Pivnick v. United States of America
- P. Castel
- 1:25-cv-02810
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Bryan Pivnick v. United States, Judge Castel ordered the government to respond to Pivnick’s challenge to his conviction without deciding its merits.
Bryan Pivnick, who is incarcerated and representing himself, must await the government's response to his challenge. The United States must address how the filing should be classified, whether it is timely, and whether relief should be granted if it is timely.
What happened
Bryan Pivnick, who is incarcerated and representing himself, challenged the judgment entered after his guilty plea. He said the judgment was invalid and later described his filing as an extraordinary writ rather than a motion under the federal law normally used by people in custody to challenge convictions.
The court noted that Pivnick remains incarcerated, so his filing appears to challenge his conviction while he is in custody. The court also said the filing appears to be outside the one-year deadline for that type of motion, although Pivnick argued that his belief that he had filed a filing with the Supreme Court should extend the deadline.
Judge Castel did not decide whether Pivnick’s filing should be treated as a custody challenge, an extraordinary writ, or a motion under the federal post-conviction statute. Instead, the court ordered the government to respond by December 10, 2025, allowed Pivnick to reply by January 12, 2026, and allowed the government to respond again by January 27, 2026. The court also stated that it would not issue a certificate allowing an appeal and that any appeal would not be considered taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Pivnick v. United States of America · No. 1:25-cv-02810
- P. Castel
- Oct. 20, 2025
Background
Bryan Pivnick, who is incarcerated at FCI Fort Dix and proceeds without a lawyer, pleaded guilty in the related criminal case. He later sent the court a document arguing that the judgment was invalid from the beginning and that the United States lacked authority to proceed against him.
The court initially told Pivnick that it intended to treat his application as a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, the statute used to challenge a federal conviction or sentence by a person in custody. Pivnick said he did not want to proceed under that statute. He instead sought a writ of error coram nobis, an extraordinary remedy generally available to challenge a conviction when the person is no longer in custody and cannot use the ordinary federal post-conviction procedures.
Issues Identified by the Court
Pivnick later filed a document titled “ORGANIC WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS IN THE LIKENESS OF AN EXTRAORDINARY WRIT OF ERROR CORAM NOBIS UNDER THE ORGANIC CONSTITUTION OF 1787 INVOKING THE ORIGINAL JURISDICTION UNDER THE COMMON LAW.” The court reviewed the substance of the filing rather than relying only on its title.
The court said the filing appeared to be a collateral attack on Pivnick’s conviction while he remained in custody. It explained that a person generally cannot avoid the limits of § 2255 by relabeling the application as a writ of coram nobis or another type of habeas petition. The court also stated that the application appeared to be filed after § 2255’s one-year deadline, measured from when the criminal judgment became final. Based on the appeal timeline described in the order, the court said the judgment became final on October 23, 2023, unless Pivnick had filed a petition for Supreme Court review by then.
Pivnick submitted correspondence concerning an attempt to file a Supreme Court petition. The court said it could not locate a petition accepted for filing by the Supreme Court Clerk. Pivnick argued that his belief that he had filed such a petition justified extending the deadline through equitable tolling, a doctrine that can sometimes extend a filing deadline in exceptional circumstances.
Disposition
The court did not decide whether the July 29, 2025 filing should be treated as a habeas petition, a writ of coram nobis, or a § 2255 motion. It also did not decide whether the filing was timely or, if timely, whether relief should be granted. Instead, the court ordered the government to provide a merits response addressing those questions by December 10, 2025. Pivnick may reply by January 12, 2026, and the government may reply by January 27, 2026.
Judge Castel stated that a certificate of appealability would not issue and certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.