Sun v. New York City Police Department
- Laura Swain
- 1:18-cv-11002
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Sun v. New York City Police Department, Judge Swain denied Yi Sun’s request to pause the case and denied fee-free appeal status.
Yi Sun, whose request to pause the case was denied and whose permission to appeal without paying fees was denied.
What happened
In Sun v. New York City Police Department, Yi Sun asked the court to pause her case while other government entities investigated her allegations of court misconduct and bias.
The court said requests directed to the Department of Justice, the Senate Judiciary Committee, or the federal courts’ administrative office were improperly directed to this court and could not be granted by it. The court denied Sun’s request to pause the case because she identified no proper basis for accusing the court of bias.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also certified that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Sun permission to appeal without paying filing fees. The order resolved docket entry 122.
The detailed version
- Sun v. New York City Police Department · No. 1:18-cv-11002
- Laura Swain
- Sept. 24, 2020
Background
The court considered Yi Sun’s “Emergency Motion for Stay Cases . . . and Request for an Emergency Special Investigation,” dated September 18, 2020. Sun sought review by the Department of Justice, the Senate Judiciary Committee, or the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts of facts underlying her allegations of misconduct by the court. She also asked the court to pause her case while an investigation into the court’s alleged bias was completed.
Rulings
The court stated that the requests for review were improperly directed to it and that it could not grant them. The court noted that Sun could direct applications or communications to the other government entities. It also stated that the Chief Judge had forwarded a similar request directed to her to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The court denied Sun’s request for a stay. It explained that Sun had not identified a proper basis for accusing the court of bias and that any investigation of that accusation would occur separately from the case. The court stated that disagreement with a litigant’s legal position does not show improper judicial bias and cited decisions explaining that judicial rulings or earlier adverse rulings, without more, generally do not establish judicial partiality.
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied Sun permission to appeal without paying the required fees. The order resolved docket entry number 122.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.