Waters v. Lilley
- Freeman
- 1:17-cv-08258
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Waters v. Lilley, Judge Freeman ordered the petitioner to withdraw his habeas petition or file a reply by specified deadlines.
Keith Waters, the pro se habeas petitioner, was required to notify the court by May 15, 2020, or file a reply by June 12, 2020.
What happened
Waters v. Lilley is a habeas case brought by pro se petitioner Keith Waters to challenge his state-court conviction. He had not replied to the opposition, and public information appeared to show that he had been released on parole in October 2019. The court said parole did not make the case moot.
The court gave Waters until May 15, 2020, to tell the court if he no longer wanted to continue. If he wanted to proceed, he had to file a reply to the opposition by June 12, 2020. The court warned that it might decide the claims using only the petition and the respondent’s filings if he did not reply.
Judge Debra Freeman issued an order addressing how the case should proceed; she did not decide the habeas claims. The Clerk was directed to mail the order to Waters at his docketed address.
The detailed version
- Waters v. Lilley · No. 1:17-cv-08258
- Freeman
- May 4, 2020
Background
Keith Waters, proceeding without a lawyer, filed this habeas case to challenge his state-court conviction. The opinion states that he began the case while incarcerated at Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Woodbourne, New York. Waters had not filed a reply to Lynn Lilley’s opposition to the petition. Based on publicly available information, it appeared that Waters had been released on parole in October 2019.
The court explained that release on parole did not make the petition moot because a person released to the custody of a parole board can still satisfy the legal requirement that the person be “in custody” for habeas relief.
Order
The court ordered that, if Waters no longer wished to continue, he should notify the court by May 15, 2020. If he wished to proceed, he was directed to file his reply to the opposition by June 12, 2020.
The court cautioned that if Waters did not file a reply by that date, it might decide his habeas claims based only on the petition and the respondent’s opposition papers. The Clerk of Court was directed to mail a copy of the order to Waters at the address listed on the docket.
Result
Judge Debra Freeman’s order set deadlines and addressed the next steps in the case. It did not grant or deny the habeas petition and did not decide whether Waters’s conviction should be overturned. The opinion does not describe the specific claims in the petition.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.