Albarado v. Collier
- Laura Swain
- 1:23-cv-02068
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Albarado v. Collier, Judge Swain transferred Albarado’s habeas petition to federal court in Texas because venue was proper there.
The order affects Juan Manuel Albarado’s § 2254 petition by transferring it from the Southern District of New York to the Northern District of Texas, Abilene Division. The transferee court will address whether he may proceed without paying fees.
What happened
In Albarado v. Collier, Juan Manuel Albarado, representing himself, filed a petition challenging matters including his Texas conviction, prison discipline, and withheld sentence credits. He also asserted what he called federal Indian rights and said the prisons were operating on tribal lands.
The Southern District of New York determined that venue was proper in the Northern District of Texas, Abilene Division, because Taylor County was where the conviction and any challenged disciplinary sanction occurred. The court did not decide whether Albarado’s challenges were legally valid.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered the case transferred to that Texas court and closed it in the Southern District of New York. She left the decision about proceeding without paying fees to the transferee court, denied fee-free status for any appeal, and said no certificate allowing an appeal would issue.
The detailed version
- Albarado v. Collier · No. 1:23-cv-02068
- Laura Swain
- Apr. 6, 2023
Background
Juan Manuel Albarado, who was representing himself, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The petition was captioned for the Eastern District of New York but was submitted to the Southern District of New York. On the form, Albarado checked that he was challenging his conviction, a parole revocation, and a disciplinary proceeding.
The opinion says Albarado challenged, among other things, his conviction in the 104th District Court of Taylor County, Texas. It also says he asserted “federal Indian rights,” identified himself as a Native American Comanche Indian, argued that prisons in Abilene, Texas, were illegally operating on tribal lands, and claimed that good-time and “field work time” credits had been improperly withheld. The opinion notes that he had previously filed a petition challenging the conviction and had filed at least one other petition concerning a prison disciplinary sanction involving good-time credit. Those earlier matters are described here only as prior related proceedings.
Venue ruling
The court determined that Taylor County is in the Northern District of Texas, Abilene Division. It held that venue was proper there whether Albarado was challenging the Taylor County conviction or a disciplinary sanction imposed in Taylor County that affected the length of his sentence. The court therefore ordered the Clerk of Court to transfer the action to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Abilene Division.
Disposition
The transfer order did not decide the merits of Albarado’s conviction, disciplinary, credit, or tribal-land challenges. The court closed the case in the Southern District of New York and stated that the transferee court would decide whether Albarado could proceed without paying fees. The court also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, denied fee-free status for purposes of an appeal, and stated that a certificate of appealability would not issue because Albarado had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.