Davis v. Warden
- Jerry Blackwell
- 0:24-cv-04174
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 10
In Davis v. Warden, FCI Sandstone, Judge Blackwell denied Jeramy Davis's petition challenging the Bureau of Prisons' decision to deny him First Step Act sentence-reduction time credits, holding that when a prisoner serves consecutive sentences that are combined into one aggregate term and one of those sentences is for a disqualifying offense, the entire combined term is ineligible for time credits.
Federal prisoners serving consecutive or concurrent sentences where at least one sentence is for an offense that disqualifies them from earning First Step Act time credits. These prisoners — particularly those housed in the Eighth Circuit (which covers Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota) — may be denied all FSA time credits for the entire combined term of their imprisonment.
What happened
In Davis v. Warden, FCI Sandstone (Case No. 24-4174), Jeramy Davis, a federal prisoner at FCI Sandstone in Minnesota, filed a petition asking the court to order the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to grant him time credits under the First Step Act (FSA) — a federal law that allows eligible prisoners to earn credits toward early release by completing certain programs. Davis is serving two consecutive sentences, one of which is for a firearm offense that is specifically excluded from FSA time-credit eligibility. The BOP treated both sentences as a single combined term and denied Davis all time credits because one portion of that combined sentence was ineligible. Davis argued that he should at least be able to earn credits for the portion of his sentence tied to his eligible conviction.
The central legal question was how two federal statutes interact: one law (18 U.S.C. § 3584(c)) requires the BOP to treat multiple consecutive or concurrent sentences as a single combined term for administrative purposes, and another law (18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(D)) says a prisoner is ineligible to earn FSA time credits if they are 'serving a sentence' for one of 68 specific disqualifying offenses. Davis argued the second law should be read to deny credits only while a prisoner is serving the specific disqualifying portion of their sentence. The court disagreed, finding that the text of § 3632(d)(4)(D) focuses on the prisoner as a whole — not on each individual sentence segment — and that when read together with the aggregation rule of § 3584(c), the entire combined term becomes ineligible if any part of it stems from a disqualifying conviction. The court also noted that Congress knew how to tie eligibility rules to individual offenses when it wanted to, and chose different language here.
Judge Blackwell overruled Davis's objections to the Magistrate Judge's earlier Report and Recommendation, accepted that Report and Recommendation in full, and denied Davis's petition. The court also conducted its own independent analysis of the statutory text — applying the U.S. Supreme Court's 2024 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which requires courts to independently determine the best reading of a law rather than simply deferring to a government agency's interpretation — and reached the same conclusion as the Magistrate Judge. The court acknowledged that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has not yet issued a detailed published opinion on the precise question but noted that unpublished Eighth Circuit decisions and rulings from other courts, including the Second Circuit, have consistently reached the same result.
The detailed version
This case concerns a petition for a writ of habeas corpus (a legal request asking a court to order the government to justify a person's imprisonment or the conditions of their confinement) filed by federal prisoner Jeramy Davis under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. Davis is incarcerated at FCI Sandstone in Minnesota and is represented by counsel from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' First Step Act Resource Center.
Davis is serving two consecutive sentences arising from the same criminal episode and sentenced together in a single judgment. One sentence is for a drug distribution offense, which is eligible for First Step Act (FSA) time credits. The other is for using a firearm during a drug trafficking crime under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which is one of 68 offenses specifically listed in 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(D) as disqualifying a prisoner from earning FSA Federal Time Credits (FTCs). The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) aggregated both sentences into a single combined term pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3584(c) and then denied Davis all FTCs because the combined term included a disqualifying conviction.
Davis filed his petition on November 12, 2024. United States Magistrate Judge David T. Schultz issued a Report and Recommendation (R&R) on May 20, 2025, recommending denial of the petition. Davis timely objected; the Government responded. Judge Jerry W. Blackwell conducted de novo (independent, from scratch) review of the portions of the R&R to which Davis objected, and clear-error review of uncontested portions.
Davis's objections
Davis did not object to the R&R's rejection of his Second Amendment and Ex Post Facto Clause arguments. He objected solely on the statutory interpretation question, arguing that: (1) the R&R improperly relied on unpublished Eighth Circuit opinions rather than engaging in a full statutory analysis; (2) those opinions were unpersuasive because the petitioners in those cases were self-represented (pro se) and did not raise the sophisticated arguments Davis raised; (3) the R&R improperly relied on out-of-circuit authority; and (4) the correct reading of § 3632(d)(4)(D) is that it bars FTCs only while a prisoner is actively serving the specific disqualifying sentence segment, not the eligible portion.
Court's statutory analysis
The court applied the framework from Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024), which requires courts to independently determine the best reading of a statute using traditional tools of statutory construction, rather than deferring to the agency's interpretation. Applying that standard, the court found the BOP's interpretation correct for several reasons:
- Section 3584(c), enacted before the FSA, mandates that multiple consecutive or concurrent sentences 'shall be treated for administrative purposes as a single, aggregate term of imprisonment,' with no limitation on the phrase 'administrative purposes.' Determining FSA time-credit eligibility — an administrative sentence-computation function — falls within that mandate. - Section 3632(d)(4)(D) uses the present tense and focuses on 'a prisoner . . . serving a sentence,' not on individual sentence segments. Read in light of § 3584(c), 'the sentence' is the single aggregated term, not each discrete count. - Congress demonstrated it knows how to link eligibility to individual offenses when it wants to (citing 34 U.S.C. § 60541(g)(5)(A)(ii) in the Second Chance Act, which references 'conviction for an offense or offenses'). The omission of such language in § 3632(d)(4)(D) signals Congress intended to identify ineligible classes of prisoners, not to parse sentences. - Requiring the BOP to disaggregate sentences for each count would create ongoing administrative complexity inconsistent with Congress's aggregation directive.
Handling of caselaw objections
The court found the R&R's reliance on unpublished Eighth Circuit decisions — Tyler v. Garrett, 2024 WL 5205501 (8th Cir. Dec. 24, 2024), and Clinkenbeard v. Murdock, 2025 WL 926451 (8th Cir. Mar. 27, 2025) — appropriate for persuasive value under Eighth Circuit Rule 32.1A, even though unpublished opinions are not binding precedent. The court rejected Davis's argument that those decisions carried less weight because the petitioners were pro se, noting that the district court decision in Clinkenbeard itself engaged in detailed analysis of statutory language, legislative history, and Loper Bright, and was affirmed by the Eighth Circuit. The court also found reliance on Giovinco v. Pullen, 118 F.4th 527 (2d Cir. 2024) — an out-of-circuit published decision reaching the same result — to be standard legal practice.
Distinguishing Hill v. King
The court acknowledged a contrary district court decision, Hill v. King, Civ. No. 23-1365, 2025 WL 1020604 (D. Minn. Oct. 7, 2024), but distinguished it on the facts. In Hill, a two-month ineligible sentence was appended to a much longer eligible sentence (representing less than two percent of the total) for unrelated conduct imposed years later — facts the Hill court found produced an 'absurd' result justifying application of the canon against absurdity. Davis's convictions arose from the same criminal episode and were sentenced together in a single judgment, making the absurdity rationale inapplicable.
Ruling
Judge Blackwell overruled all of Davis's objections, accepted the R&R in its entirety, and denied the petition. Judgment is to be entered accordingly.
Reviewer note from the AI+
Read the full 10-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.