Sanders v. United States
- Paul Engelmayer
- 1:23-cv-01547
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Sanders v. United States, Judge Engelmayer preliminarily found Sanders’s post-conviction petition untimely and invited his response before ruling on his motions.
Reginald Sanders is directly affected because the court preliminarily viewed his post-conviction petition as untimely but gave him an opportunity to respond. The Government is affected as the opposing party. The opinion does not finally resolve Sanders’s motions.
What happened
In Sanders v. United States, Reginald Sanders, representing himself, asked the court to reinstate and amend his petition seeking relief from his federal conviction. The Government argued that the petition was filed too late.
The court’s preliminary view was that the petition missed the one-year filing deadline. The court calculated that Sanders’s conviction became final on February 3, 2022, and that the deadline expired on February 3, 2023. Sanders deposited his petition in the prison mailing system on February 5, 2023.
The court did not make a final ruling on Sanders’s motions. Judge Paul A. Engelmayer gave Sanders until April 15, 2024, to respond to the Government’s timeliness argument and directed the Clerk to mail him the order.
The detailed version
- Sanders v. United States · No. 1:23-cv-01547
- Paul Engelmayer
- Mar. 27, 2024
Background
Reginald Sanders, who was representing himself, filed motions to reinstate and amend his petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Section 2255 allows a federal prisoner to ask the sentencing court to vacate, set aside, or correct the sentence. The Government responded that Sanders’s original petition was barred by the statute’s one-year filing deadline.
Timeliness analysis
The court stated that the one-year period generally runs from the date the conviction becomes final. The Second Circuit had summarily affirmed Sanders’s conviction on November 5, 2021. Sanders did not ask the Supreme Court to review that decision or seek more time to do so. The time to seek Supreme Court review therefore expired 90 days later, on February 3, 2022, making that the date the conviction became final.
The court calculated that the one-year period ended on February 3, 2023. Sanders deposited his petition in the prison mailing system on February 5, 2023. Applying the prison-mailing rule, which treats a self-represented prisoner’s filing as made when it is given to prison authorities for mailing, the court said the petition appeared to be late.
The court also noted that equitable tolling can extend a filing deadline in limited circumstances. To obtain that extension, a petitioner must show that he pursued his rights diligently and that an extraordinary circumstance prevented timely filing. The court said it did not appear that Sanders could make that showing, but it did not finally decide the issue.
What the court did
The court did not grant or deny Sanders’s motions to reinstate or amend the petition. Instead, it invited Sanders to submit a reply addressing the Government’s claim that the petition was untimely. The reply was due April 15, 2024. The court also directed the Clerk to mail Sanders a copy of the order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.