(DOWNLOAD) "Moran v. Sondalle" by Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Moran v. Sondalle
- Author : Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
- Release Date : January 22, 2000
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 59 KB
Description
Submitted May 4, 2000 We have consolidated five cases in which prisoners required to litigate under 42 U.S.C. sec.1983 instead sought writs of habeas corpus. The Prison Litigation Reform Act, which applies to prisoners' civil suits, imposes require-ments different from those of the Antite-rrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which governs collateral attacks on con-finement, making it important to classify cases correctly. See, e.g., Pischke v. Litscher, 178 F.3d 497 (7th Cir. 1999); Valona v. United States, 138 F.3d 693 (7th Cir. 1998); Moore v. Pemberton, 110 F.3d 22 (7th Cir. 1997); Copus v. Edgert-on, 96 F.3d 1038 (7th Cir. 1996). Prison-ers may be tempted to choose one route rather than another to avoid limitations Congress adopted. For example, the filing fee for an action seeking a writ of habe-as corpus is $5, while the fee to com-mence a case under sec.1983 is $150, see 28 U.S.C. sec.1914(a), and the fee in a sec.1983 case eventually will be collect-ed from the prisoner's trust account under 28 U.S.C. sec.1915(b) even if the prisoner cannot pay in advance. Frivolous actions count as ""strikes"" under sec.191-5(g), and a prisoner who has accumulated three strikes must as a rule prepay the fees in all future civil actions, while collateral attacks are not subject to limitation because of prior frivolous suits. Four of the petitions, filed by Mark Moran, Daniel Johnson, Robert Paulk, and Terry Paul, contend that Wisconsin vio-lated multiple provisions of the Consti-tution by transferring inmates to pri-vately run prisons in other states. The fifth, filed by Michael Spiess, alleges that Wisconsin failed to use constitu-tionally required procedures before deny-ing an application for release on parole. All five prisoners claimed that relief is proper under 28 U.S.C. sec.2241. In the first four cases the district court, citing Pischke, held that such claims must be pursued as civil suits under sec.1983. In each case the district court dismissed the petition (without prejudice to refiling under sec.1983), declined to issue a certificate of appealability, see 28 U.S.C. sec.2253(c)(1)(A), and permit-ted the appeal to proceed in forma paupe-ris. In each case, despite ruling that the action was frivolous, the district court declined to certify that an appeal would not be in good faith under 28 U.S.-C. sec.1915(a)(3). The district judges stated that the prisoners were ""earnest"" and thus proceeding in good faith. In the fifth case the district court did not reach the merits, ruling that Spiess had failed to exhaust his state remedies. See 28 U.S.C. sec.2254(b)(1)(A). The court declined to issue a certificate of ap-pealability and certified that the appeal is in bad faith, so that all appellate fees must be prepaid. Despite Newlin v. Helman, 123 F.3d 429, 437-38 (7th Cir. 1997), which holds that a collateral attack on a prison administrator's deci-sion is a ""civil action"" for purposes of the plra, in none of the five cases did the district court attempt to collect filing fees from the prisoner's trust account under 28 U.S.C. sec.1915(b).
 "Moran v. Sondalle" by Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free){kind=link}