Morris v. Wolcott
- Paul Engelmayer
- 1:22-cv-00052
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Morris v. Wolcott, Judge Engelmayer denied Keith Morris’s habeas petition after adopting a magistrate judge’s unobjected-to recommendation.
Keith Morris, whose petition was denied; the case was closed, and the court denied appeal-related certification and fee-free appeal status.
What happened
Morris v. Wolcott concerned Keith Morris’s petition asking a federal court to overturn his New York state conviction for second-degree assault. Morris represented himself and challenged the evidence supporting the conviction and his sentence.
A magistrate judge recommended denying the petition. Neither party objected, so the court reviewed the recommendation for clear error—an obvious mistake on the face of the record—and found none.
Judge Engelmayer adopted the recommendation and denied the petition, closed the case, and denied a certificate of appealability and permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal. The court also stated that the lack of objections waived appellate review.
The detailed version
- Morris v. Wolcott · No. 1:22-cv-00052
- Paul Engelmayer
- May 1, 2023
Background
Keith Morris, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. That procedure allows a person held under a state-court conviction to ask a federal court for relief. After a jury trial in New York Supreme Court, New York County, Morris had been convicted of second-degree assault under New York Penal Law § 120.05(12).
Morris raised two grounds for relief: that the evidence was legally insufficient and did not support the conviction when weighed as a whole, and that his sentence should be reduced in the interest of justice.
Recommendation and Review
On April 10, 2023, a magistrate judge issued a Report and Recommendation advising that the petition be denied. No party filed objections. The district court therefore reviewed the recommendation for clear error, meaning an obvious error apparent from the record without a full reconsideration of the issues.
The court stated that its review revealed no facial error in the recommendation and adopted it in its entirety. Because the parties did not object within the required period, the court also stated that they had waived appellate review.
Ruling
The court denied the petition, directed the Clerk to terminate pending motions and close the case, and directed that a copy of the decision be mailed to Morris. The court declined to issue a certificate of appealability, stated that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, and denied permission to proceed without paying fees for purposes of an appeal.
This order is classified as procedural because the court adopted the recommendation after clear-error review without independently analyzing the underlying habeas claims in the opinion itself.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.