Perkins v. Daniels
- Jeffrey Bryan
- 0:24-cv-01094
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 1
In Perkins v. Daniels, Judge Bryan denied Perkins’s motion to appoint appellate counsel because only the Court of Appeals could decide it.
Victor B. Perkins’s request for appointed counsel on appeal was denied; the order did not decide the merits of his underlying constitutional claims.
What happened
Perkins v. Daniels involved Victor B. Perkins’s request for a lawyer to represent him in his appeal.
The district court had previously dismissed Perkins’s Fifth and Eighth Amendment claims. Perkins asked this court to appoint a lawyer for his appeal, but the court said that request belonged in the Court of Appeals.
Judge Jeffrey M. Bryan denied the motion because it was not properly before the district court and stated that Perkins should file the request with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The detailed version
- Perkins v. Daniels · No. 0:24-cv-01094
- Jeffrey M. Bryan
- July 26, 2024
Background
Victor B. Perkins sued Dr. Jack Daniels and Dr. Dionne Hart. He brought Fifth and Eighth Amendment claims under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics. On June 13, 2024, the court dismissed those claims. Perkins was appealing that order when he asked the district court to appoint appellate counsel.
Issue
The issue was whether the district court could decide Perkins’s request for a lawyer to represent him on appeal.
Ruling
The court held that a request for counsel on appeal must be decided by the Court of Appeals, not the district court. It therefore denied Perkins’s motion to appoint counsel on appeal because the request was not properly before the court. The order stated that Perkins should refile the request with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.