Horswell v. State of Minnesota

Background

Phillip Harold Horswell is civilly committed in Minnesota for an indefinite term after a Minnesota state district court found him mentally ill and dangerous. On January 8, 2018, he filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, a federal procedure for challenging state custody, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. That court transferred the case to the District of Minnesota because Texas had no connection to Horswell’s confinement.

The District of Minnesota denied Horswell’s petition without prejudice for failure to exhaust state remedies, meaning he had not first used the available procedures in Minnesota courts. The clerk entered the judgment of dismissal on August 2, 2018.

Motion to Reopen

On August 2, 2019, Horswell filed a pro se motion to reopen the court file. The court treated the motion as a request for relief from the 2018 judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). That rule allows relief from a final judgment for specified reasons, including qualifying newly discovered evidence, or for another reason that justifies relief. The rule also requires such a motion to be filed within a reasonable time after the basis for relief arises.

Horswell claimed that newly discovered evidence showed the state judge who ordered his civil commitment had not been duly reelected for the term in which the commitment order was entered. The opinion identifies the supporting material as a list of Minnesota judicial election results from 2006 that did not include Judge Robert D. Walker’s name. The court noted that Minnesota district court judges serve six-year terms and that the record did not show Judge Walker was a candidate for reelection in 2006.

Court’s Analysis and Ruling

The court held that, even assuming Horswell’s evidence was true, it did not change the legal basis for the earlier judgment. Horswell had still failed to invoke the judicial procedures available in Minnesota state courts, so he was not entitled to federal habeas relief.

The court therefore DENIED Horswell’s Motion to Reopen Court File. The order addressed relief from the prior judgment rather than deciding the validity of the state judge’s election or the underlying civil commitment. The opinion also explains that, because the original petition had been denied without prejudice for failure to exhaust state remedies, the motion was not barred as a successive habeas petition.