CARL EVANS v. THE STATE OF ILLINOIS (2002)

OPINION

This wrongful incarceration claim seeks $5,800 compensation for the allegedly unlawful imprisonment of the claimant from November 9, 1999 to January 3, 2000 by the respondent's Department of Corrections (IDOC). Claimant, who had been incarcerated pursuant to a criminal sentence of the circuit court, alleges that IDOC was negligent in failing to release him on his legal release date, and is therefore liable for the consequential damages occasioned by his illegal detention, primarily lost wages that Claimant alleges he could have earned during that time. This claim is before the court for final determination following trial to our Commissioner, J. Patrick Hanley, who has submitted his findings to the full court.

The Facts

Claimant Carl Evans was remitted to IDOC to serve a 4-year criminal sentence (for possession of a controlled substance) following his breach of the 3-year strict probation that had originally been imposed by the circuit court. Upon his re-sentencing, Claimant requested that court to grant him credit for time previously served in the Cook County jail; he was told that 131 days would be credited against his sentence. The circuit court order of sentence and commitment (the mittimus) that was entered and transmitted to IDOC with the Claimant (on November 16, 1998), however, specified 5 days of credit were to be received by the claimant.

Claimant, placed at IDOC's Graham Correctional Center, did not receive a copy of any official specifications or calculations of his release date, despite his requests. He maintained his own calculations, based on the 131 days of credit that he expected.

After assignment to a program at the Crossroads Work Release Center, in Chicago, the Claimant received a calculation sheet from his counselor (sometime between March-June, 1999, according to claimant's testimony). Those calculations showed a release date of March 15, 2000.

The Claimant complained to a counselor that that date did not match his own calculations. The counselor responded that the IDOC records indicated that he had been credited with only 5 days total credits, which claimant identified as the period he had been held in the county jail after his arrest for probation violation and before his resentencing. (Claimant was then in communication with his lawyer, in the Cook County Public Defender's office, but the record is vague on what the lawyer then did on the credit issue; Claimant was advised that his court file was reported to be lost.)

In August, 1999, the appellate court upheld his conviction. Aided by his sister, Claimant sought to have his prior-time credit corrected by the circuit court. Ultimately, he received a letter from the Cook County Public Defender's office (dated December 22, 1999) that informed him that Judge Preston Bowie had signed an order (on December 21, 1999) granting him an additional 131 days of credit, and that copies were being forwarded to IDOC. A copy of the court's corrected mittimus order was enclosed. Claimant brought the letter and the copy of the court order to the attention of the Assistant Warden and other staffers at IDOC's Shawneetown Correctional Center (SCC), where he was then housed. They told him they could not do anything until the official papers arrived from the court through IDOC channels.

On January 3, 2000, the SCC records office received an official corrected mittimus for the claimant from the circuit court; it directed that he was to receive 131 days of credit for previous time served rather than the original 5 days credited. The SCC staff verified the information by telephone call to the circuit court clerk, and recalculated claimant's out date as November 9, 1999 (with credits for good conduct and supplemental meritorious and educational time that had been earned by Claimant). That release date, of course, had already passed.

On that same day, January 3, 2000, claimant was told he was being released and could sign out. Without any advance notice of his release, the Claimant was not given the pre-release program nor the half-way house opportunity that IDOC usually affords releasees. Without time to arrange anything else, Claimant moved in with his sister and four children (two of whom are Claimant's, whose wife had previously died). Claimant sought, but was unable to obtain, a bed at a halfway house. He stayed with various relatives until he was able to get a job and an apartment.

Claimant seeks compensation for 58 days of illegal incarceration, based on the time he remained in IDOC after his correct release date, i.e., from November 9, 1999 to January 3, 2000. His claim for $100 per day is based on his projected income, at $12 per hour, from a job with High Tech Development, a company for which he had worked while on work release. Claimant testified that the company owner had told him there was an opening on a project in the Hyde Park area, starting about November 20, 1999, and would use him on that job, but that the job was filled by the time he was released in January, 2000.

Legal Theories --Wrongful Incarceration

Giving this pro se claim a liberal reading, the Claimant ultimately advances two distinct legal theories of his claim: (1) a negligence claim, which is predicated on a legal duty of IDOC to ascertain the correct legal release date of inmates committed to its custody; and (2) a failure to assist claimant, which is predicated on a duty of IDOC to assist Evans, as an IDOC inmate, to correct his mittimus.

The claimant's second theory is easily disposed, as its predicate duty is unsupported. Claimant has cited no precedent, statute or regulation creating or supporting such a duty. This court has found no legal basis for an affirmative duty on IDOC to provide legal assistance to inmates who seek to correct their sentences. This is especially true in a case like this where an inmate is complaining about an aspect of his sentence that is not controlled by IDOC and does not involve an alleged error or omission by IDOC -- for which IDOC might be culpable.

Claimant's negligence theory, in contrast, relies upon IDOC's duty to apply the legal terms of its inmates sentences. We agree that that duty runs to the inmates individually as well as to the public collectively. Thus, it seems clear that a negligent performance -- or a nonperformance -- of this legal duty is actionable. An allegedly negligent failure to release an inmate on time, as in this case, is a perfectly sound invocation of this legal duty.

Patton v. State

This conclusion is somewhat at odds, or appears to be at odds, with this court's decision in Patton v. State of Illinois, 47 Ill.Ct.Cl. 174 (1994). Patton stated that the applicable tort theory for a claim against IDOC for an illegal incarceration beyond the claimant's legal release date was the common law tort of false imprisonment. Although that intentional tort is surely applicable to some wrongful incarceration claims (see, e.g., Smart v. State of Illinois, 48 Ill.Ct.Cl. 38 (1996)), we conclude that that tort theory is not the sole cause of action available in such cases in which the Claimant's original incarceration was effected under color of a court order. Insofar as our opinion in Patton v. State of Illinois, supra, holds or suggests that false imprisonment is the sole basis of a claim against IDOC for wrongfully extended incarceration beyond the legal release date, it is overruled.

The Negligent Incarceration Claim

This brings us to the application of Claimant's negligent incarceration theory to the facts of this case. Claimant's negligence claim is that IDOC knew, or had reason to know, of the error in Claimant's original sentence -- i.e., its understatement of his credit for time already served -- and failed to exercise adequate care to investigate and correct that error.

We do not agree that IDOC either actually knew or was on some kind of constructive notice of the error (i.e., that it should have known) by virtue of the Claimant inmate's verbal protests. An undocumented assertion by an inmate of technical errors in his sentence -- especially an allegation that the sentencing court made an error -- cannot be taken as adequate to put IDOC on notice that triggers a duty to investigate. We are unaware of authority to the contrary.

The statutes place the duty of transmitting convicts sentencing data to IDOC on the county sheriff and the circuit court clerk, as this court noted in Patton, supra (see, e.g., Unified Code of Corrections, //5-4-1, 3-8-1; 730 ILCS 5/5-4-1, 5/3-8-1). The error in the original mittimus in this case was made by the circuit court, possibly due to an error or omission by the circuit court clerk's office or the sheriff's office. Whatever its source, the error was fixed in the circuit court sentencing order, which IDOC was duty bound to enforce, and could not unilaterally correct. As the Claimant ultimately recognized, the sentencing court was the only source of relief for that error. We find no basis for holding IDOC liable, even indirectly, for a sentencing error in a court order.

But we agree with the Claimant that he put IDOC on notice of the sentencing error -- or more accuratelythat he put them on notice of the current correction of the previous error -- when, in December 1999, he showed IDOC officials at SCC the attorney's letter and, much more importantly, a copy of the corrected mittimus from the circuit court.

At that point, which was at most 12 days before his release on January 3, 2000, the analysis turns a slight corner. Although Claimant's argument focuses on the error in his original sentence, which is a losing argument for the reasons noted above, he has nevertheless proven that IDOC was put on actual although unofficial notice of the judicial order -- the amended mittimus -- that effectively mandated his release. In our view, that was sufficient to trigger a duty on IDOC to make a reasonable and reasonably prompt investigation of that order.

Faced with an apparent copy of a new court order shortening the Claimant's sentence, IDOC had a duty to investigate the authenticity and effectiveness of that order -- which it managed to do in one day by telephone (to the issuing court's clerk's office) when IDOC personnel at SCC finally got the official transmission of that order through official channels. The burden on IDOC to verify that order was nominal; but the consequences to the Claimant were substantial -- and without justification. In this day of fax machines, e-mail and computers even ignoring the ubiquitous telephone there is no reason that an inmate who has served his time and is entitled to his or her freedom should have to wait around in prison while the State bureaucracy transmits an official copy of a court order to the right person in the right facility in the right agency, which in this case somehow took well over a week to accomplish.

This court will allow Claimant's negligence claim as applied to that judicial order. We find that IDOC was negligent, but that its negligence did not commence until the time it was confronted with the copy of the new court order.

In the absence of precise evidence of the date or time that that occurred, we will presume that it was the day after the date of the letter from the public defender's office (a liberal reading, given the record of the postal service), i.e., that the letter arrived in Claimant's hands and was shown to SCC officials on December 23, 1999. Even allowing that one business day for IDOC to verify the authenticity of the court order by phone or fax, we find that the Claimant should have been released not later than Christmas Eve day, 1999, and is entitled to damages for nine days of wrongful incarceration.

Although we are not fully accepting of Claimant's $12 per hour wage argument, and although we do not accept the general proposition that an inmate is ordinarily able to commence working the day after his release, we are not inclined to quibble over this Claimant's $100 per day claim in the unusual circumstances of this case, where it is undisputed that he should have been released even earlier than was caused by IDOC's delay -- the limited time for which this court can grant compensation -- and where he ultimately did secure gainful employment.

Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, the court finds liability for the Claimant and against IDOC and assesses damages at $900; and it is therefore ORDERED:

Claimant Carl Evans, is awarded the sum of $900.00 in full and complete satisfaction of this claim against the State of Illinois.

EPSTEIN, J.