Stevens v. United States
- Kimba Wood
- 1:21-cv-06152
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Stevens v. United States, Judge Wood ordered further filings on Stevens’s petition and denied a certificate for appeal and permission to appeal without paying fees.
Terrell Stevens, his appointed counsel, and the United States, which was ordered to address any supplemental filing.
What happened
In Stevens v. United States, the court was handling Terrell Stevens’s petition challenging his federal conviction. The court had previously warned that the petition appeared late and that some arguments might be barred because Stevens had not raised them on direct appeal.
Stevens did not explain why those barriers should not apply. His appointed lawyer also filed nothing by the deadline, while Stevens submitted another document without a lawyer that largely repeated his earlier petition. The court did not decide the petition’s underlying claims in this order.
Judge Kimba Wood ordered Stevens’s lawyer and the government to file any additional papers or confirm that they would rely on earlier filings. Judge Wood also ruled that no certificate allowing an appeal would issue and denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees.
The detailed version
- Stevens v. United States · No. 1:21-cv-06152
- Kimba Wood
- Aug. 30, 2021
Background
The court construed Stevens’s March 19, 2021 submission as a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, a procedure through which a federal prisoner may challenge the legality of a conviction or sentence. In an earlier opinion, the court noted that the petition was filed more than three years after Stevens’s conviction became final and that many of his arguments might be procedurally barred because he had not raised them on direct appeal. The court gave Stevens an opportunity either to withdraw the petition or to explain why those barriers did not apply.
Stevens did not make that showing. He filed three additional submissions without a lawyer, including a request for new counsel. His appointed lawyer, Lance A. Clarke, moved to withdraw because he and Stevens disagreed about whether the petition should be denied as time-barred and because the disagreement prevented effective advice. The court granted Clarke’s withdrawal motion and appointed Benjamin Zeman to advise Stevens.
Stevens again did not make the required showing, and counsel did not file a submission by the August 20 deadline. The court later received Stevens’s document titled “Amended Affidavit of Truth / Due Process Violation / Breach of Plea / Show Cause.” The court stated that this document largely mirrored the original petition in both form and substance.
Order
The court ordered Stevens’s counsel to file any supplemental submission supporting the petition, or to confirm that no such filing would be made, by September 2, 2021. It ordered the government to file any supplemental opposition, or to confirm that it would rely on its March 25, 2021 opposition brief, by September 9, 2021.
The court also stated that Stevens had not at that time made a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied, so it ruled that a certificate of appealability would not issue. A certificate of appealability is court authorization generally required to appeal the denial of a federal post-conviction petition. The court further certified that any appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied Stevens permission to proceed with the appeal without paying filing fees.
What the Order Did Not Decide
This order did not grant or deny the § 2255 petition itself. It set deadlines for further filings and addressed appeal-related matters while the petition remained under consideration. The classification is procedural because the order did not decide whether Stevens’s underlying claims were legally or factually meritorious.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.