Rodriguez v. LaManna
- George Daniels
- 1:20-cv-07547
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Rodriguez v. LaManna, Judge Daniels denied Rodriguez’s federal petition as untimely and granted LaManna’s motion to dismiss.
Johnny Rodriguez’s federal challenge to his New York conviction and sentence was denied, and the case was closed; Jamie LaManna’s motion to dismiss was granted.
What happened
In Rodriguez v. LaManna, Johnny Rodriguez challenged his 2013 New York conviction and sentence, alleging constitutional violations involving trial-court rulings and evidence.
Rodriguez filed his federal petition on September 6, 2020. The court found that his conviction became final on January 17, 2019, so the one-year filing deadline expired on January 17, 2020. His later state-court sentence challenge could not pause a deadline that had already expired.
Judge George B. Daniels adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendation after finding no clear error. The court granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss, denied Rodriguez’s petition, and directed the clerk to close the case.
The detailed version
- Rodriguez v. LaManna · No. 1:20-cv-07547
- George Daniels
- June 29, 2022
Background
Johnny Rodriguez, appearing without a lawyer, filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus—a request to challenge his custody—based on his 2013 conviction and sentence in New York State Supreme Court, New York County. He alleged that trial-court rulings and evidentiary problems violated his constitutional rights.
After a jury trial, Rodriguez was convicted on thirty-one drug- and firearm-related charges. The trial court sentenced him, as a mandatory persistent felony offender, to an aggregate prison term of thirty years to life. Rodriguez later filed a state post-conviction motion alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and separately appealed his conviction. The New York appellate court affirmed both the conviction and denial of the post-conviction motion, and the New York Court of Appeals denied leave to appeal on October 18, 2018.
Timeliness of the Petition
The federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, or AEDPA, generally gives a person one year to file a federal petition challenging a state conviction. Because Rodriguez did not ask the United States Supreme Court to review his case, the district court determined that his conviction became final on January 17, 2019, ninety days after the New York Court of Appeals denied leave to appeal. The one-year deadline therefore expired on January 17, 2020.
Rodriguez filed his federal petition on September 6, 2020, after the deadline. The court also held that his January 23, 2020 state-court motion seeking to vacate his sentence did not pause the federal deadline because the deadline had already expired before he filed that motion. The court further agreed that the record did not support extending the deadline for extraordinary circumstances or because of newly presented evidence of innocence.
Ruling
Magistrate Judge Lehrburger recommended dismissal of the petition as time-barred. No party filed objections. Judge George B. Daniels reviewed the recommendation for clear error, found none, and adopted it in full.
The court granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss. It denied Rodriguez’s petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and directed the clerk to close the case.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.