Harris v. Walker

Background

The court received a petition prepared by Maurice Mayo, a self-represented pretrial detainee on Rikers Island, on behalf of himself and 11 other detainees, including William Harris. The court separated Harris’s claims from Mayo’s case and opened this action for Harris.

The court initially directed Harris either to pay the $5 filing fee or submit an application to proceed without paying it. After Harris initially did neither, the court denied the petition without prejudice. Harris later submitted the required application, and the court vacated the earlier order, reopened the action, and granted the application.

Harris’s petition alleged that he was being held unlawfully because he had waived indictment by a grand jury and was being held under a Superior Court Information. He referred to New York Criminal Procedure Law § 195.20(d) and alleged violations of constitutional rights. He also alleged that his lawyer was conspiring with the District Attorney’s Office to deny him those rights. The attached state-court docket showed that his criminal case was pending in New York Supreme Court, Kings County.

Legal framework and analysis

The court explained that Section 2254 is generally used to challenge custody after a person has been convicted and sentenced in state court. Because Harris was awaiting the resolution of his criminal case, the court concluded that his application should instead be treated as a petition under Section 2241, the federal statute used to challenge certain pretrial detention.

The court gave Harris 30 days to notify it in writing if he wanted to withdraw the application rather than proceed under Section 2241. If he did not do so, the application would be designated as a Section 2241 petition.

The court also explained that a person generally must first use available state-court remedies before seeking federal relief under Section 2241. Harris challenged his indictment waiver in an ongoing state criminal proceeding, but the petition did not allege that Harris or his lawyer had filed a motion challenging the waiver. The court stated that Harris first had to raise that issue in the state proceedings before the federal court could consider whether federal intervention was appropriate.

Opportunity to amend

Because Harris was proceeding without a lawyer and the original petition had been prepared by Mayo rather than drafted specifically for Harris, the court found that amendment would not necessarily be futile. It granted Harris 60 days to file an amended petition. The amended petition must identify his grounds for relief, describe the steps taken to pursue those grounds in the ongoing state proceedings and, where necessary, in the state appellate courts, and explain why he could not exhaust those remedies if he was unable to do so. The court stated that an amended petition would completely replace the original petition.

Disposition

Judge Laura Taylor Swain recharacterized the petition as arising under Section 2241, gave Harris 30 days to state whether he wished to withdraw it, and granted him 60 days to file an amended petition. The court did not issue an order requiring the respondent to answer at that time. It stated that the petition would be denied if Harris failed to comply within the allowed time and could not show good cause for the failure. The court also stated that no certificate allowing an appeal would issue and denied permission to proceed without paying appeal-related fees, certifying that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.