Johnson v. Griffin

Defendant's claim arising from the parole board's determination that he was no longer eligible for parole was not a cognizable habeas claim.

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Respondent Allen Mathis Griffin is incarcerated in the state prison system, having pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter, robbery, and attempted robbery. We granted the Warden’s application for interlocutory review of the habeas court’s denial of the Warden’s motion to dismiss Griffin’s habeas petition as successive. In light of our holding in Griffin’s first habeas action Johnson v. Griffin, 271 Ga. 663 522 SE2d 657 1999 “Griffin I”, we reverse the habeas court’s ruling.

Griffin filed his first state habeas petition in 1998, after the State Board of Pardon and Paroles notified him he was no longer eligible for parole and would be required to serve his entire sentence. In that petition, Griffin asserted that OCGA § 42-9-40 and 42-9-45 were “unconstitutional statutes that induce guilty pleas by statutory promises of leniency parole and parole eligibility but the statutes are not binding on the Parole Board. . . .” The habeas court granted relief on Griffin’s claim he was improperly denied eligibility for parole and ordered the Parole Board to consider Griffin for parole. This Court reversed that ruling in Griffin I. Griffin then filed another habeas petition in the Superior Court of Baldwin County in which he asserted that his guilty plea was based upon “unfulfillable and unenforceable promises of OCGA § 42-9-40 and 42-9-45 and those statutes are unconstitutional under the Georgia Constitution. . . .” Citing OCGA § 9-14-511 , the habeas court denied the Warden’s motion to dismiss the second petition as successive because the first habeas court had never ruled on petitioner’s claim that the statutes were unconstitutional. The habeas court certified its order for immediate review, and this Court granted the Warden’s application for interlocutory review, asking the parties to address “whether the holding in Johnson v. Griffin, supra, is res judicata as to all Griffin’s subsequent claims for habeas corpus relief based upon the alleged unconstitutionality of OCGA § 42-9-40 and 52-9-45.”

Johnson v. Griffin

Defendant's claim arising from the parole board's determination that he was no longer eligible for parole was not a cognizable habeas claim.

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