Perkins v. Stenseth
- Jeffrey Bryan
- 0:24-cv-01909
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 2
In Perkins v. Stenseth, Judge Bryan dismissed Perkins’s petition without prejudice for failure to prosecute and denied a certificate of appealability.
Alvin Perkins’s § 2254 petition was dismissed without prejudice; Linda Stenseth was the named respondent.
What happened
Perkins v. Stenseth concerned Alvin Perkins’s petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The petition was the subject of a magistrate judge’s recommendation that it be dismissed because Perkins did not comply with an order to explain why the case should continue.
Neither party objected to the recommendation before the deadline. The court therefore reviewed it for clear error, meaning an obvious mistake, and found none.
Judge Bryan adopted the recommendation, dismissed Perkins’s petition without prejudice, and denied a certificate of appealability. The dismissal was based on failure to prosecute, not on a decision about the petition’s underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Perkins v. Stenseth · No. 0:24-cv-01909
- Jeffrey M. Bryan
- Aug. 26, 2024
Background
Alvin Perkins filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The opinion does not describe the petition’s underlying claims. Magistrate Judge John F. Docherty issued a Report and Recommendation recommending dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) for failure to prosecute. The recommendation stated that Perkins had failed to comply with the court’s order to show cause, which required him to explain why the case should not be dismissed.
Review of the Recommendation
Neither party objected to the Report and Recommendation, and the objection deadline had passed. Because there were no timely objections, Judge Jeffrey M. Bryan reviewed the recommendation for clear error—an obvious mistake—and found none.
Ruling
The court adopted the Report and Recommendation. It dismissed Perkins’s petition without prejudice, meaning the order did not bar refiling, based on failure to prosecute. The court also denied a certificate of appealability. The order did not decide the merits of Perkins’s underlying petition.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.