McReynolds v. Witt

Background

Hajji Y. McReynolds filed a federal petition challenging his 2005 Wisconsin state-court convictions for solicitation of prostitution and bail jumping. He was convicted in November 2005 and received six years of imprisonment followed by six years of supervised release. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions in 2008, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court denied further review that year. McReynolds did not ask the United States Supreme Court to review the case.

McReynolds raised three claims: that he was unlawfully arrested and trafficked; that he was denied constitutional rights and due process; and that the state introduced improper witness testimony at trial. He asked the court to vacate his convictions. Although he was in Minnesota custody when he filed the petition, public records showed that he completed the 12-year Wisconsin sentence in November 2017.

Report and Recommendation and objections

The matter was referred for an initial review under Rule 4 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases. The magistrate judge recommended dismissal on procedural grounds without deciding the merits of McReynolds’s claims. McReynolds objected, but he did not identify any specific portion of the recommendation that he challenged. Instead, he repeated arguments he had already presented to the magistrate judge. The court therefore reviewed the recommendation for clear error and interpreted McReynolds’s filings liberally because he represented himself.

Court’s analysis

The court concluded that McReynolds’s petition was moot. Federal habeas relief generally requires the petitioner to be in custody under the conviction being challenged. Because McReynolds had completed the sentence, the court concluded that he was no longer in custody under that conviction and that no active case or controversy remained.

The court further stated that, even if the petition were not moot, it was untimely under the one-year limitations period for federal habeas claims. The court determined that the period expired in 2010, more than a decade before McReynolds filed the petition, and found that he had not shown grounds for extending the deadline on equitable grounds. The court also stated that the petition failed to present a cognizable, exhausted federal claim.

Disposition

The court found no clear error in the portions of the recommendation that were not specifically challenged. It overruled McReynolds’s objections, adopted the September 22, 2023 Report and Recommendation, and dismissed McReynolds’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus without prejudice. The court also declined to issue a certificate of appealability.