Korsh v. Marques
- Susan Nelson
- 0:18-cv-01229
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 5
In Korsh v. Marques, Judge Nelson denied Korsh’s custody petition and dismissed the action as moot after his release.
Michael Lloyd Korsh’s petition challenging his residential-reentry placement was denied and his action was dismissed after his release from custody; Warden R. Marques prevailed on the disposition.
What happened
Michael Lloyd Korsh, representing himself, challenged the Bureau of Prisons’ decision to place him in a residential reentry center later than he wanted. He sought credit for 180 days there instead of the 123 days he received.
While the case was pending, Korsh was released from custody and began supervised release. The court considered whether any exception to the mootness rule applied, but found that none did and that it could no longer provide the requested relief.
In Korsh v. Marques, Judge Susan Richard Nelson denied the habeas petition as moot and dismissed the action. The order did not state that the dismissal was with or without prejudice.
The detailed version
- Korsh v. Marques · No. 0:18-cv-01229
- Susan Nelson
- Feb. 5, 2019
Background
Michael Lloyd Korsh filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 challenging the Bureau of Prisons’ decision to place him in a residential reentry center in Edina, Minnesota, on September 25, 2018, rather than on his requested placement date of July 31, 2018. Korsh claimed that he was entitled to 180 days in the center, but ultimately received 123 days. He filed the petition while imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota.
Korsh had pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and had received a 30-month prison sentence followed by 10 years of supervised release. While the petition was pending, he was released from custody on January 25, 2019, and began supervised release.
Mootness analysis
The court reviewed Korsh’s objections to Magistrate Judge Leo Brisbois’s report and recommendation. The district court conducted a de novo review, meaning it independently considered the parts of the recommendation to which Korsh objected.
Under Article III of the Constitution, federal courts may decide only actual cases or controversies. A case becomes moot when later events mean the court can no longer provide effective relief. The court considered four possible exceptions: continuing collateral injuries, an issue capable of repetition yet avoiding review, a defendant’s voluntary cessation of the challenged conduct, and a properly certified class action.
The court found that none of these exceptions applied. Korsh had been fully released from custody, and the conditions of supervised release were not a continuing effect of the delayed residential-reentry placement. There was no reasonable expectation that Korsh would face the same detention again, no evidence that the respondent had ended the challenged detention to defeat federal jurisdiction, and no class action was involved.
Disposition
Because the court could no longer order the relief Korsh requested and no mootness exception applied, it concluded that no case or controversy remained sufficient to support federal jurisdiction.
The court therefore ordered that Korsh’s petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 be DENIED and that the action be DISMISSED. The order did not add a with-prejudice or without-prejudice designation.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.