Rowland v. FMHP
- Paul Magnuson
- 0:22-cv-01692
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 3
In Rowland v. FMHP, Judge Magnuson dismissed Jesse Rowland’s habeas petition without prejudice and denied his request to reassign the case.
Jesse Rowland, whose amended federal habeas petition was dismissed without prejudice and whose related motions were denied or denied as moot; FMHP and MSH were the respondents.
What happened
In Rowland v. FMHP, Jesse Rowland challenged a state-court civil commitment order and filed several related motions. A magistrate judge recommended dismissing the petition because most claims were too late and another claim had not gone through the state courts.
The court agreed that the 2011 commitment challenge was more than a decade past the federal one-year deadline. It also said that at least three claims concerned the conditions of confinement rather than the fact or length of confinement, so those claims could not be brought through a federal habeas petition. Any challenge to the latest state-court order was still being appealed in state court and therefore had not been completed through the state process.
Judge Paul A. Magnuson adopted the recommendation and dismissed the amended petition without prejudice. He denied or denied as moot the remaining motions, denied the request to reassign the case, and ruled that no certificate allowing an appeal would issue.
The detailed version
- Rowland v. FMHP · No. 0:22-cv-01692
- Paul Magnuson
- Nov. 7, 2022
Background
Jesse Rowland filed a federal habeas petition challenging his state-court civil commitment order. The opinion states that Rowland was committed in 2011. United States Magistrate Judge Leo I. Brisbois issued a Report and Recommendation recommending that the petition be denied as untimely and for failure to exhaust state remedies, and recommending denial of Rowland’s other motions. Rowland did not file objections to the recommendation, although he filed a motion to reassign the judge.
Reasons for dismissal
The court reviewed the portions of the recommendation to which Rowland had not objected for clear error and found none.
The court concluded that most of Rowland’s claims were barred by the federal habeas statute’s one-year limitations period. Because the challenged commitment occurred in 2011, the court found the challenge more than a decade late. The court also agreed that at least three claims challenged the conditions of Rowland’s confinement, rather than the fact or duration of his confinement. Those claims were therefore not cognizable, meaning they could not be pursued in a federal habeas action.
The court further concluded that any challenge to the most recent state-court order denying Rowland’s request for discharge from civil commitment was unexhausted. Rowland’s appeal of that order remained pending in the Minnesota Court of Appeals, so he had not completed the available state-court process for that challenge.
Rulings
Judge Paul A. Magnuson adopted the Report and Recommendation and ordered that the amended petition be dismissed without prejudice. The court denied as moot the motion for a brief length extension, the motion to send a copy of the petition and related documents to the Court of Appeals, the applications to proceed without paying filing fees, the motion to substitute the petition, the motion for an evidentiary hearing, and the motion for the case to be found favorable.
The court denied the motions for appointment of counsel, the motion for an extension of time, the motion to be moved to a federal prison, hospital, or other facility, and the motion to reassign a judge. The court also ruled that no certificate of appealability would issue. The opinion states that the remaining motions were denied because the substantive claims had been dismissed.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.