Russell v. Segal
- Jerry Blackwell
- 0:23-cv-01075
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 2
In Russell v. Segal, Judge Blackwell overruled Russell’s objections, denied her custody petition, and dismissed the case after accepting the magistrate judge’s recommendation.
Georgie Elaine Russell’s petition was denied and her action was dismissed; the order also overruled her objections to the magistrate judge’s recommendation.
What happened
In Russell v. Segal, Georgie Elaine Russell objected to a magistrate judge’s recommendation that her petition challenging custody be denied and dismissed. Russell represented herself in the case.
The court reviewed the issues Russell raised and found no clear error in the recommendation’s conclusion that the statute at issue unambiguously rejected her arguments. The court also said that Russell’s newly raised claims about her conditions of confinement could not be brought through this type of custody petition and had not been raised earlier.
Judge Jerry W. Blackwell overruled Russell’s objections, accepted the recommendation in full, denied her petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, and dismissed the action.
The detailed version
- Russell v. Segal · No. 0:23-cv-01075
- Jerry W. Blackwell
- June 14, 2023
Background
Georgie Elaine Russell filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, a procedure used to challenge certain custody or detention issues. United States Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright recommended that the petition be denied and the case dismissed in a May 9, 2023 Report and Recommendation. Russell, who was representing herself, objected to that recommendation.
Court’s analysis
The district court reviewed the portions of the recommendation Russell specifically challenged independently, as required by 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1). It reviewed the unchallenged portions only for clear error, meaning an obvious mistake in the record. The court also applied a liberal reading to Russell’s filings because she was representing herself.
Russell challenged the recommendation’s alternative analysis, but the court found that the recommendation had not clearly erred in concluding that the relevant statute unambiguously rejected her arguments. The court therefore gave no weight to that objection. The court also determined that Russell’s remaining objections raised conditions-of-confinement claims that could not be pursued through a custody petition and had been waived because she had not raised them in the original petition.
Ruling
Judge Jerry W. Blackwell accepted the Report and Recommendation in its entirety. The court ordered that Russell’s objections be overruled, the recommendation be accepted, her petition under § 2241 be denied, and the action be dismissed. The order did not state whether the dismissal was with or without prejudice.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.