Chiprez v. Adame

Background

Froylan Medina Chiprez, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, brought a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 based on events at Salinas Valley State Prison. The operative pleading was his fourth amended complaint. The only remaining claim concerned M. Adame’s alleged 19-day delay in mailing Chiprez’s legal mail.

Chiprez alleged that he gave a federal habeas petition to prison staff on February 15, 2018, and that Adame mailed it on March 6, 2018. Chiprez claimed the delay led to a later delay in filing the petition and denied him meaningful access to the courts. He identified the petition as Case No. 18-cv-00501-AG-RAO.

The court had previously given Chiprez several opportunities to correct deficiencies in this claim. It had dismissed unrelated claims involving other defendants because they were improperly joined in the same action, and it had instructed Chiprez that he needed to show how Adame’s actions caused an actual injury.

Court’s Analysis

The court screened the complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, which requires review of a prisoner’s complaint against a governmental officer or employee. A claim under § 1983 requires a violation of a federal right by a person acting under state authority.

The court recognized that prisoners have a First Amendment right to send and receive mail and that deliberate delays in legal mail can support an access-to-the-courts claim when they adversely affect legal proceedings. But an isolated mail delay does not state a constitutional claim without evidence of improper motive or actual interference with access to the courts.

The court examined the record in Chiprez’s federal habeas case. That petition was filed on March 13, 2018, and was dismissed as untimely on November 30, 2018. The earlier court had determined that the petition would still have been untimely even if it had been treated as filed on February 15, 2018, the date Chiprez said he mailed it. The applicable filing period had already expired on April 14, 2017. The court therefore concluded that Adame’s alleged 19-day delay was not the reason the petition was dismissed.

Because Chiprez did not show an actual injury caused by the delay, the court held that Claim 1 failed to state a cognizable access-to-the-courts claim. The court also noted that Chiprez had not provided additional information showing that the delay caused the alleged harm and had already received several chances to amend.

Disposition

The court dismissed Claim 1 without any further leave to amend. It dismissed the fourth amended complaint for failure to state a cognizable claim for relief, terminated all pending motions as moot, and closed the case.