Salcido v. Johnson
- Yvonne Rogers
- 4:20-cv-01942
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Salcido v. Johnson, Judge Rogers dismissed the successive petition without prejudice and granted Salcido a financial hardship fee waiver.
Martin Seanz Salcido’s petition was dismissed without prejudice; his application to proceed without paying filing fees was granted, and his other pending motions were terminated as moot.
What happened
In Salcido v. Johnson, Martin Seanz Salcido, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition challenging his conviction and sentence. He had previously filed a federal petition challenging the same conviction and sentence, and the court had denied that earlier petition on its merits.
The court determined that the new petition was a second or successive petition. Because Salcido had not obtained authorization from the federal appeals court, the district court could not consider it. He also asked to compel discovery, hold an evidentiary hearing, and receive a status report.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed the petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b), without prejudice to filing a new petition if Salcido obtained the required authorization. The court granted his application to proceed without paying filing fees based on his financial resources and terminated the other pending motions as moot.
The detailed version
- Salcido v. Johnson · No. 4:20-cv-01942
- Yvonne Rogers
- June 26, 2020
Background
Martin Seanz Salcido, identified as a state prisoner, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his conviction and sentence. He represented himself. He also applied to proceed without paying filing fees and filed motions to compel discovery, request an evidentiary hearing, and obtain a status report.
Salcido had previously filed a federal petition challenging the same conviction and sentence. The court denied that earlier petition on the merits.
Ruling
The court determined that Salcido’s new petition was a second or successive petition. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A), a second or successive petition containing new claims cannot be filed in the district court unless the federal appeals court first authorizes the district court to consider it. Salcido had not obtained that authorization.
The court therefore dismissed the petition under § 2244(b), without prejudice to filing a new petition if he obtained the required authorization. This was a threshold ruling about whether the district court could consider the petition; the order did not decide the new petition’s underlying claims.
Other Orders
The court granted Salcido’s application to proceed without paying filing fees based on his financial resources. It terminated as moot his motions to compel discovery, request an evidentiary hearing, and obtain a status report, and directed the clerk to close the file.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.