Alcantara v. Keyser
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:20-cv-03099
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Alcantara v. Keyser, Judge McMahon dismissed the duplicate release petition without prejudice and denied appeal-related requests.
Quiry Alcantara's duplicate petition was dismissed without prejudice; his substantially similar petition in No. 20-CV-3079 (ER) was not dismissed by this order.
What happened
In Alcantara v. Keyser, Quiry Alcantara, who was incarcerated at Sullivan Correctional Facility and represented himself, sought immediate release because he said he faced a high risk from COVID-19.
The case had been transferred through several federal districts to the Southern District of New York. The court found that Alcantara had already filed a substantially similar petition that was pending before Judge Edgardo Ramos in another case, No. 20-CV-3079 (ER), so it dismissed this duplicate filing without prejudice to that pending case.
Judge Colleen McMahon dismissed the petition without prejudice as duplicative. She also ruled that no certificate of appealability would issue and denied permission to proceed without paying filing fees for an appeal.
The detailed version
- Alcantara v. Keyser · No. 1:20-cv-03099
- Colleen McMahon
- Apr. 22, 2020
Background
Quiry Alcantara, who was incarcerated at Sullivan Correctional Facility and proceeding without a lawyer, filed an emergency petition seeking immediate release from custody because he was at high risk for COVID-19. The petition was first filed in the Eastern District of New York, transferred to the Northern District of New York, and then transferred to the Southern District of New York.
Reason for dismissal
The court stated that Alcantara had previously submitted a substantially similar petition in the Southern District of New York. That earlier case was pending before Judge Edgardo Ramos under docket number 20-CV-3079 (ER). Because this petition raised the same claims, the court concluded that filing and litigating a duplicate lawsuit would serve no useful purpose.
Ruling
Judge Colleen McMahon dismissed the petition without prejudice as duplicative. This means the dismissal did not bar the related pending case. The court also ruled that a certificate of appealability would not issue because the petition did not make a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied. In addition, the court certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying filing fees for purposes of an appeal.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.