Can the plaintiff get damages for an unlawful incarceration lasting more than 600 days?

This guy was re-incarcerated after he violated the terms and conditions of his post-release supervision. In 2005, the Department of Corrections imposed that PRS re-incarceration. The sentencing judge did not impose that re-incarceration. The problem was that in 2006, the Court of Appeals said that only the judge can impose this PRS re-incarceration, not DOCS. In total, plaintiff spent 686 days in jail for violating the terms of his PRS after the Court of Appeals said in Early v. Murray, 451 F.3d 71 (2d Cir. 2006), that DOCS had no authority to impose the sentence. For this reason, plaintiff wants financial compensation for this unlawful incarceration. The Court of Appeals says plaintiff may be entitled to these damages. But he may not.

The case is Vincent v. Annucci, issued on March 23, more than a year after the appeal was argued. By August 31, 2006, when the Court of Appeals definitively ruled on this issue in Early, it was clearly established that plaintiff's continued PRS incarceration violated the Constitution because it was not judicially-imposed. The question, is plaintiff entitled to compensation for this?

First, qualified immunity. That immunity is available to public defendants in constitutional claims when the law was not clearly established at the time of the violation, as determined by Supreme Court and Second Circuit authority. This is an easy call for the Court of Appeals (Walker, Sullivan and Kearse in partial dissent), as the Court already said in 2013 in this very case that the defendant cannot invoke qualified immunity based on the Court's 2006 ruling in Early. The state tries to re-argue qualified immunity again, but these arguments are not going to cut it. When something is clearly established, it's clearly established until the Supreme Court says otherwise. 

What about compensatory damages? While the trial court in this case awarded plaintiff $175,000 for the unlawful confinement, its analysis was incorrect because the trial court's damages calculation was too cursory. The trial court said it was a mystery what might have happened had the DOCS commissioner referred plaintiff to re-sentencing post-Early in 2006. That reasoning was incorrect. The trial court did not consider what steps were actually available to the Commissioner in determining whether to keep plaintiff in jail for another two years after the Early ruling came down. The Commissioner might have needed court approval to eliminate the PRS term that it had imposed, which led to the post-PRS incarceration. At a minimum, the commissioner was required to at least try to stop DOCS's administrative and custodial operations that had been held to violate the law in 2006. This is all very complicated, but the moral of the story is that plaintiff's extended incarceration, which lasted more than 600 days, may not even be compensable if the state can show that there were other ways to keep him in jail post-Early. Nor did the trial court discuss plaintiff's burden of proving damages. You have to prove damages in our court system and they are not presumed just because your rights were violated.