Martinez v. Superintendent Mark T. Miller
- Lewis Liman
- 1:23-cv-01281
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Omar Martinez v. Superintendent Mark T. Miller, Judge Liman declined to issue a certificate allowing Martinez to appeal dismissal of his detention petition.
Omar Martinez, whose request for a certificate of appealability was denied, and Superintendent Mark T. Miller, the respondent.
What happened
Omar Martinez v. Superintendent Mark T. Miller concerns Martinez’s request to appeal the dismissal of his petition challenging his detention. The court had granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss the petition on July 2, 2025.
This order addresses whether Martinez should receive a certificate of appealability, which is generally required to appeal a state-court detention case in federal court. The court declined to issue the certificate because Martinez’s petition was untimely and did not substantially show that a constitutional right had been denied.
Judge Liman also noted that the court had previously certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith. The order therefore declined to issue a certificate of appealability.
The detailed version
- Martinez v. Superintendent Mark T. Miller · No. 1:23-cv-01281
- Lewis Liman
- Sept. 3, 2025
Background
The court had granted Superintendent Mark T. Miller’s motion to dismiss Omar Martinez’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, a petition seeking federal review of detention, on July 2, 2025. In that earlier order, the court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
Certificate of Appealability
The order explains that, in a detention case arising from state-court process, a person generally may not appeal without a certificate of appealability. The certificate may issue only if the applicant makes a substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied. The relevant standard also asks whether reasonable judges could debate whether the petition states a valid constitutional claim.
Ruling
The court declined to issue Martinez a certificate of appealability. It gave as its reason that Martinez had not made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right based on the court’s dismissal of his untimely petition. Judge Lewis J. Liman signed the order on September 3, 2025.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.