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S.D.N.Y.Procedural orderFiled Jan. 29, 2024

Brown v. State of New York

Judge
Paul Engelmayer
Docket
1:22-cv-06371
Court
U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
Pages
2
HabeasCivil Procedure
In one sentence

In Brown v. State of New York, Magistrate Judge Figueredo treated Brown’s sentence-vacatur motions as additions to his habeas petition and terminated them as separate motions.

Who this affects

Noel Brown and the State of New York; the order also directed the Clerk of Court to terminate Brown’s two separate sentence-vacatur motions.

What happened

In Brown v. State of New York, Noel Brown filed a petition challenging his custody under a federal law that allows challenges to state convictions or sentences. He later filed two motions asking to vacate his sentence.

The court treated those two motions as supplemental briefs—additional written arguments supporting Brown’s existing petition—instead of as separate motions. The opinion did not decide whether Brown was entitled to habeas relief.

Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the two separate motions. The motions will be decided together with Brown’s habeas petition.

The detailed version

For law students, journalists, and other readers who want the full reasoning

Case
Brown v. State of New York · No. 1:22-cv-06371
Judge
Paul Engelmayer
Date
Jan. 29, 2024

Background

Noel Brown filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 on July 25, 2022. Section 2254 provides a procedure for a person in state custody to seek federal court review. Brown later filed motions on April 4, 2023, and October 6, 2023, asking the court to vacate his sentence.

Court’s action

The court construed, or treated, the two sentence-vacatur motions as supplemental briefings supporting Brown’s habeas petition. The court stated that the motions would be decided with the habeas petition rather than as separate motions.

The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate the motions listed at ECF Nos. 31 and 37. The opinion did not decide the merits of Brown’s habeas petition or whether his sentence should be vacated.

Disposition and classification

The court terminated the two motions as separate docketed motions after construing them as supplements to the habeas petition. The habeas petition itself was not decided in this order. This is a procedural order because it addressed how the filings would be handled, not whether Brown was entitled to relief.

The authoritative version

Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.

Open opinion PDF →
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