Ferguson v. Bolin
- Patrick Schiltz
- 0:23-cv-02489
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 5
In Ferguson v. Bolin, Judge Foster denied Ferguson’s stay request, ordered an answer to his habeas petition, and left the petition pending.
Michael Lashone Ferguson’s federal habeas case remains pending. William Bolin must file an answer within 28 days, and Ferguson may reply within 21 days after the answer is filed.
What happened
In Ferguson v. Bolin, Michael Lashone Ferguson asked the federal court to pause his habeas case so he could return to state court and raise additional claims. The court ordered William Bolin to answer the existing petition but did not decide the petition’s merits.
Ferguson sought to add claims about trial counsel’s investigation and objections, and alleged prosecutorial misconduct involving witnesses’ testimony. The court said the petition appeared to contain exhausted claims for preliminary-screening purposes, while the additional claims likely would be barred under Minnesota’s rule requiring known claims to be raised on direct appeal.
Judge Dulce J. Foster denied the motion to stay. The court ordered Bolin to file an answer within 28 days, and allowed Ferguson 21 days after that answer to file a reply.
The detailed version
- Ferguson v. Bolin · No. 0:23-cv-02489
- Patrick Schiltz
- Sept. 15, 2023
Background
Michael Lashone Ferguson filed a petition seeking federal habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and moved to stay the proceedings. He asked for a stay so he could return to Minnesota state court to exhaust two additional groups of claims: ineffective assistance of trial counsel for failing to investigate and failing to object to alleged prosecutorial misconduct and grand-jury issues; and prosecutorial misconduct based on the alleged use of perjured testimony before the grand jury and at trial.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that a federal habeas petition containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims may sometimes be stayed while the petitioner returns to state court. That procedure is limited and generally requires good cause for failing to exhaust the claims earlier. A stay is also improper when the unexhausted claims are plainly meritless.
The court concluded that Ferguson’s petition was not a mixed petition. For purposes of preliminary screening under Rule 4, the court found that Ferguson had sufficiently shown that the claims in his petition were exhausted, while emphasizing that it was making no final exhaustion determination. The court understood Ferguson to be seeking permission to stay the case, return to state court to raise additional claims, and later amend his federal petition.
The court found that Ferguson had not shown good cause for failing to exhaust the additional claims before filing his federal petition. It also said those claims were likely barred under Minnesota’s Knaffla rule, which generally prevents a state post-conviction court from considering claims that were known but not raised on direct appeal. Because the claims were likely to be barred in state court, the court said they were likely procedurally defaulted and therefore not available for federal habeas review.
Ruling and case status
Judge Dulce J. Foster denied Ferguson’s Motion to Stay the Proceedings. The court did not decide the merits of Ferguson’s habeas petition. Instead, it directed Bolin to file an answer explaining why the writ should not be granted within 28 days of the order and to serve Ferguson at the same time. Ferguson may file a reply within 21 days after the answer is filed. The order also states that Ferguson may return to state court to try to exhaust claims before this court adjudicates the habeas petition on its merits.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.