RICHMOND, VA — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by two Virginia inmates who were held for an extra year after they should have been released under a 2020 sentencing reform law.
The court’s October 15, 2025, decision affirms a lower court ruling that neither Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares nor Virginia Department of Corrections Director Harold Clarke can be held personally liable for the delay in releasing Hamilton Hall Swart III and Richard Earl DaSilva.
According to court records, the dispute arose after the General Assembly passed H.B. 5148, which expanded eligibility for enhanced sentence credits, allowing some inmates to earn up to 15 days of credit per 30 days served. The law excluded certain serious offenses, but the language was ambiguous on whether attempted aggravated murder was among them.
Initially, former Attorney General Mark Herring advised that such attempts did qualify for enhanced credits. However, Miyares, who succeeded Herring and had opposed the legislation, issued a new advisory opinion in April 2022 interpreting the law more narrowly. Following Miyares’ opinion, the Department of Corrections rescinded Swart and DaSilva’s scheduled release.
One year later, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled in Prease v. Clarke that inmates convicted of attempted aggravated murder were, in fact, eligible for the credits. Swart and DaSilva were released in July 2023 and filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that their extended incarceration violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
The Fourth Circuit, in a published opinion authored by Judge Wilkinson and joined by Judges Niemeyer and King, held that the state officials acted reasonably in interpreting unsettled state law. The court emphasized that federal courts should not impose damages on state officials for legal interpretations that were later rejected by state courts, noting this would be “inimical to the federal-state relationship.”
The court further ruled that neither official acted with “deliberate indifference,” a necessary threshold for Eighth Amendment liability, and that their actions did not meet the “conscience-shocking” standard required to support a substantive due process claim under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The ruling reinforces the principle that advisory legal interpretations by state officials on ambiguous state laws, even if later overturned, do not by themselves give rise to federal civil rights liability.
