Gannaway v. People of New York
- Laura Swain
- 1:21-cv-07674
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Gannaway v. People of New York, Judge Swain denied Gannaway’s unnecessary request to extend his appeal deadline and processed his notice of appeal.
The order affected Shakur D. Gannaway’s request for additional time to appeal and his ability to proceed without prepaying fees for an appeal from this order.
What happened
In Gannaway v. People of New York, Shakur D. Gannaway, who was incarcerated and representing himself, challenged a 1991 robbery conviction through a petition for a writ of error coram nobis. The court had previously allowed him to proceed without prepaying fees but denied that petition for lack of jurisdiction.
Gannaway later asked for more time to appeal that denial, even though his deadline had not expired. The court denied the extension request as unnecessary and directed the Clerk of Court to process his notice of appeal.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also ruled that any appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for an appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Gannaway v. People of New York · No. 1:21-cv-07674
- Laura Swain
- June 14, 2022
Background
Shakur D. Gannaway, who was incarcerated and proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition for a writ of error coram nobis challenging his conviction for a robbery crime. The court had granted his request to proceed without prepaying filing fees, then denied the petition for lack of jurisdiction in an April 18, 2022 order.
The opinion explains that the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s three-strikes rule did not apply to this petition because it was not a civil action for purposes of that rule. The court therefore allowed Gannaway to proceed without prepaying fees in this case, even though a prior related proceeding had barred him from filing future actions without prepaying fees while incarcerated unless he faced an imminent threat of serious physical injury.
Motion and ruling
Gannaway filed a notice of appeal from the April 18 order and also moved for an extension of time to file that notice. The court explained that the deadline for a civil appeal is generally 30 days after judgment, and that Gannaway’s deadline had not yet expired. The court therefore denied his request for an extension of time to appeal as unnecessary.
The court directed the Clerk of Court to process Gannaway’s notice of appeal. It also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from this June 14 order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for an appeal from this order.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.