Phelps v. Superintendent

Background

Darryl Phelps, who was incarcerated at Gouverneur Correctional Facility and proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 seeking release because of the COVID-19 pandemic and his existing health conditions. In later letters, he characterized that request as an Eighth Amendment claim concerning a serious risk to his health. He also raised claims about the denial of parole, the validity of his 1998 guilty plea and conviction, the effectiveness of his trial and appellate lawyers, and conditions of supervised release.

Phelps pleaded guilty in 1998 in New York County Supreme Court to first-degree burglary and attempted first-degree rape. He received concurrent prison terms of 20 years to life. His conviction was affirmed on appeal, and the New York Court of Appeals denied leave to appeal and later denied reconsideration. His conviction became final on February 26, 2002. Phelps continued filing state-court challenges, but the opinion states that those efforts were rejected.

The New York State Board of Parole denied Phelps parole on May 13, 2019, and imposed a 24-month reconsideration hold. The Board’s Appeals Unit rejected his administrative appeal. Phelps then filed a state-court challenge under Article 78. His first petition was dismissed without prejudice for improper service, and his second petition, filed in August 2020, remained pending when the federal court ruled.

Claims and analysis

Respondent moved to dismiss the petition, arguing that Phelps had not exhausted available state remedies, that his COVID-19 conditions-of-confinement claim was not a proper claim under § 2254, and that his challenge to the conviction was untimely. Phelps asked the court to stay the case so he could pursue state remedies.

The court held that Phelps’s COVID-19 claim was unexhausted because he had not shown that he presented it to a state court. The court found that New York procedures were available, including proceedings under Articles 70 and 78, and that Phelps had not shown a reason to excuse exhaustion. The court therefore dismissed that claim without prejudice, allowing a new petition after proper exhaustion. Because dismissal rested on exhaustion, the court did not decide whether the claim was otherwise outside the scope of § 2254 or should instead have been brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

The court also held that the parole-denial claim was unexhausted. Although Phelps had completed an administrative appeal and filed an Article 78 petition, that state petition had not yet been decided. The court stated that further state review would be required if the trial court ruled against him. It dismissed the parole claim without prejudice.

Phelps’s claims concerning his guilty plea and conviction appeared in later letters, without a request for permission to amend the petition. The court nevertheless considered whether amendment should be allowed and concluded that it would be futile. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d), a state prisoner generally has one year to file a federal collateral challenge, subject to specified rules and tolling for certain properly filed state proceedings. The court determined that Phelps’s deadline was February 26, 2003, that he had not filed a federal petition by then, and that the facts supporting his ineffective-assistance and guilty-plea claims were known no later than the date his conviction became final. The court therefore denied leave to amend those claims as untimely.

Disposition

The court held that a stay was unavailable because the petition was completely unexhausted, rather than partly exhausted and partly unexhausted. Judge Katherine Polk Failla granted in full Respondent’s motion to dismiss and denied Phelps’s request to stay the petition. The court dismissed the Eighth Amendment and parole-denial claims without prejudice, denied leave to amend to add claims concerning the 1998 conviction, denied permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal, declined to issue a certificate of appealability, and directed the Clerk to close the case.