Garland v. Clinton Correctional Facility
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-10947
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Garland v. Clinton Correctional Facility, Judge Swain separated conviction and civil-rights claims into two cases and denied appeal fee relief.
Tamarkqua Garland; Correction Officers Covington and Perrone; Captain Pines; the City of New York; and Clinton Correctional Facility. The civil-rights claims were separated into a new action, while the conviction challenge remained in the original case.
What happened
Tamarkqua Garland, who is incarcerated at Clinton Correctional Facility, challenged his 2015 conviction and described several civil-rights claims. He alleged that correctional officers used excessive force against him in 2015, and also described injuries from a greasy kitchen floor and hot shower water.
Garland filed materials seeking review of his conviction and adding facts about the civil-rights claims. The court kept the conviction challenge in this case and ordered the civil-rights claims opened as a separate case against Correction Officers Covington and Perrone, Captain Pines, and the City of New York.
The court severed the civil-rights claims, meaning it separated them from the conviction challenge, and directed the Clerk of Court to create the new case and transfer specified filings, Judge Swain ruled. The court also denied fee-free status for any appeal from this order because it certified that such an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Garland v. Clinton Correctional Facility · No. 1:22-cv-10947
- Laura Swain
- Dec. 27, 2022
Background
Tamarkqua Garland, who the opinion says is currently incarcerated in Clinton Correctional Facility, filed a complaint that both challenged his 2015 conviction and asserted civil-rights claims. The court had previously directed Garland to file a separate amended petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 if he wanted to challenge the conviction, or an amended civil-rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 if he wanted to pursue claims concerning a use-of-force incident.
In a December 6, 2022 application, Garland alleged that on September 14, 2015, correctional officers at the George Motchan Detention Center attacked him. He alleged that several officers kicked and stomped him, placed a knee on his neck, threw him into a barred window, slammed him into a concrete floor, and held him upside down. He also alleged that Captain Pines did not intervene and that he continues to suffer debilitating pain. The opinion says it is unclear whether the reported time was morning or evening.
Garland additionally alleged that he injured his back after slipping on a greasy kitchen floor while working in the kitchen on October 3, 2014. He alleged that, on an unspecified date, hot shower water scalded his back.
Court’s Action
Garland later filed two amended petitions under § 2254. To address the conviction challenge separately from the civil-rights claims, the court severed the civil-rights claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 21. The court ordered the Clerk of Court to treat pages 5 and 6 of Garland’s December 6 letter as a civil-rights complaint under § 1983 and open a new civil action naming Correction Officer Covington (Shield #17730), Correction Officer Perrone (Shield #17433), Captain Pines, and the City of New York as defendants. The Clerk was also directed to refile the prisoner authorization and docket a copy of the order in the new action.
The court stated that the petition challenging Garland’s 2015 conviction would continue under the existing docket number, 22-CV-8712 (LTS). The order did not decide the merits of either the conviction challenge or the civil-rights claims. Judge Laura Taylor Swain also certified that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for purposes of an appeal.
Effect of the Order
The conviction challenge remained in the original case, while the civil-rights claims were directed to proceed in a newly opened action. This order organized the claims and transferred specified filings; it did not determine whether Garland’s allegations were legally or factually valid.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.