Azeez v. John/Jane Doe
- Kenneth Karas
- 7:22-cv-06028
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 20
In Azeez v. John/Jane Doe, Judge Swain ordered Abdool Azeez to file a proper state-conviction challenge within 60 days.
Abdool Azeez, who must provide a properly completed amended state-conviction challenge and information about exhaustion of state remedies; the underlying conviction challenge was not decided.
What happened
Azeez v. John/Jane Doe concerns Abdool Azeez’s filing challenging a New York state conviction. Because his submission was an affidavit rather than the required form, the court gave him a Section 2254 petition form to complete.
The court directed Azeez to identify every ground for relief, provide supporting facts, and describe the appeals and other state-court proceedings used to present those grounds. It also explained that he generally must finish available state remedies before seeking federal review.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered Azeez to file an amended petition within 60 days. The court did not decide whether his conviction or confinement violated federal law; it stated that failure to comply, without good cause, would result in denial of the petition. The court also declined to issue a certificate of appealability and denied permission to appeal without paying the filing fee.
The detailed version
- Azeez v. John/Jane Doe · No. 7:22-cv-06028
- Kenneth Karas
- Sept. 19, 2022
Background
Abdool Azeez, representing himself, filed an affidavit challenging a conviction entered by the New York State Supreme Court, Westchester County. He also asked the court for a blank form for a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, the federal procedure for challenging state-court custody. The Clerk’s Office opened the affidavit as a new civil action, and Azeez paid the $5 filing fee.
Why the Court Required an Amended Petition
The court explained that a § 2254 petition must identify all grounds for relief, state the facts supporting each ground, and specify the requested relief. Azeez’s affidavit did not meet those requirements because he had asked for the form so that he could state his grounds for relief. The court therefore granted him leave to complete the attached § 2254 form and granted him leave to file an amended petition.
The court also explained the exhaustion requirement. Before seeking federal review, Azeez generally had to give the New York courts the first opportunity to consider the constitutional errors connected to his confinement. The court directed him to complete the form’s exhaustion section, including the dates of his appeals and post-conviction motions, and to describe the steps taken to present each ground in the New York courts.
Order
The court directed Azeez to file an amended petition within 60 days of the order, captioned “Amended Petition” and bearing the same docket number. The amended petition would replace the original affidavit, so Azeez would need to repeat any facts from the affidavit that he wanted the court to consider. The court stated that the amended petition would later be reviewed for substantive sufficiency and, if proper, reassigned to a district judge under the Clerk’s Office’s procedures.
The order did not decide the merits of Azeez’s challenge to his conviction. It stated that if he failed to comply within the allowed time and could not show good cause, the petition would be denied. The court also ruled that a certificate of appealability would not issue because Azeez had not then made a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied, and it denied permission to appeal without paying the filing fee.
Read the full 20-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.