Shannon Cortney Nevels v. Warden Ken Clark

Background

Shannon Cortney Nevels, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He sought to vacate, modify, or strike restitution imposed as part of his sentence, relying on what he identified as “Senate Bill 824 & Assembly Bill 1869” and on his inability to pay under state law.

The petition was initially assigned to Magistrate Judge Robert M. Illman, who dismissed the original petition with permission to amend so that Nevels could address identified deficiencies. Nevels filed an amended petition, and the matter was later reassigned to Judge Beth Labson Freeman. The opinion states that Nevels had been convicted in Alameda County and sentenced to 21 years in state prison.

Reasoning

The court held that the petition did not satisfy the federal habeas custody requirement. Federal habeas jurisdiction under § 2254 requires both that the petitioner be subject to a restraint on liberty and that the challenged claim have a connection to the unlawful custody. Success must be capable of changing the restraint on the petitioner’s liberty.

The court relied on its earlier warning that a challenge only to restitution does not meet that requirement when eliminating or changing the money obligation would not affect the petitioner’s imprisonment. Because Nevels presented the same restitution claim in his amended petition, the court concluded that he could not proceed with it. The court therefore found no habeas jurisdiction.

The court also addressed two additional defects. It stated that the action appeared untimely because it was filed many years after the one-year limitations period following Nevels’s 2014 conviction. It further stated that the petition appeared unexhausted because Nevels had indicated that he filed a state habeas petition only in the Alameda County Superior Court, rather than giving the highest available state court a fair opportunity to consider each claim. The court had directed him to address both issues, but the amended petition did not do so.

Disposition

The court dismissed the habeas action for lack of jurisdiction, as well as for being untimely and unexhausted. The court also concluded that no certificate of appealability was warranted and denied one. The opinion does not state that the dismissal was with or without prejudice.

Classification

This is a procedural order because the court dismissed the habeas action on threshold grounds—lack of jurisdiction, untimeliness, and failure to exhaust state remedies—without deciding whether Nevels was legally entitled to have the restitution changed or removed.