Mitchell v. Atchely
- Jon Tigar
- 4:23-cv-03455
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 9
In Mitchell v. Atchely, Judge Tigar dismissed Correy Mitchell’s petition as second or successive, granted fee-waiver status, and denied a certificate of appealability.
Correy Mitchell’s federal petition was dismissed, while the respondents received judgment in their favor. The court granted Mitchell permission to proceed without paying filing fees but denied a certificate of appealability.
What happened
Correy Mitchell filed a petition challenging his state conviction and sentence. He had previously filed at least three federal petitions concerning the same conviction and sentence, and this petition repeated or varied claims from two of those proceedings.
The court ruled that the petition was second or successive under federal law because it challenged the same judgment, relied on facts that were already available, and raised claims related to earlier petitions. Mitchell had not first obtained permission from the federal appeals court to file another petition. The court also said that, to the extent he was seeking review of state-court decisions directly, the federal district court lacked authority to hear that appeal.
Judge Jon S. Tigar dismissed the petition, granted Mitchell permission to proceed without paying filing fees, denied a certificate of appealability, entered judgment for the respondents, and closed the case.
The detailed version
- Mitchell v. Atchely · No. 4:23-cv-03455
- Jon Tigar
- Feb. 6, 2024
Background
Correy Mitchell, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his state conviction and sentence. The opinion states that he was convicted in 2004 of robbery, assault, and carjacking and was ultimately sentenced to 207 years to life.
Mitchell had already filed at least three federal petitions challenging that conviction and sentence. In a prior related proceeding, the Central District of California denied his first petition on the merits. A later petition in that district was summarily denied as second or successive. In an earlier proceeding in the Northern District of California, the court dismissed or rejected claims concerning a parole hearing, the authority to change his sentence, and alleged errors in his abstract of judgment and minute order.
Analysis
The court held that the current petition was a “second or successive” petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b). The court explained that a petition falls within that category when it challenges the same state-court judgment, relies on facts that existed when the earlier petition was filed, and raises claims that were or could have been addressed earlier.
The current petition challenged state-court proceedings and asserted due-process, equal-protection, cruel-and-unusual-punishment, and sentencing-related claims. The court found that these claims were variations of claims raised in earlier federal proceedings. Mitchell therefore needed authorization from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before filing the petition in the district court, and the district court could not consider it without that authorization.
The court separately stated that, to the extent Mitchell was using the petition as a direct appeal of California Supreme Court decisions, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine deprived the federal district court of subject-matter jurisdiction to review those state-court judgments.
Disposition
Judge Jon S. Tigar granted Mitchell leave to proceed without paying filing fees. The court dismissed the petition as second or successive, denied a certificate of appealability, entered judgment in favor of the respondents and against Mitchell, and closed the case. The order did not decide the underlying validity of Mitchell’s conviction or sentence.
Read the full 9-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.