Wells v. Supt. M. King
- Laura Swain
- 1:25-cv-05651
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Carl D. Wells v. Supt. M. King, Judge Liman denied counsel without prejudice and granted the respondent a four-week extension to answer.
Carl D. Wells’s request for appointed counsel was denied without prejudice, and Superintendent M. King received a four-week extension, until December 23, 2025, to answer the Section 2254 petition.
What happened
Carl D. Wells filed a federal petition challenging his 2019 New York conviction for second-degree robbery. He asked the court to appoint a lawyer to represent him.
The court denied Wells’s request for a lawyer without prejudice, finding that the current record did not show that his claim was substantial or likely to succeed. The court granted Superintendent King’s request for four more weeks to respond, setting December 23, 2025, as the new deadline.
Judge Lewis J. Liman issued the order. The order did not decide whether Wells’s challenge to his conviction should ultimately succeed, and it warned that the court was unlikely to grant additional extensions.
The detailed version
- Wells v. Supt. M. King · No. 1:25-cv-05651
- Laura Swain
- Nov. 24, 2025
Background
Carl D. Wells filed a petition under Section 2254 challenging his 2019 conviction for second-degree robbery under New York law. The petition was placed in the prison mailbox in June 2025 and entered on the court’s docket on July 8, 2025. The court had ordered Superintendent M. King to respond. Wells also described his petition as seeking a different form of relief, but the court said that distinction did not matter for the request for appointed counsel.
Wells applied for appointment of counsel. Superintendent King separately moved for a four-week extension of the deadline to respond. King stated that the state-court proceedings were extensive, dated back to 2006, and that he did not yet have all of the state-court documents.
Appointment of Counsel
The court explained that a person bringing a Section 2254 petition has no constitutional right to a lawyer. A court may appoint counsel when the interests of justice require it, using standards that require the petitioner first to show that the claim has substance or a likelihood of success. The court may then consider factors such as the petitioner’s ability to obtain representation, the complexity of the legal issues, the need for factual investigation, and the need for cross-examination.
The court reviewed Wells’s petition and the First Department’s decision affirming his conviction. Because the court had not yet received the state-court records, it considered only the current record. On that record, it found that Wells had not shown that his claim had substance or was likely to succeed. The court therefore denied without prejudice Wells’s request for appointment of counsel, meaning the request was not permanently barred by this order.
Extension and Disposition
The court found good cause for Superintendent King’s requested extension and granted the motion, extending the deadline to answer to December 23, 2025. The court warned that it was unlikely to grant any further extensions. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the motions at Docket Numbers 18, 20, and 24 and mail Wells a copy of the order. The order addressed counsel and scheduling; it did not decide the underlying challenge to Wells’s conviction.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.