Wells v. Miller
- Lewis Liman
- 1:21-cv-11231
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Wells v. Miller, Judge Liman ordered supplemental briefing on whether exhaustion should be excused; he did not decide the motion to dismiss.
Carl D. Wells and Supt. Mark Miller, the parties required to submit supplemental briefing; the motion to dismiss remained unresolved.
What happened
In Wells v. Miller, Supt. Mark Miller asked the court to dismiss Carl D. Wells’s petition challenging his custody through a habeas proceeding. The opinion does not describe the underlying claims.
Wells argued that the delay in his direct appeal should excuse his failure to first present his claims through the required state process. The court said the parties had not adequately addressed the legal standard for deciding whether that failure should be excused.
Judge Liman ordered both sides to file supplemental letters by January 27, 2023, addressing exhaustion and, for Miller, providing an update on Wells’s direct appeal. The court did not decide the motion to dismiss.
The detailed version
- Wells v. Miller · No. 1:21-cv-11231
- Lewis Liman
- Jan. 9, 2023
Background
Petitioner Carl D. Wells filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, a court challenge to his custody. Respondent Supt. Mark Miller moved to dismiss the petition and submitted supporting legal memoranda. The opinion does not state the underlying claims or the court in which Wells’s direct appeal was pending.
Issue
In response to the dismissal motion, Wells argued that the delay in his direct appeal should excuse his failure to exhaust his habeas claims. Exhaustion generally requires a petitioner to present claims through the available state process before seeking federal habeas relief. The court stated that neither side had adequately addressed whether the failure to exhaust should be excused under the standard discussed in Barker v. Wingo, which a prior appellate decision had suggested applies to habeas exhaustion.
Court’s action
The court ordered both parties to submit supplemental letter briefing of no more than three single-spaced pages by January 27, 2023, addressing whether Wells’s failure to exhaust should be excused. The court also ordered Miller to provide an update on the status of Wells’s direct appeal and the expected timeline for hearing and deciding it. This order did not grant or deny the motion to dismiss and did not resolve the petition.
Disposition
The opinion is an interim procedural order directing additional briefing. No final disposition of the petition or the motion to dismiss is stated.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.