Rodriguez v. Burke
- Tarnofsky
- 1:24-cv-02715
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 12
In Rodriguez v. Miller, Magistrate Judge Tarnofsky recommended granting Miller’s motion to dismiss Rodriguez’s habeas petition as untimely.
Andres Rodriguez’s federal challenge to his New York conviction was subject to the recommended dismissal as untimely; Mark Miller was the respondent seeking dismissal. The opinion does not state that the district judge had entered a final ruling.
What happened
In Andres Rodriguez v. Mark Miller, Rodriguez asked the federal court to review his New York conviction, arguing that his guilty plea was involuntary, his lawyer was ineffective, and his sentence violated the Constitution. Miller moved to dismiss the petition as filed too late.
The report concluded that Rodriguez’s conviction became final on September 7, 2020, and that the filing deadline was extended to November 28, 2023, by the time allowed for his state post-conviction motion. Because Rodriguez filed the federal petition on February 5, 2024, the report found it 69 days late. It also found no basis for extending the deadline or making an exception based on actual innocence.
Magistrate Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky recommended granting Miller’s motion to dismiss. The report says the parties had 14 days to object to the recommendation; it does not state that District Judge Margaret M. Garnett had entered a final ruling.
The detailed version
- Rodriguez v. Burke · No. 1:24-cv-02715
- Tarnofsky
- Feb. 7, 2025
Background
Andres Rodriguez, who was proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his New York conviction. The petition raised arguments including that his guilty plea was involuntary, that his lawyer provided ineffective assistance, and that his sentence violated the Eighth Amendment. Mark Miller moved to dismiss the petition as untimely, meaning filed after the applicable deadline.
Rodriguez pleaded guilty in February 2017 to one count of first-degree criminal sexual act and one count of forcible touching. The state court denied his later request to withdraw the plea and sentenced him to 12 years in prison followed by 10 years of post-release supervision. New York appellate courts affirmed the conviction and denied or dismissed his later efforts to obtain further review.
Timeliness analysis
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act gives a person in custody under a state-court conviction one year to file a federal habeas petition, subject to statutory tolling and limited equitable exceptions. The report determined that direct review ended when the time to seek review in the United States Supreme Court expired on September 7, 2020. Without tolling, the federal filing deadline therefore was September 7, 2021.
Rodriguez filed a state motion to vacate the judgment on November 13, 2020. The report found that this state collateral proceeding tolled the federal deadline through February 3, 2023, when the Appellate Division denied leave to appeal. The report concluded that Rodriguez’s later application to the New York Court of Appeals did not extend the tolling period because the Appellate Division’s order was not appealable in that court. The 812 days of tolling moved the federal deadline to November 28, 2023.
The report treated the federal petition as filed on February 5, 2024—69 days after the adjusted deadline. It rejected Rodriguez’s position that the state Court of Appeals’ June 5, 2023 dismissal made the federal petition timely. It also found that Rodriguez had not shown an extraordinary circumstance that prevented timely filing and had not offered new evidence supporting an actual-innocence exception.
Recommendation and procedure
Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky recommended that Miller’s motion to dismiss the petition be granted. This was a report and recommendation rather than a stated final decision by District Judge Margaret M. Garnett. The notice allowed the parties 14 days after service to file objections and warned that failing to object would waive objections and preclude appellate review.
Read the full 12-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.