$1.6 Million Class-Action Settlement for Virginia Prisoners Subjected to Delayed Release
In an amended agreement filed in the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia on January 28, 2025, state Department of Corrections (DOC) Director Chadwick Dotson and his predecessor, Harold Clarke, promised to pay a total of $1,599,694 to settle a class-action suit filed by 53 state prisoners who were detained past their release dates.
The mass over-detentions resulted from an advisory opinion issued by state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) regarding exclusions for certain violent crimes from sentence credits adopted by state lawmakers in 2020. Just as those credits were set to take effect in July 2022, Miyares determined that the exclusions should extend to related “inchoate” offenses—putting those convicted of attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder on the same footing as those actually convicted of murder. As a result, Clarke estimated, some 8,000 prisoners faced delayed release from prison—including 560 already told they were going home that month, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Jan. 2023, p.50.]
In July 2023, the state Supreme Court shot down Miyares’ overly expansive interpretation of the law’s exclusions when it granted a writ of habeas corpus to over-detained prisoner Steven Prease. By then, the DOC had subjected at least 53 prisoners to over-detention based on Miyares’ bad advice. But the high Court granted immunity to him, as well as to Clarke and Dotson for relying on his work. And a habeas petition provides for no recovery of damages. Yet the DOC dragged its feet for months longer before finally releasing all the prisoners in November 2023. One of them, Leslie Puryear, then filed suit on behalf of the group, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Nov. 2024, p.14.]
The parties proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. Under its terms, $1,139,564 was set aside to pay eligible prisoners $118 for each day of over-detention that they were forced to endure—a total of 9,646 days for all 53 Plaintiffs, calculated from the date they were actually released back to July 1, 2022, which was the date that they were supposed to be freed had the expanded sentence credits not been improperly withheld from them. Any single payment that was calculated to total less than $1,000 was bumped up to that minimum amount.
The settlement also included $40,000 as a service payment to Puryear, subject to the district court’s approval. Another $20,000 was set aside for expenses of the claims administrator. A total of $400,000 was awarded to class counsel, attorneys Michael Allen, Ellora T. Israni, Emahunn R.A. Campbell and Rebecca J. Livengood of Relman Colfax PLLC in Washington, D.C. The Court granted preliminary approval to the agreement on January 29, 2025, and final approval on May 19, 2025. See: Puryear v. Dotson, USDC (E.D. Va.), Case No. 3:24-cv-00479.
Puryear, who served 11 years in prison for armed robbery, was held another 16 months by DOC after his scheduled July 2022 release because Miyares said—wrongly—that his attempted murder conviction was just as disqualifying for sentence credits as a murder conviction was. “I knew, waking up every day, I shouldn’t be here,” Puryear recalled of his extra time in prison, which caused him to miss his son’s high school graduation and a grandson’s birth. Livengood, one of the class attorneys, called the money that he and other Plaintiffs would receive “a meaningful remedy for a widespread harm.”
Virginia limits governors to two non-consecutive terms, but not the attorney general. Despite the big bill that the DOC had to pay for his shoddy advice to Dotson and Clarke, Miyares was unopposed in the June 2025 GOP primary for renomination to run again in the November 2025 election.
Additional source: Washington Post
Related legal case
Puryear v. Dotson
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (E.D. Va.), Case No. 3:24-cv-00479 |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Settlement |