Moore v. Lynch
- Richard Seeborg
- 3:19-cv-05684
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Moore v. Lynch, Judge Seeborg dismissed Gary B. Moore’s habeas petition because he was not in custody on the challenged conviction.
Gary B. Moore’s attempt to obtain federal review of his 1985 state conviction was dismissed; Jeff Lynch received judgment in his favor.
What happened
Gary B. Moore challenged a 1985 state conviction in Moore v. Lynch, but that conviction carried a two-year sentence imposed more than 34 years earlier.
The court said Moore was no longer in custody for that conviction, so it lacked authority to consider his petition. The court also said the petition would be barred as a second or successive challenge to his 2005 convictions because Moore had not obtained permission from the appeals court.
Judge Richard Seeborg dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction, ordered judgment for Jeff Lynch, closed the case, and declined to issue a certificate allowing an appeal.
The detailed version
- Moore v. Lynch · No. 3:19-cv-05684
- Richard Seeborg
- Sept. 17, 2019
Background
Gary B. Moore filed a federal petition challenging a 1985 state conviction. The opinion states that he received a two-year sentence for that conviction and that more than 34 years had passed since the sentence was imposed. Moore was currently imprisoned because of 2005 state convictions, which had been enhanced using the 1985 conviction.
Moore had previously challenged the 1985 conviction as part of a federal petition concerning his 2005 convictions. That 2009 petition was denied, and his appeal was unsuccessful. He filed another federal case in 2015 concerning the 2005 convictions; that petition was dismissed because its claims were untimely, procedurally defaulted, or not legally cognizable. The opinion also refers to a January 2019 state-court denial of a habeas petition and says that court found no record showing a pending criminal proceeding to which Moore’s request for an evidentiary hearing could attach.
Ruling
The court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction. Federal habeas relief is available only to a person who is “in custody” on the conviction being challenged when the petition is filed. The court held that Moore could not be in custody on the 1985 conviction because its two-year sentence had expired more than three decades earlier.
The court rejected the argument that using the 1985 conviction to enhance the 2005 sentences placed Moore in custody on the 1985 conviction. It explained that if the 2005 convictions were invalidated, the resulting sentences and enhancements would also be invalidated; Moore could not then be held on the already-expired 1985 sentence.
The court gave an additional reason for dismissal: by seeking to invalidate the 1985 conviction, Moore was again challenging his 2005 convictions. A second or successive federal habeas petition requires authorization from the court of appeals, and the court found that Moore had not shown he received that authorization. The court stated that, if jurisdiction existed, it would dismiss the petition as second or successive and unauthorized.
Judge Richard Seeborg ordered that the petition be dismissed for want of jurisdiction, that judgment be entered in favor of Jeff Lynch, and that the file be closed. The court also ruled that a certificate of appealability would not issue.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.