Williams v. Walker

Background

Maurice Mayo, William Harris, Randolph Maxwell, Jeffrey McVay, Cameron Walters, Clyde Reid, Jahsaun Washington, Rondell Halley, Mark Stevens, Shawn Scales, and Andrew Williams filed a joint petition for a writ of habeas corpus. A habeas petition asks a federal court to address the legality of a person’s custody. The petitioners were proceeding without lawyers and also purported to act for other prisoners on Rikers Island.

The petition alleged that New York City courts were illegally waiving the petitioners’ constitutional right to a grand jury and holding them on superior court informations. It also alleged a conspiracy with district attorneys to violate their constitutional rights. The opinion did not decide whether those allegations were legally or factually correct.

Severance of the Petition

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20 generally permits multiple plaintiffs to join one action when their claims arise from the same event or series of events and share a legal or factual question. Rule 21 permits a court to separate claims when proceeding together would cause unfairness, expense, delay, or inefficiency.

The court concluded that the 11 petitioners’ claims were not identical and were complicated by separate criminal charges, facts, procedural histories, and alleged constitutional violations. The court also explained that a person representing himself or herself without a lawyer may not act as another person’s attorney. In addition, each unrepresented petitioner would have to personally sign court filings. The court found that incarceration-related transfers, release, security restrictions, limited communication, piecemeal filings, delays, and missed deadlines made joint litigation unfair and inefficient.

The court therefore severed the action into 11 separate habeas corpus actions. Mayo remained the sole petitioner in this docket. The court directed the Clerk of Court to open separate actions for Harris, Maxwell, McVay, Walters, Reid, Washington, Halley, Stevens, Scales, and Williams, assigning each a new civil docket number and docketing a copy of the petition and order in each case. The court stated that the cases could later be treated as related or consolidated if appropriate, but the petitioners would not be considered co-petitioners unless the court later ordered otherwise.

Filing Fee Requirement for Mayo

The petition requested permission for the petitioners to proceed without paying filing fees upfront, but it did not show that they were unable to pay the $5 filing fee. The court directed Mayo, within 30 days, either to pay the fee or to complete, sign, and submit an application to proceed without prepaying fees. No response from the respondent was required at that time. The court stated that if Mayo complied, the action would be processed through the Clerk’s Office, and if he failed to comply within the permitted time, the court would dismiss the action.

The court directed that the newly opened cases would receive similar orders requiring each petitioner to pay the $5 fee or submit an application to proceed without prepaying fees. It also ruled that no certificate allowing an appeal would issue because the petition did not make a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied.

Disposition

The court severed the claims of the 10 named petitioners other than Mayo, kept Mayo as the sole petitioner in this action, and directed Mayo to address the filing fee within 30 days. The court did not reach the merits of the petitioners’ habeas claims. Chief United States District Judge Laura Taylor Swain signed the order on July 29, 2022.