Perkins v. Raurdin

Background

In November 1992, a federal district court in the Eastern District of North Carolina civilly committed Victor B. Perkins under 18 U.S.C. § 4246. Since 2019, Perkins had been civilly committed at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota. On June 29, 2022, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus seeking release and asserting that he was no longer a danger to society.

A magistrate judge recommended dismissing the petition and denying Perkins’s application to proceed without paying the filing fee as moot. Perkins objected to that recommendation, moved to strike it, and later filed a motion for summary judgment. The court treated the motion to strike as an objection because the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not authorize a motion to strike a report and recommendation. The court also noted that summary-judgment motions are not proper in habeas cases.

Analysis

The court rejected Perkins’s objection that he had not consented to review by a magistrate judge. It explained that district courts may refer matters to magistrate judges for reports and recommendations and that the district judge retains final authority to decide the case.

The court also rejected Perkins’s objection that the magistrate judge had not reached the merits. The court held that the petition was procedurally improper. Habeas relief is generally available only when the petitioner lacks another remedy. Because Perkins was civilly committed under 18 U.S.C. § 4246, the court concluded that 18 U.S.C. § 4247(h) provided another procedure: counsel or the person’s legal guardian may file, at any time during the commitment, a motion in the court that ordered the commitment seeking a hearing on discharge.

The court concluded that any request under Section 4247(h) had to be filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the court that ordered Perkins’s commitment. It further held that Perkins’s pro se filing—that is, a filing made without a lawyer—would be improper because he had appointed counsel in that district and Section 4247(h) requires the motion to be filed by counsel or a legal guardian. The court therefore held that the magistrate judge properly declined to reach whether Perkins should be released.

Disposition

The court overruled Perkins’s objections and adopted the report and recommendation. It denied Perkins’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, denied his application to proceed without paying the filing fee as moot, and denied his motion for summary judgment. The court dismissed the action without prejudice, meaning the dismissal itself did not bar a later filing, but the opinion did not decide the merits of Perkins’s request for release.