In re Cabrera

INTRODUCTION

In 2008, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) determined that inmate Elvin Cabrera was an associate of the Mexican Mafia prison gang (EME) based on his possession of photocopies of four drawings, two of which included part of the names of EME affiliates as the artists.1 Cabrera challenged his gang validation2 in a petition for writ of habeas corpus.

In this opinion, the noun “affiliate” is used to include both gang members and gang associates. “Validation” is the term given the process of identifying which inmates in California prisons are gang associates or members. (See Cal. Code Regs., tit. 15, § 3378, subd. (c)(3), (4); Madrid v. Gomez (N.D.Cal. 1995) 889 F.Supp. 1146, 1241.) All further regulatory references are to title 15 of the California Code of Regulations. This court granted Cabrera‟s petition in a September 2011 opinion, but the California Supreme Court reversed, concluding our decision was based on an improper interpretation of the CDCR‟s regulation. (In re Cabrera (2012) 55 Cal.4th 683.) The Supreme Court remanded for further proceedings and directed us to resolve two issues, the first being: “Whether the…