Wells v. Keyser
- Nelson Roman
- 7:20-cv-03666
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Wells v. Keyser, Judge Roman denied Wells’s federal habeas petition without prejudice and denied an appeal certificate and fee-free appeal status.
Nolan Wells’s federal habeas petition was denied without prejudice, while the judgment preserved his stated right to pursue the claims in state court. William F. Keyser was the respondent.
What happened
Wells v. Keyser concerned Nolan Wells’s federal petition for habeas relief. The judgment does not describe the claims or explain the underlying dispute; it says the court adopted MJ Smith’s report and recommendation from an earlier order.
The court denied the petition without prejudice to Wells’s right to pursue the claims in state court. It also ruled that no certificate of appealability would issue, denied fee-free status for an appeal, and closed the case.
Judge Nelson Roman’s judgment was entered on March 17, 2021. Because the judgment does not analyze the petition’s underlying claims, this summary treats the ruling as a procedural disposition rather than a decision on the merits.
The detailed version
- Wells v. Keyser · No. 7:20-cv-03666
- Nelson Roman
- Mar. 17, 2021
Background
Nolan Wells filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus against William F. Keyser. The judgment states that the court’s March 15, 2021 order adopted MJ Smith’s report and recommendation in its entirety. The text provided here does not describe Wells’s specific claims, the state-court proceedings, or the reasoning in the adopted report and recommendation.
Rulings
The court denied Wells’s habeas petition without prejudice to his right to pursue the claims in state court. “Without prejudice” means the judgment did not bar the stated pursuit of those claims in state court.
The court also ruled that a certificate of appealability would not issue because Wells had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied. In addition, the court certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for purposes of an appeal. The case was closed.
Classification
This is a procedural order. The judgment adopts a report and recommendation but, in the text provided, does not reach or analyze the merits of Wells’s underlying habeas claims.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.