On June 28, 2024, Relman Colfax filed a class action complaint in federal court against the current and former directors of the Virginia Department of Corrections (“VADOC”) for failing to properly implement the state’s “earned sentence credit” (“ESC”) program. The program entitles incarcerated people to ESCs that shorten their sentences when they complete educational and training programs. The complaint alleges that defendants improperly denied dozens if not hundreds of individuals in their custody their lawfully owed credits, thereby wrongfully keeping them in prison for weeks, months, and sometimes more than a year past their proper release date. The suit was filed on behalf of named Plaintiff Leslie Puryear and a class of people serving convictions for inchoate offenses related to robbery and carjacking who should have been released prior to November 2023 but were not. The new lawsuit follows Mr. Puryear’s 2023 habeas petition, in which Relman Colfax and the ACLU-VA secured the release of Mr. Puryear and the other class members.
Virginia’s earned sentence credit program, initially enacted in 1995, enables people who are incarcerated to earn sentence credits and ultimately be released early based on conduct and program participation. The state assembly amended the program in 2020 to increase the rate at which people can earn credits and to make the credits mandatory. VADOC has no lawful discretion to deny credits to individuals who are entitled to them under the statute. This expansion of the program by its terms should have impacted hundreds of people incarcerated in VADOC facilities. However, when the law became effective in 2022, VADOC improperly withheld earned sentence credits from certain people eligible for them, including Mr. Puryear and the other class members. The law clearly states that all but a few enumerated convictions are eligible for the expanded credits, but VADOC ignored this and withheld credits from people whose convictions were not listed among the excluded crimes. Even after the Virginia Supreme Court rebuked a related VADOC interpretation of the law in Prease v. Clarke, 888 S.E. 2d 758 (July 6, 2023), VADOC continued to refuse to properly implement the ESC program and release Mr. Puryear and the other class members.
Relman Colfax and the ACLU-VA represented Mr. Puryear in a challenge to his own confinement through a petition for habeas corpus filed with the Virginia Supreme Court in September 2023. While VADOC initially opposed the petition, it later relented, releasing Mr. Puryear in early November 2023 and announcing that it would retroactively grant expanded ESCs to other similarly situated incarcerated people, reducing time in prison for potentially hundreds of people.
The now-filed class action complaint seeks compensation for Mr. Puryear and other class members who have suffered significant injuries by way of their unlawful imprisonment—including deprivation of their constitutional rights, emotional distress, and loss of economic opportunity. The defendants are Chadwick Dotson and Harold Clarke, the current and former VADOC directors, respectively. The complaint alleges violations of the Due Process Clause and the Eighth Amendment, as well as a state law claim for false imprisonment.
The Relman Colfax litigation team includes Rebecca Livengood, Ellora Israni, and David DePriest, with assistance from paralegal Jazmin Trenco and summer associate Cole Lautermilch.
A copy of the complaint is here.