United States District Court, M.D. Alabama, Southern Division
RECOMMENDATION OF THE MAGISTRATE JUDGE
STEPHEN M. DOYLE, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
This
case is before the court on a pro se petition for
writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 filed by
Alabama inmate Lanice Bonds (“Bonds). Doc.
1.[1]
I.
BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
On June
9, 2014, Bonds pleaded guilty in the Houston County Circuit
Court to the charge of being a school employee who engaged in
a sex act with a student under the age of 19 years, in
violation of § 13A-6-81, Ala. Code 1975. Doc. 8-2 at
40-59. On July 21, 2014, the trial court sentenced Bonds to
10 years in prison. Doc. 8-2 at 63-74.
Bonds
appealed, arguing he was not a “school employee,
” as that term is used in § 13A-6-81, Ala. Code
1975. Doc. 8-3. Bonds reserved his right to appeal this issue
before entering his guilty plea. He had raised the issue in a
motion to dismiss the indictment, which the trial court
denied after a hearing. See Doc. 8-1 at 119-226;
Doc. 8-2 at 2-40.
In an
opinion entered on September 18, 2015, the Alabama Court of
Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment.
Bonds v. State, 205 So.3d 1270 (Ala.Crim.App.2015);
see Doc. 8-4. In holding that Bonds was a school
employee within the meaning of § 13A-6-81, the Alabama
Court of Criminal Appeals stated:
As noted above, Bonds was convicted for a violation of §
13A-6-81, Ala. Code 1975. That section provides, in relevant
part:
“(a) A person commits the crime of a school employee
engaging in a sex act or deviant sexual intercourse with a
student under the age of 19 years if he or she is a school
employee and engages in a sex act or deviant sexual
intercourse with a student, regardless of whether the student
is male or female. Consent is not a defense to a charge under
this section.”
The legislature has not specifically defined “school
employee” in the context of § 13A-6-81, but §
13A-6-80 lists persons considered to be “school
employees” for purposes of § 13A-6-81. Section
13A-6-80, Ala. Code 1975, provides: “For purposes of
this article, school employee includes a teacher, school
administrator, student teacher, safety or resource
officer, coach, and other school employee”
(emphasis added). Bonds concedes that he was a
“resource officer.” (See, e.g.,
Bonds's brief, p. 14 (“It cannot be disputed that
[Bonds] was a school resource [sic] at Dothan High School. .
. .”).) Thus, a simple reading of § 13A-6-80
indicates that, because of his position as a “resource
officer” assigned to Dothan High School, Bonds was a
“school employee” under § 13A-6-81.
In addition to Bonds's concession that he was a
“resource officer, ” the evidence presented at
the hearing on the motion to dismiss consistently refers to
Bonds as a resource officer or school-resource officer. Even
so, Bonds urges this Court to go beyond the language of the
relevant statutes and to construe that language in light of
the terms of his particular employment arrangement with the
Dothan Police Department. Bonds argues that the evidence from
the hearing on the motion to dismiss established that he was
solely an employee of the Dothan Police Department and not of
the Dothan Board of Education or Dothan High School. Under
Bonds's reading of the relevant statutes, his title as a
“resource officer” is irrelevant; rather, the
relevant inquiry is whether the school was actually
responsible for paying his wages and ultimately had the
authority to control his job duties as a resource officer.
The first problem with Bonds's interpretation of the
relevant statutes, however, is that, as noted above, his job
title-“resource officer”-is specifically included
in the list of persons in § 13A-6-80. The phrase
“school employee includes” followed by several
job titles in § 13A-6-80 indicates a nonexhaustive list
of positions the legislature has declared to be “school
employees” for purposes of Title 13A, Chapter 6,
Article 4A. The examples listed in § 13A-6-80 include
positions such as “student teacher” and
“coach, ” which might not meet a traditional test
for employment because, depending on the circumstances, those
positions might be volunteer, unpaid, or ultimately not
controlled by a particular school's administration.
Accordingly, § 13A-6-80 is a clear expression by the
legislature that the term “school employee” in
Title 13A, Chapter 6, Article 4A, is not limited to those
persons who meet a traditional, technical definition of
employment by a school's administration, such as the
definition Bonds urges upon this Court. As the Alabama
Supreme Court has stated:
“‘In another context, this Court explained that
the word “‘including' is not to be
regarded as limitational or restrictive, but merely as a
particular specification of something to be included or to
constitute a part of some other thing.”
Sims v. Moore, 288 Ala. 630, 635, 264 So.2d 484, 487
(1972) (emphasis added). “‘Including' is not
a word of limitation, rather it is a word of
enlargement, and in ordinary significance also may
imply that something else has been given beyond the
general language which precedes it.” Id.
(emphasis added).'” Bon Harbor, LLC v. United
Bank, 53 So.3d 82, 93 (Ala. 2010) (quoting
Southeastern Meats of Pelham, Inc. v. City of
Birmingham, 895 So.2d 909, 913 (Ala. 2004)).
Cf. Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner,
Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 132
(2012) (“[T]he word include does not
ordinarily introduce an exhaustive list. . . .”).
The second problem with Bonds's interpretation is that it
renders § 13A-6-80 unnecessary. If a “school
employee” is simply a “school employee, ”
we question why the legislature would deem it necessary to
provide examples in § 13A-6-80. Cf. §
13A-1-6, Ala. Code 1975 (“All provisions of this title
shall be construed according to the fair import of their
terms to promote justice and to effect the objects of the
law, including the purposes stated in Section
13A-1-3.”); see also Hatcher v. Diggs, 76 Ala.
189, 193 (1884) (“Some effect must be allowed to every
word, or phrase, and such interpretation adopted, if
reasonable, that no word or phrase will be repugnant to any
other provision, or be unnecessary and superfluous. Says Lord
Coke: ‘The good expositor makes every sentence have its
operation to suppress all the mischiefs; he gives effect to
every word in the statute; he does not construe it so that
any thing should be vain and superfluous, nor yet makes
exposition against express words.'”).
Adopting Bonds's interpretation-and rendering §
13A-6-80 superfluous-would lead to yet another problem:
Thwarting a manifest purpose of § 13A-6-81. Section
13A-1-3, Ala. Code 1975, provides: “The general
purposes of the provisions of this title are: (1) To
proscribe conduct that unjustifiably and inexcusably causes
or threatens substantial harm to individual and/or public
interests. . . .” At a minimum, § 13A-6-81 seeks
to prevent those persons holding positions of authority or
influence at a school from having sex with students. Here,
the evidence indicated that Bonds had been a resource officer
at multiple schools. He wore his police uniform to his job at
the school and worked at special school events. He even had
an office at the school-where he took the victim in this case
and had sex with her on his desk. Bonds's reading of the
relevant statutes would thwart their purpose, and we reject
it. Cf. Scalia & Garner, Reading Law 63
(“A ...