPINION AND ORDER
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II.
Motion to Reconsider
The court construes Coultas’s “Motion for the District Court to [Hear] New Supreme Court
Case Directly Contradicting Previous Ruling Of This Court And To Reverse Summary Judgment
Ruling For State Defendants” (#68) as a motion to reconsider its prior ruling for an error of law.
Motions for reconsideration under Rules 59(e) and 60(b) apply generally the same standard.
Automobile Ins. Co. of Hartford, Connecticut v. Abel, No. 08-CV1004-AC, 2010 WL 5014408, at
*2 (D. Or. Dec. 3, 2010) (citing Fidelity Federal Bank, F.S.B. v. Durga Ma Corp., 387 F.3d 1021,
1023 (9th Cir. 2004), and Fuller v. M.G. Jewelry, 950 F.2d 1437, 1441 (9th Cir. 1991).
“Reconsideration is appropriate if the district court (1) is presented with newly discovered evidence,
(2) committed clear error or the initial decision was manifestly unjust, or (3) if there is an intervening
change in controlling law.” School Dist. No. 1J v. ACandS, Inc., 5 F.3d 1255, 1263 (9th Cir. 1993).
Coultas asks the court to consider recent Supreme Court precedent. However, the material
Coultas cites is actually a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court and not an actual
Supreme Court decision. That said, Coultas nonetheless presents a viable argument that this court
erred when it ruled that his claims were barred by the doctrine set forth in Heck v. Humphrey, 512
U.S. 477 (1994). According to Coultas, the Ninth Circuit has recognized an “impossibility”
exception to Heck. That is, where it is impossible for a plaintiff to avail himself of the remedy of
habeas corpus, Heck cannot bar his claims arising under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (hereinafter “section
1983”). Coultas is correct that the Ninth Circuit has joined other circuits in carving out an
impossibility exception in narrow circumstances. He is incorrect, however, that those circumstances
include his own.
The Supreme Court addressed the potential for an exception to Heck in Spencer v. Kemna,
OPINION AND ORDER
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523 U.S. 1 (1998). In Spencer, the petitioner challenged revocation of his parole. While still
incarcerated in state prison, the petitioner filed a petition for habeas corpus alleging a lack of due
process in the parole revocation proceedings. In part due to the state’s requests for extensions of
time, the matter was still pending when the petitioner was released from prison, rendering his
petition for habeas corpus moot. The majority opinion noted that Heck would not bar a suit for
damages under section 1983 so long as it did not imply the invalidity of the revocation of his parole,
in essence restating the fundamental premise of Heck. In a concurring opinion, however, Justice
Souter discussed the “favorable termination” requirement set forth in Heck. The concurrence first
acknowledged that the majority opinion in Heck “acknowledged the possibility that even a released
prisoner might not be permitted to bring a § 1983 action implying the invalidity of a conviction or
confinement without first satisfying the favorable-termination requirement.” Spencer, at 19-20.
However, the concurrence went on to propose a “better view”:
[A] former prisoner, no longer “in custody,” may bring a § 1983 action establishing
the unconstitutionality of a conviction or confinement without being bound to satisfy
a favorable-termination requirement that it would be impossible as a matter of law
for him to satisfy. Thus, the answer to Spencer’s argument that his habeas claim
cannot be moot because Heck bars him from relief under § 1983 is that Heck has no
such effect. After a prisoner’s release from custody, the habeas statute and its
exhaustion requirement have nothing to do with his right to any relief.
Id. at 21. As a concurrence, however, this analysis does not represent the majority holding in
Spencer.
The Ninth Circuit took up this issue in Nonnette v. Small, 316 F.3d 872 (9th Cir. 2002).
There, Nonnette, a formerly-incarcerated prisoner, filed a section 1983 action for damages alleging
due process violations associated with the revocation of good-time credits. The district court
dismissed the claim on the ground that, having not successfully brought his claim via a petition for
OPINION AND ORDER
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habeas corpus, Nonnette was barred from bringing a section 1983 claim for damages by Heck’s
favorable termination rule. The Ninth Circuit determined that, lacking a remedy in habeas for
mootness, Nonnette was entitled to proceed under section 1983. The court noted in a footnote,
however, the limited reach of its holding: “We also emphasize that our holding affects only former
prisoners challenging loss of good-time credits, revocation of parole or similar matters; the status
of prisoners challenging their underlying convictions or sentences does not change upon release,
because they continue to be able to petition for a writ of habeas corpus.” Id. at 878 n.7.1
Consistent with this clarification, the Ninth Circuit validated the Heck bar in Guerrero v.
Gates, 442 F.3d 697 (9th Cir. 2006), where the plaintiff, no longer in custody, had failed to timely
pursue his habeas remedy and was not otherwise prevented from doing so. The court noted that
Nonnette was not applicable to those challenging their underlying conviction. The court also
referenced Cunningham v. Gates, 312 F.3d 1148 (9th Cir. 2002), in which the Ninth Circuit applied
the Heck bar despite the fact that habeas relief was no longer available to the plaintiff: “Habeas
relief was ‘impossible as a matter of law’ in Cunningham’s case because he failed timely to pursue
it.” Guerrero, 442 F.3d at 704. In evaluating the claim before it, the Guerrero court wrote:
We find Guerrero’s situation to resemble Cunningham more closely than
Nonnette. Guerrero never challenged his convictions by any means prior to filing this
lawsuit. Nearly three years passed from his last encounter with the LAPD before he
took any action at all. His failure to timely achieve habeas relief is self-imposed.
1
The availability of habeas relief to a formerly-incarcerated individual, i.e., the ability to
avoid the mootness doctrine, is premised on whether the conviction carries collateral consequences.
On this point, the Supreme Court wrote: “In recent decades we have been willing to presume that
a wrongful criminal conviction has continuing collateral consequences (or, what is effectively the
same, to count collateral consequences that are remote and unlikely to occur).” Spencer, 523 U.S.
at 8. Thus, a former prisoner challenging his or her underlying conviction or convictions may pursue
a remedy via a petition of habeas corpus. As such, the doctrinal bar in Heck, requiring favorable
termination of the underlying conviction, is maintained as the plaintiff’s proper remedy is in habeas.
OPINION AND ORDER
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Thus, as in Cunningham, though habeas relief for Guerrero may be “impossible as
a matter of law,” we decline to extend the relaxation of Heck’s requirements.
Guerrero cannot now use his “failure timely to pursue habeas remedies” as a shield
against the implications of Heck. Accordingly, we hold that Heck bars Guerrero’s
§ 1983 claims of wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution, and conspiracy.
Id. at 705 (quoting Cunningham, 312 F.3d at 1154 n.3).
Here, several of Coultas’s claims challenged his underlying conviction and, thus, ran afoul
of Heck as their success would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction and subsequent
confinement. Because he seeks to invalidate his prior convictions, Coultas has or had viable claims
in habeas and, in the absence of favorable termination, cannot pursue section 1983 claims as they
are barred by Heck. Accordingly, Coultas’s motion for reconsideration is denied.
Conclusion
For the reasons stated, Coultas’s motion to supplement (#66) is GRANTED and Coultas’s
motion for reconsideration (#68) is DENIED.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
DATED this 19th day of September, 2012.
/s/ John V. Acosta
JOHN V. ACOSTA
United States Magistrate Judge
OPINION AND ORDER
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