Charles v. Capra
- Vincent Briccetti
- 7:21-cv-01669
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Charles v. Capra, Judge Davison denied a stay of Charles’s habeas case because he did not show good cause for delayed exhaustion.
Alan Charles’s request to pause his federal habeas case was denied; the order also concerned Michael Capra’s opposition to that request.
What happened
In Charles v. Capra, Alan Charles asked the court to pause his federal case so he could pursue and complete a state-court coram nobis proceeding, a state procedure for challenging a conviction. Michael Capra opposed the request.
The court treated Charles’s request as an application to pause the federal habeas case while state remedies were pursued. Charles did not explain why he had left the claims out of his 2015 state petition or why he waited after his state post-conviction proceedings ended in 2017.
Judge Davison denied the motion because Charles did not show a sufficient reason for failing to pursue the additional state claims earlier. The order also noted that a separate report recommended dismissing the federal case as filed too late, which would make the stay request moot if Judge Briccetti adopted that recommendation.
The detailed version
- Charles v. Capra · No. 7:21-cv-01669
- Vincent Briccetti
- Feb. 7, 2022
Background
Alan Charles filed a motion dated December 10, 2021, asking the court to stay, or pause, this federal habeas action so he could pursue and exhaust coram nobis remedies in state court. A federal habeas action is a proceeding asking a federal court to review the legality of a person’s custody. Michael Capra opposed the motion.
The order states that the court issued a separate Report and Recommendation to Judge Vincent Briccetti recommending that the action be dismissed as time-barred. The order further states that, if Judge Briccetti adopted that recommendation, Charles’s motion for a stay would be moot. This order did not decide whether the recommended dismissal should be adopted.
Court’s Analysis
Although Charles cited Rule 15(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the court construed the motion as a request for stay-and-abeyance under Rhines v. Weber. Stay-and-abeyance can allow a federal habeas case to pause while the petitioner pursues state remedies, but only when the required circumstances are shown.
The court concluded that Charles had not shown those circumstances. In particular, he did not explain why he failed to include the claims he now wanted to exhaust in his 2015 coram nobis petition. He also did not account for his delay in pursuing additional state remedies after his last state post-conviction litigation ended in 2017. The court described the passage of time as extraordinary and found that Charles had not shown good cause for failing to exhaust the additional claims earlier.
Disposition
Judge Paul E. Davison denied Charles’s motion for a stay and directed the Clerk to close Docket 18. The order did not state that the habeas action itself was dismissed; it addressed only the motion for a stay. The order also did not reach the merits of Charles’s underlying habeas claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.