Castellanos v. Frauenheim
- James Donato
- 3:17-cv-01307
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Castellanos v. Frauenheim, Judge Donato granted sealing of juror exhibits and an extension for Castellanos to file a traverse.
Rolando Castellanos received additional time to file his traverse. Scott Frauenheim was permitted to file the specified exhibits under seal, protecting the identifying information and privacy of certain jurors.
What happened
In Castellanos v. Frauenheim, Rolando Castellanos, a California prisoner representing himself, filed a petition challenging his state-court conviction. Scott Frauenheim asked to file several state-court exhibits under seal.
The exhibits concerned alleged juror misconduct and included jurors’ personal identifying information. The court also considered Castellanos’s request for more time to respond to Frauenheim’s answer.
Judge Donato granted Frauenheim’s motion to file the exhibits under seal and granted Castellanos’s extension request. Castellanos had until December 2, 2019, to file his response, and the court said it would provide no further extensions.
The detailed version
- Castellanos v. Frauenheim · No. 3:17-cv-01307
- James Donato
- Nov. 18, 2019
Background
Rolando Castellanos, a California prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his state-court custody. Scott Frauenheim filed an answer and asked to submit several state-court documents under seal. Castellanos separately requested another extension of time to file a traverse, meaning his written response to the answer.
Sealing request
The court explained that court records are generally presumed to be open to the public. Under Northern District of California Local Rule 79-5, sealing is permitted when a document contains material entitled to legal protection, and the request must be limited to that material. The court found compelling reasons to seal the exhibits because they concerned alleged juror misconduct, contained personal identifying information about certain jurors, and had been filed under seal in state court. The court therefore granted the motion to file the documents under seal, Docket No. 33.
Extension request and disposition
The court noted that Castellanos had already received several extensions. It granted his most recent request, Docket No. 38, and allowed him to file a traverse by December 2, 2019. The court stated that no further extensions would be provided. The order addressed the sealing and filing-deadline requests.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.