Clayton Crowe v. United States

430 F. App'x 484

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: July 18, 2011
• Docket: 09-6508
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

The petitioner-appellant, Clayton Crowe, appeals from the district court’s judgment denying his petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241. We AFFIRM.

Crowe is currently serving a sixty-year sentence in federal prison. Because he suffers from heart and kidney ailments, Crowe asked the Director of the Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) to file a motion in federal court seeking a compassionate release as permitted under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(l)(A)(i). The BOP denied his request. After pursuing administrative remedies without success, Crowe filed a petition — styled as a § 2241 petition — in the district court, seeking an order requiring the BOP to file a motion for compassionate release with the sentencing court in North Carolina. The district court correctly determined that § 2241 does not provide subject matter jurisdiction over Crowe’s petition. The district court also correctly determined that, even if viewed as a request for review of agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701-706, Crowe’s petition lacks merit because federal courts have no authority to review or countermand the BOP’s decision not to seek a compassionate release for an inmate. Crowe filed a timely appeal to this court.

The BOP has the authority to seek a modification of a prisoner’s sentence pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)®, which provides that a federal court “may not modify a term of imprisonment once it has been imposed except that ... in any case ... the court, upon motion of the Director of the [BOP], may reduce the term of imprisonment ... if it finds that ... extraordinary and compelling reasons war rant such a reduction.” Id. (emphasis added). The statute places no limits on the BOP’s authority to seek or not seek a sentence reduction on behalf of a prisoner, nor does it define — or place any limits on — what “extraordinary and compelling reasons” might warrant such a reduction. The BOP, in other words, has broad discretion in its decision to move the court for a sentence modification under § 3582(c)(l)(A)(i). 1

Based on this broad grant of discretion, a number of courts have determined that the BOP’s decision regarding whether or not to file a motion for compassionate release is judicially unreviewable. See Fernandez v. United States, 941 F.2d 1488, 1493 (11th Cir.1991) (holding that the BOP’s decision whether to seek a compassionate release under the predecessor to § 3582(c)(l)(A)(i) was unreviewable); Simmons v. Christensen, 894 F.2d 1041, 1043 (9th Cir.1990) (same); Turner v. U.S. Parole Comm’n, 810 F.2d 612, 615 (7th Cir.1987) (same); Crawford v. Woodring, No. CV 08-362-GW, 2009 WL 6575082, at *6 (C.D.Cal. Dec. 11, 2009) (dismissing as unreviewable prisoner’s § 2241 request for an order directing the BOP to move for early release under § 3582(c)(l)(A)(i)); Gutierrez v. Anderson, No. 06-1714, 2006 WL 3086892, at *4 (D.Minn. Oct. 30, 2006) (same); see also Engle v. United States, 26 Fed.Appx. 394, 397 (6th Cir.2001) (holding that the district courts lack “jurisdiction to sua sponte grant compassionate release” and that “[a] district court may not modify a defendant’s federal sentence based on the defendant’s ill health, except upon a motion from the Director of the Bureau of Prisons”). Consistent with these decisions, we hold that a federal court lacks authority to review a decision by the BOP to not seek a compassionate release for an inmate under § 3582(c)(l)(A)(i).

The judgment of the district court denying Crowe’s petition for writ of habeas corpus is AFFIRMED.

1 . Crowe argues, on various grounds, that the breadth of discretion granted to the BOP by § 3582(c)(l)(A)(i) is unconstitutional. Crowe’s arguments in this regard are frivolous and we decline to address them.