NY State Liable for Prisoner’s 94 Days Overdetention

The State of New York has been found liable by a New York Court of claims judge for holding a prisoner 94 days past his release date. The court then ordered that a trial date be set to determine the amount of damages due.

Claimant Shaka Ifill (a/k/a Ciya Brown), filed his lawsuit alleging he was incarcerated over three months past his maximum expiration date (MED) of July 22, 2009. Ifill also asserted that the wrongful confinement deprived him of his right to due process under the New York State Constitution.

Ifill was originally given a sentence of three years plus three years of post-release supervision (PRS). Ifill completed the confinement portion of his sentence in May 2005, but was re-incarcerated twice for parole violations. During one of his PRS terms, Ifill was rearrested and charged with several new felony offenses, and again found in violation of his parole. The judge in his new case ordered that Ifill's new sentence run concurrently with his PRS violation time.

However, upon being returned to state prison for the PRS violation, the county jail did not forward copies of the sentencing documents for Ifill's new convictions.

DOC records staff testified that when they do not receive the proper paperwork form the county, they automatically assume any multiple sentences run consecutively to one another, and it is the prisoner's responsibility to obtain any documents to prove otherwise.

After much back and forth with the records custodian at the state prison where he was held, Ifill did indeed obtain the sentencing documents from the county showing his sentences were to be served concurrently. By that time, however, Ifill was already three months past his MED. He was finally released on October 23, 2009, four days after presenting this paperwork to the records custodian at the prison.

Finding that DOC should have obtained copies of his sentencing paperwork once Ifill complained that his release date was incorrectly calculated, and that a failure to do so created a presumption under New York law that DOC was in possession of the sentence and commitment order, the court held DOC responsible for Ifill's wrongful confinement.

"Prison officials are conclusively bound by the contents of commitment papers accompanying a prisoner," the court noted. "The failure, for whatever reason, to credit claimant with the proper amount of (time) owed to him” rendered the extended confinement unlawful.

The court set no date for the trial to determine damages. Ifill was represented by attorney Jason Leventhal of Leventhal & Klein, LLP.

See: Ifill v. The State of New York (NY Court of Claims), No. 2013-039-371, Claim No. 117297 (June 12, 2013).

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