A prisoner may petition the court for a writ of mandate to compel the prison system to process his or her administrative appeal, a state appellate court has ruled.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) “is obliged to process disciplinary appeals by the regulations in the California Code of Regulations, Title 15, section 3084 et seq.,” said the court in an opinion filed Feb. 22.
Failure to perform a legal duty can be a basis for a writ of mandate. CDCR’s regulations have the “dignity” of laws because they are “quasi-legislative rules the department promulgated as part of lawmaking power delegated by the Legislature,” the appeals court reasoned.
Chung Kao filed a petition for a writ of mandate in the Superior Court after the appeals coordinator at the R. J. Donovan Correctional Facility failed to process his disciplinary inmate appeal and the warden refused to rectify the failure. The Superior Court decided the petition was not filed timely and dismissed it.
Kao appealed the dismissal to the Court of Appeal in San Diego. The principal issue in the appeal was the time period in which Kao was required to file the mandate petition.
CDCR claimed the time period was 60 days. After passing on the threshold question of the legal obligation involved, the appeals court ruled that the time period was three years.
The Court of Appeal reversed the Superior Court’s judgment dismissing the petition because Kao filed the petition within three years.
