Watkins v. Colvin

Background

Dennis Watkins filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. A habeas petition is a request for federal court relief from allegedly unlawful custody or detention. The order does not describe the specific claims or facts underlying Watkins’s petition.

Report and Recommendation

On August 30, 2019, Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses issued a Report and Recommendation recommending that the court deny the petition. The parties had 14 days to object, but neither party filed objections.

When no party objects to a magistrate judge’s recommendation, the district court reviews the record for clear error on its face. Judge Preska reviewed the record and the recommendation and found no clear error. She therefore adopted the recommendation in its entirety as the opinion of the court.

Rulings

The court denied Watkins’s habeas petition. It also denied a certificate of appealability after finding that Watkins had not demonstrated a denial of a constitutional right. The clerk was directed to mail Watkins a copy of the order, mark the action closed, and deny all pending motions as moot.

Classification

This is a procedural order under the stated classification rules because the court denied the petition by adopting a recommendation after clear-error review without discussing the underlying merits. The order’s express dispositions were denial of the petition, denial of a certificate of appealability, and denial of all pending motions as moot.