Carl D. McQuillion v. William Duncan, Warden Attorney General of the State of California

California state prisoner Carl McQuillion appeals the district court’s denial of his two consolidated petitions for writs of ha-beas corpus, brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 . McQuillion alleges that his due process rights were violated when the California Board of Prison Terms, in 1994, rescinded as “improvidently granted” his parole date, which had been set in 1979. We hold that, under clearly established Supreme Court precedent, the parole scheme in California under which McQuil-lion was given his parole date in 1979 gave rise to a constitutionally protected liberty interest. The process that is due before a prisoner can be deprived of such an interest is a showing that there is “some evidence” in the record to support a later rescission of that date. Because the Board’s grounds for its later rescission reflect nothing more than a disagreement with the ultimate determination reached by the earlier granting panel, the “some evidence” standard has not been met. Accordingly, we reverse.

I

In 1973, McQuillion was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to seven years to life with the possibility of parole. In May 1979, a hearing panel of the Community Release…