Black v. Johnson
- Philip Halpern
- 7:20-cv-08725
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Black v. Johnson, Magistrate Judge McCarthy denied amendment but granted Black 30 more days to file his reply.
Marcus Black’s federal challenge to his New York conviction; the order also set the State’s opposition and Black’s reply schedule.
What happened
In Black v. Johnson, Marcus Black, representing himself, asked to add an insufficient-evidence claim to his federal petition challenging his New York conviction. He also asked for 30 additional days to reply to the State’s opposition.
The court ruled that the petition already included the insufficient-evidence claim because the State had addressed it in its response. Adding the same claim would therefore serve no purpose, so the court denied Black’s request to amend the petition.
Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy granted Black’s request for more time and ordered him to file his reply by October 30, 2023. The order did not decide whether Black’s conviction should be overturned.
The detailed version
- Black v. Johnson · No. 7:20-cv-08725
- Philip Halpern
- Sept. 28, 2023
Background
Marcus Black, acting without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his New York state-court conviction after a jury trial. He had been convicted of second-degree burglary and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. Black later asked to pause the federal case while pursuing a state-court motion and then withdrew that request. Instead, he asked to amend his petition to add an insufficient-evidence claim and requested 30 additional days to file his reply to the State’s opposition.
Legal standard
The court explained that amendments to a habeas petition—the type of federal petition Black filed—generally require the court’s permission. The one-year limitations period under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act also limits amendments filed after that period. A proposed claim may not be added if it is untimely or if adding it would be futile, meaning the amendment would accomplish nothing.
Ruling on amendment
The State argued that Black’s insufficient-evidence claim should have been included earlier because he had already raised it during his direct appeal. The State also argued that the claim lacked merit. The court noted, however, that the State’s response to the original petition had already treated Ground III as an insufficient-evidence claim concerning Black’s burglary conviction. Because habeas petitions must be read broadly, the court construed the existing petition as already containing that claim.
The court therefore denied Black’s motion for leave to amend. It explained that granting permission to add a claim already included in the petition would be futile. This order did not decide the merits of the insufficient-evidence claim or the other claims in the petition.
Extension of time and disposition
The court granted Black’s request for an additional 30 days to file his reply. It ordered him to file the reply by October 30, 2023. The Clerk was directed to terminate the pending motion and mail the order to Black.
The order’s dispositions were: the motion for leave to amend was denied, and the request for an extension of time to file a reply was granted.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.