Opinion
Case No. 14 C 2760
04-25-2014
LAURENTINO BECERRA, #R47844, Plaintiff, v. TEJADA - (Warden), et al., Defendants.
MEMORANDUM ORDER
Laurentino Becerra ("Becerra") has filed a self-prepared 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ("Section 1983") Complaint against the former and present wardens at Stateville Correctional Center ("Stateville," where Becerra is in custody), Director S.A. Godinez of the Illinois Department of Corrections and three Stateville Correctional Officers. Becerra has also tendered to other Clerk's-Office-provided forms: a Motion and Affidavit To Proceed in District Court Without Prepaying Fees or Costs ("IFP Application") and a Motion for Appointment of Counsel ("Counsel Motion") because Becerra's allegations (which must be accepted as true at this point so long as they are "plausible" in Twombly-Iqbal terms) reflect that he appears to have satisfied the exhaustion-of-administrative-remedies precondition to suit set out in 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), so that this memorandum order can move on to consider other threshold issues.
"Self-prepared" is employed in the sense that Becerra has utilized the printed form of Complaint provided by this District Court's Clerk's Office for use by pro se prisoner plaintiffs but has completed his filing with an extensive hand-printed narrative and a number of exhibits.
In that respect the printout of transactions in Becerra's trust fund account at Stateville, attached to the IFP Application, does not provide all of the information called for by 28 U.S.C. § 1915 ("Section 1915"), more specifically Section 1915(a)(2), so that this Court cannot now rule on the IFP Application. More specifically, that printout covers only the period from September 18, 2013 through March 7, 2014, which is clearly not the relevant six-month period preceding the filing of the Complaint. In that respect the six-month period clearly ended on a date before April 15, 2014, when the Complaint was received in the Clerk's Office, but this Court now has no way to determine the proper date once Becerra has been given the benefit of the "mailbox rule" called for by Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266 (1988).
As is often the case with prisoner filings, there is a considerable time gap involved: March 20 is the date of the Certificate signed by the Stateville fiscal officer, while March 24 is the date on which Becerra signed the Complaint and both accompanying motions. No explanation is provided as to why three weeks elapsed thereafter before the papers arrived in this District Court.
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Accordingly Becerra must provide additional information in two respects:
1. One missing piece of information is the date on which Becerra committed his documents to the United States mails or delivered them to prison authorities for that purpose (the "mailbox rule" date).Nonetheless it is plain that Becerra will in all events qualify for in forma pauperis treatment of the special type provided for in Section 1915, in addition to which the Counsel Motion provides the necessary information that calls for that motion's being granted at this point. Accordingly this Court has obtained the name of this member of the trial bar, who is designated to represent Becerra pro bono publico:
2. Another is an additional printout of transactions in Becerra's trust fund account for the period from March 7, 2014 through that "mailbox rule" date.
Michael J. O'Rourke
O'Rourke & Moody
55 West Wacker Drive
Suite 1400
Chicago, IL 60601
312-849-2020
Fax: 312-849-2021
Email: morourke@orourkeandmoody.com.
That designated counsel is directed as his first order of business to determine whether the Marshals Service can promptly complete the service of process on the several defendants -- but if that is not the case, counsel is authorized to make those arrangements himself and will be reimbursed for the expenses of doing so out of court funds.
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Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge