Walden v. Walcott
- George Daniels
- 1:19-cv-11409
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Walden v. Walcott, Judge Daniels declined to issue an appeal certificate and found an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
John Walden, whose habeas petition had already been dismissed in full, was denied a certificate of appealability and received a certification that an appeal from the judgment on the merits would not be taken in good faith.
What happened
In Walden v. Walcott, John Walden, representing himself, asked to set aside his New York state conviction through a federal habeas petition. The court had dismissed that petition in full on March 29, 2022.
The court declined to issue a certificate of appealability because Walden had not substantially shown that his constitutional rights were denied and had not identified a debatable constitutional claim. The court also certified that an appeal from the judgment on the merits would not be taken in good faith.
Judge George B. Daniels issued the memorandum decision and order on May 17, 2023.
The detailed version
- Walden v. Walcott · No. 1:19-cv-11409
- George Daniels
- May 17, 2023
Background
On December 12, 2019, John Walden filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, a federal procedure for challenging a state-court conviction. The opinion states that Walden represented himself. He sought to set aside his December 1, 2017 New York state judgment of conviction. According to the opinion's footnote, Walden had pleaded guilty to nine counts of third-degree burglary and received an aggregate sentence of six to twelve years of incarceration.
On March 29, 2022, the court granted the respondent's motion to dismiss and dismissed the habeas petition in its entirety. The present opinion addresses appellate matters following that dismissal; it does not provide the earlier decision's merits analysis.
Court's Action
The court declined to issue a certificate of appealability. Such a certificate is required for a habeas petitioner to appeal in this context. The court concluded that Walden had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied and had not identified a claim on which reasonable judges would disagree about whether such a denial occurred.
The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the judgment on the merits would not be taken in good faith. The opinion is a procedural order concerning appeal authorization and the good-faith certification, rather than a new decision on the underlying conviction challenge.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.