Moise v. Fields
- Vernon Broderick
- 1:19-cv-11964
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 21
In Moise v. Fields, Judge Stanton found Eddie Moise’s petition untimely and unexhausted but granted him 60 days to amend.
Eddie Moise, the incarcerated petitioner seeking federal review of his New York conviction; the order also directs the Clerk of Court to serve him and requires further action before the petition can proceed.
What happened
Moise v. Fields concerns Eddie Moise’s federal challenge to his New York conviction for weapon, firearm-sale, and ammunition offenses. He filed the petition without a lawyer and after the federal one-year filing deadline had expired.
The court also found that Moise had not shown that he had completed state-court review for all his claims. The court said the dates and status of one state motion were unclear, and that his claim of actual innocence did not appear to have been raised in state court.
Judge Louis L. Stanton granted Moise permission to file an amended petition within 60 days, requiring him to provide information about his claims and state-court proceedings. The order did not decide whether Moise was entitled to relief on the conviction.
The detailed version
- Moise v. Fields · No. 1:19-cv-11964
- Vernon Broderick
- Oct. 22, 2020
Background
Eddie Moise, who was incarcerated at Fishkill Correctional Facility, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his May 28, 2014 New York County judgment of conviction. A jury had found him guilty of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, third-degree criminal sale of a firearm, and unlawful possession of ammunition. Moise filed the original submission on December 10, 2019, without a lawyer.
The court determined that the conviction became final on April 28, 2017. Under the one-year federal statute of limitations for this type of petition, Moise had until April 28, 2018, to file. The court therefore ordered him to explain why the petition should not be dismissed as untimely.
Statute of limitations
The court found that the petition was untimely because Moise filed it after April 28, 2018. Moise said he had filed a state motion to vacate the judgment under New York Criminal Procedure Law § 440.10, but he did not state when he filed it or whether it was still pending. He also said he had filed a state petition challenging his custody, but did not provide its filing date.
The court explained that a properly filed state post-conviction motion can pause the federal limitations period only if it was filed before that period expired. A motion filed after the deadline does not restart the one-year period. Because Moise did not allege that either state proceeding was filed before April 28, 2018, the court found that he had not shown that the federal filing deadline was extended.
Exhaustion of state remedies
The court also found that Moise had not exhausted all available state remedies. Exhaustion requires a state prisoner to present each federal claim through the available state-court process before seeking federal relief. The court concluded that Moise’s submissions showed exhaustion of the grounds raised on direct appeal and in his state custody challenge, but did not show exhaustion of the grounds raised in his § 440.10 motion. The court also stated that Moise appeared to raise actual innocence as a new ground that had not been presented in any prior proceeding.
Order
The court granted Moise leave to file an amended petition within 60 days of the order. The amended petition had to identify each ground for relief, describe the steps taken to exhaust each ground in state court, provide the filing dates for the § 440.10 motion and state petition, identify any appeals, state whether the § 440.10 motion remained pending and where, and list the grounds raised in each proceeding. The court explained that the amended petition would completely replace the original petition and would be reviewed for substantive sufficiency.
The court did not decide the merits of Moise’s challenges to his conviction. It directed the Clerk of Court to mail the order and an amended-petition form to Moise. The order stated that if Moise failed to comply within the allowed time and could not show good cause, the petition would be denied.
Read the full 21-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.