Phelps v. Superintendent
- Katherine Failla
- 1:20-cv-10352
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Phelps v. Superintendent, Judge Failla granted dismissal, denied a stay, and dismissed claims without prejudice for failure to exhaust state remedies.
Darryl Phelps, whose Eighth Amendment and parole-denial claims were dismissed without prejudice and whose request to stay the petition and request to add claims concerning his 1998 conviction were denied.
What happened
In Phelps v. Superintendent, the judgment addressed Darryl Phelps’s Eighth Amendment and parole-denial claims, as well as his request to stay the petition.
The court granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss in full. It dismissed the Eighth Amendment and parole-denial claims without prejudice, allowing Phelps to bring them in a separate petition after exhausting state-court remedies. The court also denied his request to stay the petition and denied permission to add claims challenging his 1998 conviction.
Judge Katherine Failla’s ruling also denied fee-free status for an appeal, found that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, and declined to issue a certificate of appealability. The case was closed.
The detailed version
- Phelps v. Superintendent · No. 1:20-cv-10352
- Katherine Failla
- June 7, 2021
Background
The judgment concerns Darryl Phelps’s petition against the Superintendent of Gouverneur Correctional Facility. It refers to Phelps’s Eighth Amendment and parole-denial claims and to his request to stay the petition. Phelps also sought to add claims concerning the validity of his underlying 1998 conviction.
Rulings
The court granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss the petition in full. It dismissed Phelps’s Eighth Amendment and parole-denial claims without prejudice, subject to renewal in a separate petition after he exhausts his state-court remedies. The court denied Phelps’s request to stay the petition.
The court denied Phelps leave to amend his petition to add claims concerning the validity of his 1998 conviction. It also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for an appeal. The court declined to issue a certificate of appealability under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1)(A), stating that Phelps had not made the required substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right. The case was closed.
Classification
This is a procedural order. The court disposed of the petition based on exhaustion and related procedural rulings rather than deciding the underlying claims on their merits.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.