Fields v. Miller
- Cathy Seibel
- 7:23-cv-05428
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Fields v. Miller, Judge Swain granted 60 days to amend a federal custody challenge because state remedies appeared unexhausted.
Jamil Fields is affected because he must file an amended federal habeas petition within 60 days to provide information about his claims and exhaustion of state remedies. The order does not decide the merits of his challenge to his conviction.
What happened
In Fields v. Miller, Jamil Fields, who is incarcerated, challenged his 2019 New York conviction through a federal petition seeking relief from custody. He represented himself and said he had raised his claims in state court, but his statements about further review were inconsistent.
The court explained that a person challenging a state conviction generally must first give the state courts a fair opportunity to review the federal claims. The court found that Fields had not shown whether he sought review from New York’s highest court after the intermediate appellate court affirmed his conviction, or whether he pursued other available state post-conviction procedures.
The court granted Fields 60 days to file an amended petition stating his claims, supporting facts, and steps taken to exhaust state remedies. Judge Laura Taylor Swain did not decide whether Fields is entitled to habeas relief, and stated that failure to comply could lead to denial of relief without prejudice; the court also declined to issue a certificate allowing an appeal and denied permission to appeal without paying fees.
The detailed version
- Fields v. Miller · No. 7:23-cv-05428
- Cathy Seibel
- Aug. 28, 2023
Background
Jamil Fields, who is incarcerated at Green Haven Correctional Facility and is proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his September 3, 2019 conviction in Westchester County Court. According to the opinion, a jury convicted him of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. He alleged that he received a 20-year prison sentence followed by five years of post-release supervision.
The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the conviction on January 11, 2023. Fields’s petition gave conflicting information: it said he had not sought further review in a higher state court, but also said he had presented all his grounds for relief to the highest state court with jurisdiction.
Exhaustion requirement
Before a federal court may grant relief under Section 2254, a state prisoner generally must exhaust available state-court remedies. This means giving the state courts a fair opportunity to consider the factual and legal bases of the federal claims. In New York, that generally includes seeking review from the New York Court of Appeals after an adverse Appellate Division decision. Claims that cannot be raised on direct appeal may need to be presented through a state post-conviction motion, such as a motion under New York Criminal Procedure Law § 440.10, followed by any required appellate review.
The court found that Fields alleged no facts showing that he sought leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals after the Appellate Division affirmed his conviction. He also did not indicate that he had pursued available post-conviction motions or applications and sought further review if necessary. The court therefore stated that it appeared Fields had not exhausted his state remedies. The opinion did not decide the merits of his underlying challenges to the conviction.
Ruling
The court granted Fields 60 days’ leave to file an amended petition. The amended petition must identify his grounds for federal habeas relief, state the supporting facts, explain the steps he took to exhaust state remedies, be labeled “Amended Petition,” and use the same docket number. It will completely replace the original petition and will be reviewed for substantive sufficiency.
The court stated that if Fields does not comply within the permitted time and cannot show good cause for the failure, it will deny habeas relief without prejudice. The court also determined that Fields had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied, so it would not issue a certificate of appealability. It certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees.
Classification
This is a procedural order because the court addressed the threshold requirement of exhausting state remedies and did not decide whether Fields’s conviction violated federal law.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.