Baxter v. United States

Background

Anthony Harrison Baxter, a state prisoner incarcerated at Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, California, filed a petition challenging his state-court conviction under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The court had dismissed the action without prejudice on July 1, 2021, because Baxter had not paid the filing fee or submitted an application to proceed without prepaying the fee. The court also entered judgment in favor of the respondent.

Baxter later told the court that his address of record was incorrect and that he had not received the clerk’s notice about the missing fee payment or fee application. He attached a completed application to proceed without prepaying the fee. The court treated his letter as both a request to reopen the case and an application to proceed without prepaying the fee.

Rulings

The court granted the request to reopen the action. It directed the clerk to vacate the July 1, 2021 order of dismissal and related judgment and to reopen the case.

The court also transferred the action to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. It explained that venue for a state-prisoner challenge may be proper in either the district where the prisoner is confined or the district where the conviction occurred. Baxter was confined in Kern County, and he was challenging a conviction from Shasta County; both counties are within the Eastern District of California. The court therefore concluded that venue properly lay there rather than in the Northern District of California and transferred the case under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a).

The court deferred Baxter’s pending application to proceed without prepaying the filing fee to the Eastern District and directed the clerk to transfer the case file. The order did not decide the merits of Baxter’s challenge to his conviction. Footnote 1 also directed substitution of Warden Christian Pfeiffer as respondent because he was Baxter’s current custodian.