Barnes v. Orozco
- William Orrick
- 3:21-cv-04439
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 1
In Barnes v. Orozco, Judge Orrick dismissed Barnes’s incarceration challenge because it sought action against a journalist, not relief affecting his imprisonment.
Antoine Deshawn Barnes’s federal action was dismissed; Rosemary Orozco and the other named respondents received judgment in their favor.
What happened
In Barnes v. Orozco, Antoine Deshawn Barnes filed a federal petition challenging his incarceration. But his requests concerned having a television journalist arrested and investigated and having her property searched and seized.
The court ruled that those requests were not proper in an incarceration challenge because success would not change the length of Barnes’s imprisonment. The court also declined to treat the case as a civil-rights lawsuit because the named respondents were not state actors.
Judge William Orrick dismissed the federal action, ordered judgment in favor of the respondents, and directed the Clerk to close the file.
The detailed version
- Barnes v. Orozco · No. 3:21-cv-04439
- William Orrick
- July 21, 2021
Background
Antoine Deshawn Barnes filed this action under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, a statute used to challenge the lawfulness or duration of a person’s incarceration. The court reviewed the petition and found that Barnes was asking the court to have a television journalist arrested and investigated and to have her property searched and seized.
Analysis
The court held that these requests were not proper in a habeas action because success would not affect the length of Barnes’s incarceration. The court noted that, in an appropriate case, it may treat a habeas petition as a complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a civil-rights statute. It decided that this was not such a case because the people named as respondents were not state actors and therefore could not be held liable under § 1983. The order did not reach the merits of Barnes’s requests concerning the journalist.
Disposition
The court dismissed the federal habeas action. Judge William Orrick ordered the Clerk to enter judgment in favor of the respondents and close the file.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.