Adams v. Superintendent
- Laura Swain
- 1:24-cv-06622
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Adams v. Superintendent, Judge Swain dismissed without prejudice Adams’s petition after he neither paid the fee nor filed the required application.
Dimetreus Adams’s petition was dismissed without prejudice because he did not pay the filing fee or submit the required amended application. The Superintendent of Elmira Correctional Facility was the named respondent.
What happened
In Dimetreus Adams v. Superintendent of Elmira Correctional Facility, Adams filed a petition challenging his custody. The court had ordered him to pay the $5 filing fee or submit a corrected application to proceed without paying it.
Adams did neither within the required thirty days. The court therefore dismissed the petition without prejudice, meaning the dismissal did not bar refiling. The order did not address the petition’s underlying claims.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also denied Adams permission to appeal without paying the appeal fee and said no certificate allowing an appeal would issue. The clerk was directed to enter judgment dismissing the case.
The detailed version
- Adams v. Superintendent · No. 1:24-cv-06622
- Laura Swain
- Apr. 25, 2025
Background
Dimetreus Adams filed a petition for habeas corpus, a legal procedure used to challenge detention. In an order dated November 26, 2024, the Court directed Adams, within thirty days, either to submit an amended application to proceed without paying the filing fee or to pay the $5 fee required to file the petition. The Court warned that failure to comply would result in dismissal.
The opinion states that Adams was incarcerated when he filed the petition but was later released. On February 12, 2025, the Court mailed a copy of its earlier order to the most recent address Adams had provided.
Ruling
Adams did not submit an amended application to proceed without paying the fee and did not pay the $5 filing fee. The Court therefore dismissed the petition without prejudice under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1914 and 1915. The opinion does not address the merits of Adams’s underlying petition.
The Court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying the appeal fee. It also stated that no certificate of appealability would issue because Adams had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied. The Court directed the Clerk of Court to enter judgment dismissing the case.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.