42 USC § 1983 action alleging defendants used an invalid detainer warrant to prevent plaintiff’s release on parole; Fourteenth Amendment right to due process; Whether plaintiff had a protected constitutional right to be released on parole; Qualified immunity; Whether defendants violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right; Monell v Department of Soc Servs claim against defendant-county

The court affirmed the dismissal of plaintiff-Hester’s constitutional claims based on his allegedly late parole release where there was no “liberty interest” in obtaining parole under the applicable state law and “his effort to cast his claim as one analogous to over-detention” failed. Further, defendants-law enforcement officers were entitled to qualified immunity where they did not violate a “clearly established right” and his Monell claim against defendant-County also failed. Hester was required to remain in jail an extra four months after being eligible for parole due to a detainer lodged by Chester County. He claimed that defendants “knowingly or recklessly used an invalid detainer warrant to prevent his release on parole, and in doing so violated his right to due process under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments” as well as Tennessee law. On appeal, the court first addressed his Fourteenth Amendment due process claim based the county defendants’ alleged invalid detainer. It held that Hester lacked a protected right to be released on parole, foreclosing his due process claim. He argued that he was “seeking redress for a violation of a liberty interest in release following a grant of parole rather than a liberty interest in obtaining a grant of parole.” But the court rejected this argument. Hester “acknowledge[d] that an inmate can claim a constitutional right to the grant of parole only if state law creates a specific entitlement to it[,]” and the State of Tennessee grants no such right. The court saw “no principled way to distinguish Hester’s case from others in which courts have rejected inmates’ claims to a liberty interest in parole release absent state law creating such an interest.” It added that, even if he “somehow had a liberty interest, he points to no caselaw that would have placed county officials on notice that their actions in causing a delay in release after the issuance of a” certificate of parole would violate this interest. And his Monell claim against the County failed where he was unable to show a constitutional violation.