Scales v. State of Minnesota

Background

Maurice James Scales filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, the federal statute allowing a person in state custody to seek federal review of that custody. He also filed two applications to proceed without prepaying filing fees and several motions concerning his state-court conviction.

Minnesota authorities charged Scales in October 2020 with fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct. The state court treated the offense as a felony based on an earlier Illinois conviction described in the opinion. Scales pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 48 months’ imprisonment followed by 24 months of supervised release. His counsel filed a state-court appeal, but Scales later filed a notice dismissing that appeal, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals dismissed it.

Claims and exhaustion

Scales’s federal petition was not entirely clear, but the court understood it to raise two claims: that authorities violated his right to a speedy trial and that the presence of COVID-19 during the state-court proceedings made it difficult for the parties to make sound judgments.

The court concluded that Scales had not presented either claim to the Minnesota courts. Federal law generally requires a person challenging state custody to first give the state courts an opportunity to consider the federal claims. The court found that Scales appeared to have an available state-court remedy, including a possible petition for postconviction review. It therefore concluded that the claims were unexhausted.

The court considered whether to pause the federal case while Scales pursued state remedies, a procedure known as a stay and abeyance. It assumed, without deciding, that this procedure could apply even though all of Scales’s claims were unexhausted. The court nevertheless found no suggestion of a good-faith basis for Scales’s failure to exhaust his claims and recommended against a stay.

Rulings and recommendations

The court ordered Scales’s second application to proceed without prepaying fees or costs granted. It denied his first fee application as moot because the second application resolved the issue.

The court recommended that Scales’s § 2254 petition be dismissed without prejudice, meaning the recommendation did not bar refiling after the state-court exhaustion issue was addressed. It also recommended that his pending motions seeking relief related to his conviction be denied as moot and that no certificate of appealability issue.

The document was an Order and Report and Recommendation signed by United States Magistrate Judge John F. Docherty. The notice states that the recommendations were not directly appealable and that a party could file written objections within the period specified by the court’s local rule.