Scales v. Walker
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-06562
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Scales v. Walker, Judge Swain dismissed Shawn Scales’s habeas case without prejudice because he neither paid the $5 fee nor requested a fee waiver.
Shawn Scales, whose habeas action was dismissed without prejudice after he did not pay the filing fee or submit a fee-waiver request.
What happened
In Scales v. Walker, Shawn Scales filed a petition for habeas relief. The court ordered him to either pay the required $5 filing fee or submit a completed request to waive the fee within 30 days.
Scales did neither. The court also stated that the petition did not make a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied, so it would not issue a certificate allowing an appeal of the habeas ruling.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain dismissed the action without prejudice. She denied fee-waiver status for any appeal, certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, and directed the clerk to enter judgment.
The detailed version
- Scales v. Walker · No. 1:22-cv-06562
- Laura Swain
- Oct. 5, 2022
Background
Shawn Scales brought a habeas petition against S. Walker, identified in the caption as the warden at R.N.D.C. C-74. The court had previously ordered Scales to do one of two things within 30 days: pay the $5 filing fee required for a habeas action, or submit a completed request to proceed without paying the fee.
Court’s Ruling
Scales did not submit the fee-waiver request or pay the filing fee. The court therefore dismissed the action without prejudice under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1914 and 1915. The opinion does not address the underlying claims in the habeas petition.
The court also ruled that no certificate of appealability would issue because the petition did not make a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied. It certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-waiver status for purposes of an appeal. The clerk was directed to enter judgment.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.