Fields v. Miller
- Cathy Seibel
- 7:23-cv-05428
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Fields v. Miller, Judge Swain ordered Jamil Fields to pay the filing fee or submit an application to proceed without prepayment.
Jamil Fields must either pay the $5 filing fee or submit a signed application to proceed without prepaying fees within 30 days; otherwise, the action will be dismissed. Mark Miller was not required to answer at this stage.
What happened
Fields v. Miller is a habeas case brought by Jamil Fields, who is representing himself. He submitted his petition without paying the $5 filing fee or submitting an application to proceed without prepaying court fees.
The court gave Fields 30 days to pay the fee or submit a signed application. No response from Mark Miller was required at that time. If Fields does not comply, the action will be dismissed; if he complies, the case will proceed under the Clerk’s Office procedures.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also certified that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for an appeal. The order did not decide the habeas petition’s merits.
The detailed version
- Fields v. Miller · No. 7:23-cv-05428
- Cathy Seibel
- June 27, 2023
Background
Jamil Fields, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition asking for habeas relief against Mark Miller. The opinion does not describe the underlying claims or the relief Fields seeks. Fields submitted the petition without paying the $5 filing fee and without an application to proceed without prepaying court fees.
Order
The court ordered Fields, within 30 days of the order, to either pay the $5 filing fee or complete and submit the attached signed application. The application had to include docket number 23-CV-5428 (LTS). If the court grants the application, Fields may proceed without paying the fees in advance.
The court stated that no answer from Miller was required at that time. If Fields complies, the case will be processed under the Clerk’s Office procedures. If he does not comply within the allowed time, the action will be dismissed.
Appeal and disposition
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for an appeal. This order addressed filing-fee requirements and did not decide the merits of Fields’s habeas petition. The opinion text is signed by Laura Taylor Swain, although the supplied case metadata identifies Cathy Seibel as the judge.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.