Becerra Quinones v. Emmerich
- Laura Swain
- 1:25-cv-03627
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Becerra Quinones v. Emmerich, Judge Swain transferred the sentence-execution challenge to Wisconsin, where the petitioner is incarcerated.
Jose Luis Becerra Quinones’s § 2241 petition was transferred from the Southern District of New York to the Western District of Wisconsin. The transferee court will decide whether he may proceed without paying fees; fee-free status for an appeal from the transfer order was denied.
What happened
Becerra Quinones v. Emmerich concerns a petition by a person incarcerated at FCI Oxford in Wisconsin. He challenged how his sentence was being carried out and filed the case without a lawyer under a federal law allowing challenges to federal detention conditions.
The Southern District of New York held that a court generally must have authority over the person responsible for the detention. Because the petitioner is confined in Wisconsin, the court found that the Western District of Wisconsin was the proper court to handle the petition and directed that the case be transferred there.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered the Clerk to transfer the action and closed the case in New York. The Wisconsin court will decide whether the petitioner may continue without paying filing fees, and the court denied fee-free status for any appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Becerra Quinones v. Emmerich · No. 1:25-cv-03627
- Laura Swain
- May 5, 2025
Background
Jose Luis Becerra Quinones, who is incarcerated at FCI Oxford in Adams County, Wisconsin, filed a petition without a lawyer under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. The petition challenges the execution, or carrying out, of his sentence imposed after a Florida conviction. The opinion states that he also has a related § 2241 petition pending in the Western District of Wisconsin.
Reason for Transfer
A court hearing a § 2241 petition must generally have jurisdiction—legal authority—over the petitioner’s custodian, meaning the official responsible for the petitioner’s detention. For a challenge to physical confinement, jurisdiction generally lies in the federal district where the petitioner is confined. Because Becerra Quinones is detained in Adams County, Wisconsin, the court concluded that the Western District of Wisconsin was the proper venue and transferred the petition there under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a), which permits transfer in the interest of justice.
Ruling and Effect
The court directed the Clerk of Court to transfer the action to the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin and closed the case in the Southern District of New York. The transferee court will decide whether Becerra Quinones may proceed without paying fees. The court also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for purposes of an appeal. The order did not decide the merits of the sentence-execution challenge.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.