Fex v. Michigan, 507 U.S. 43, 14 (1993)

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56

FEX v. MICHIGAN

Blackmun, J., dissenting

States v. Mauro, 436 U. S. 340, 361-362 (1978). The majority, however, gives that purpose short shrift, focusing instead on "worst-case scenarios," ante, at 49, and on an assessment of the balance of harms under each interpretation. Two assumptions appear to underlie that inquiry. The first—evident in the cursory and conditional nature of the concession that to spend several hundred additional days under detainer "is bad, given the intent of the IAD," ante, at 50—is that the burden of spending extra time under detainer is relatively minor. The failure to take seriously the harm suffered by a prisoner under detainer is further apparent in the majority's offhand and insensitive description of the practical impact of such status. To say that the prisoner under detainer faces "certain disabilities, such as disqualification from certain rehabilitative programs," ibid., is to understate the matter profoundly. This Court pointed out in Carchman v. Nash, that the prisoner under detainer bears a very heavy burden:

" '[T]he inmate is (1) deprived of an opportunity to obtain a sentence to run concurrently with the sentence being served at the time the detainer is filed; (2) classified as a maximum or close custody risk; (3) ineligible for initial assignments to less than maximum security prisons (i. e., honor farms or forestry camp work); (4) ineligible for trustee [sic] status; (5) not allowed to live in preferred living quarters such as dormitories; (6) ineligible for study-release programs or work-release programs; (7) ineligible to be transferred to preferred medium or minimum custody institutions within the correctional system, which includes the removal of any possibility of transfer to an institution more appropriate for youthful offenders; (8) not entitled to preferred prison jobs which carry higher wages and entitle [him] to additional good time credits against [his] sentence; (9) inhibited by the denial of possibility of parole or any commutation of his sentence; (10) caused anxiety and

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