Gentile v. Superintendent, Mohawk Correctional Facility
- Laura Swain
- 1:23-cv-00542
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Gentile v. Superintendent, Judge Swain transferred this second petition challenging a conviction to the Second Circuit, where authorization is required.
Joseph J. Gentile, Jr., whose second petition challenging his state-court conviction was transferred to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; the district-court case was closed.
What happened
In Gentile v. Superintendent, Mohawk Correctional Facility, Joseph J. Gentile, Jr., who is incarcerated and representing himself, challenged his 2007 New York state-court conviction. The court treated his letter as a federal petition challenging that conviction.
The court found that Gentile had already filed an earlier petition challenging the same conviction and that the earlier petition had been decided on its merits. That made this a second petition of a type that requires permission from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit before a federal district court may consider it.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain transferred the petition to the Second Circuit in the interest of justice and closed the district-court case. She also declined to issue a certificate allowing an appeal and denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees.
The detailed version
- Gentile v. Superintendent, Mohawk Correctional Facility · No. 1:23-cv-00542
- Laura Swain
- Feb. 15, 2023
Background
Joseph J. Gentile, Jr., is incarcerated at Mohawk Correctional Facility and proceeded without a lawyer. The court received his January 20, 2023 letter challenging his January 3, 2007 conviction in New York Supreme Court, Queens County. The Clerk of Court opened the submission as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, the federal procedure for challenging a state-court conviction.
The court noted that Gentile had filed an earlier § 2254 application challenging the same conviction in a prior related proceeding, No. 12-CV-0055 (E.D.N.Y.). The earlier application was denied on the merits, meaning the court had addressed the substance of the challenge.
Court’s analysis
Because the earlier application was decided on the merits, the court classified the new application as a second or successive § 2254 petition. Federal law requires a person seeking to file such a petition in a district court to first obtain authorization from the appropriate federal court of appeals. The court stated that Gentile must seek that permission from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The court explained that second or successive petitions should be transferred to the appropriate court of appeals. It therefore transferred this petition under 28 U.S.C. § 1631, which permits transfer when another court is the proper forum, rather than deciding whether Gentile’s conviction should be overturned.
Disposition
The court transferred the petition to the Second Circuit in the interest of justice and closed the district-court case. It also ruled that no certificate of appealability would issue because Gentile had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied. The court further certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying the filing fee.
Result
This order did not decide the merits of Gentile’s challenge to his conviction. It transferred the matter to the Second Circuit, which is the court that must decide whether he may pursue this second or successive petition.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.