Bonilla v. Johnson
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 4:22-cv-05397
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Bonilla v. Katz, Judge Hamilton dismissed multiple civil-rights cases with prejudice after finding no imminent danger and legal bars to the suits.
Steven Wayne Bonilla, the judges and county clerks named as defendants, and the clerks administering the closed cases.
What happened
In Steven Wayne Bonilla v. Judge Steven M. Katz et al., Bonilla filed multiple nearly identical civil-rights cases without a lawyer under a federal civil-rights law. He sued numerous state and federal judges and county clerks over his conviction and the handling of his other cases.
Bonilla is a condemned state prisoner with other state and federal proceedings. The court said he had previously been barred from proceeding without paying the filing fee unless he showed that he faced an immediate danger of serious physical injury. The court found that his complaints did not show such danger when he filed them.
The court also said that, even if Bonilla could proceed without paying the fee, the lawsuits were barred by legal rules identified in the opinion. Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton dismissed the cases with prejudice, ordered the clerk to terminate pending motions and close the cases, and directed the clerk to return future documents submitted in them without filing them.
The detailed version
- Bonilla v. Johnson · No. 4:22-cv-05397
- Phyllis Hamilton
- Sept. 28, 2022
Background
Steven Wayne Bonilla, a state prisoner facing a death sentence, filed multiple civil-rights complaints under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He represented himself in these cases. The complaints were nearly identical and named numerous state and federal judges and county clerks as defendants. They sought relief concerning Bonilla's underlying conviction and the way his other state and federal cases had been handled.
The opinion states that Bonilla had a pending federal petition concerning his imprisonment in the same court, with appointed counsel, and was also represented by counsel in state proceedings concerning that petition. The court also noted prior proceedings determining that Bonilla was disqualified from proceeding without paying the filing fee under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), unless he showed that he was in immediate danger of serious physical injury when he filed the complaint.
Court's analysis
The court found that the allegations did not show immediate danger at the time of filing. Bonilla therefore could not proceed without paying the filing fee. The court further stated that, even if an application to proceed without paying the fee were granted, the lawsuits would be barred under the legal rules identified in the opinion: Heck v. Humphrey, Younger v. Harris, Demos v. U.S. District Court, or Mullis v. U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
The court also rejected the suggestion that the judge's impartiality could reasonably be questioned because of the repetitive and allegedly frivolous filings. It cited the rule that, absent legitimate grounds for recusal, a judge has a duty to decide cases assigned to that judge.
Disposition
The court dismissed the cases with prejudice. It ordered the clerk to terminate all pending motions and close the cases, and to return without filing any further documents Bonilla submitted in the closed cases. The order did not decide the underlying conviction's validity on the merits; it disposed of the cases based on the filing-fee restriction and the legal bars the court identified.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.