A man who says he was held in prison nearly five months after his sentence expired wants a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate his claims for money damages against state prison officials.

The request by Cornelius Alston deals with the question, To what extent must Hawaii prison officials investigate a prisoner’s complaint about the length of his sentence?

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court ruled on Dec. 14 that state Department of Safety officials who calculated Alston’s sentence are immune from his claims.

But Alston has filed a request for a larger "en banc" panel of 11 judges to rule that the prison officials could be liable for miscalculating his sentence.

His lawyers, attorneys Jack Schweigert of Honolulu and Scott Michelman with the Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington, D.C., argue that the three-judge panel’s ruling conflicts with other 9th Circuit Court rulings.

They contend two 9th Circuit Court rulings in 1985 and 1990 held that inmates’ constitutional rights were violated when prison officials refused to investigate claims that their sentences had been miscalculated.

The appeals judges will now privately consider the request for the rehearing and issue a decision later.

Alston was among an estimated hundreds of Hawaii prisoners whose sentences were recalculated by prison officials starting in 2005.

Alston was sentenced to prison in 1997 on two drug charges. His release date had been set for Aug. 4, 2007, but was reset to Nov. 17, 2011, after it had been reviewed.

The reason, prison officials said, was that his prison term on the drug charges had to run consecutively to an earlier robbery sentence.

But the judge who sentenced Alston in 1997 ruled that the terms were to run at the same time, or concurrently.

The three-judge panel found that there was no evidence prison officials received a copy of the judge’s order.

The panel concluded that prison officials were under no obligation to go beyond their institutional records and review the court file.

In their request filed Wednesday, Alston’s lawyers argue that the three-judge panel set a higher bar for prisoners to sue state prison officials.

They said all the prison officials had to do was check the court’s electronic docket to find the court document on the sentence.

Alston was released on Dec. 27, 2007, after state public defenders obtained a court order clarifying that all the sentences were to run at the same time.

The release was 145 days after his original release date.

The suit is against Thomas Read, the administrator in charge of the review, and Nettie Simmons, a specialist who worked under Read’s supervision.