Kent Alexander v. William Perrill and Luis Rivera

William Perrill and Luis Rivera, defendants in this Bivens actionappea 1 , the denial by the district court of their motion for summary judgment on their defense of qualified immunity. Perrill and Rivera are federal prison officials. They contend that the district court erroneously decided that their failure to consider Alexander’s valid claim that he was being incarcerated for a longer period than permitted by law amounted to deliberate indifference to a violation of his clearly established constitutional or statutory rights. We affirm the denial of their summary judgment motion.

FACTS

On November 4, 1983, Alexander was arrested in the Republic of Germany on local charges. He was due to be released from a German jail on a bail bond on January 5, 1984, but wasn't, because a detainer was issued by the United States on January 3, 1984. Subsequently, he was convicted of the German charges and in August of 1984 began serving a fifteen month prison term.

On October 11, 1984, German authorities notified the United States that Alexander was not required to complete the remainder of his German sentence. The German authorities further indicated that he had been detained for extradition…

dissenting:

Plaintiff has been the victim of the kind of nightmare those of us involved in administering our penal system take great pains to avoid — undeserved punishment because of a bureaucratic blunder. Justice would no doubt be served by compensating him for the time he has been wrongly imprisoned. But whatever claims he may have do not run against the defendants. They did not make the error in calculating his foreign jail credits; they were not the ones *1400 responsible for keeping him in prison beyond what turned out to be his proper release date. Defendants merely implemented a decision made by the Bureau of Prisons’ Central Office, which was charged by applicable regulations with the responsibility for making this decision. My colleagues reach the contrary conclusion only by hammering a square peg into a round hole.

As I see it, the Bureau of Prisons made a wholly rational decision to centralize foreign jail credit determinations; local prison officials do not have the power to reverse those decisions once made, are fully entitled to rely on them in responding to complaints by prisoners and are shielded from liability when they act in accordance with the Central…

916 F.2d 1392 Kent ALEXANDER, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. William PERRILL and Luis Rivera, Defendants-Appellants. No. 88-15842. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted Dec. 15, 1989. Decided Oct. 10, 1990. Steven McNamee, U.S. Atty., Eugene Bracamonte, Asst. U.S. Atty., Tucson, Ariz., for defendants-appellants. A. Bates Butler, III, Butler & Stein, P.C., Tucson, Ariz., for plaintiff-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. Before REINHARDT, BEEZER and KOZINSKI, Circuit Judges. REINHARDT, Circuit Judge: 1 William Perrill and Luis Rivera, defendants in this Bivens action 1 , appeal the denial by the district court of their motion for summary judgment on their defense of qualified immunity. Perrill and Rivera are federal prison officials. They contend that the district court erroneously decided that their failure to consider Alexander's valid claim that he was being incarcerated for a longer period than permitted by law amounted to deliberate indifference to a violation of his clearly established constitutional or statutory rights. We affirm the denial of their summary judgment motion. FACTS 2 On November 4, 1983,…