Morris v. Hutchinson

Full title: BARRY MORRIS (N-41509), Plaintiff, v. JEFFREY HUTCHINSON, Defendant.

Court: UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS EASTERN DIVISION

Date published: Dec 23, 2016

Case No. 16 C 10243 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 23, 2016)

Opinion

Case No. 16 C 10243

12-23-2016

BARRY MORRIS (N-41509), Plaintiff, v. JEFFREY HUTCHINSON, Defendant.

Milton I. Shadur Senior United States District Judge

MEMORANDUM ORDER

This Court's November 8, 2016 memorandum opinion and order (the "Opinion") dismissed the self-prepared 28 U.S.C. § 2254 ("Section 2254") Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus ("Petition") in which Barry Morris ("Morris") charged that he had received ineffective assistance of trial counsel when his lawyer did not raise a defense of insanity. Now Morris has come forward with another self-prepared filing, this time captioned "Motion for Relief from a Judgment or Order" (the "Motion"). Because that filing reflects a total misunderstanding on Morris' part as to the proper judicial treatment of a Section 2254 Petition,¹ this memorandum order is issued to clear up Morris' misunderstanding.

1 This is not said by way of criticism, for the special statutory and rule provisions applicable to Section 2254 Petitions are quite understandably outside the expected range of knowledge on the part of a non-lawyer prisoner plaintiff. --------

Most conventional federal court complaints are governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ("Rules"), in particular (1) Rule 8(a), which specifies what pleading is required as to a civil "claim for relief," and (2) Rule 8(b), which defines the responsive obligations of a defendant in a civil case. By contrast, Section 2254 Petitions are the subject of a special set of "Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts" (the "Section 2254 Rules"), with Section 2254 Rule reading in relevant Part:

If it plainly appears from the petition and any attached exhibits that the petitioner is not entitled to relief in the district court, the judge must dismiss the petition and direct the clerk to notify the petitioner.

It was pursuant to Section 2254 Rule 4's directive that this Court promptly "conducted a detailed preliminary review" (Opinion at 2) of the Petition and measured it alongside our Court of Appeals' opinion in Ben-Yisrayl v. Buss, 540 F.3d 542, 546, 547-48 (7^th Cir. 2008).

Because the latter opinion had dealt with a Section 2254 claim of ineffective assistance of counsel in the light dictated by Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), just as the Illinois Appellate Court had done in Morris' case, the Opinion quoted at length from Ben-Yisrayl. And as Opinion at 2 stated with total accuracy, that opinion "could well have been written for this case."

So Morris' current Motion is based on a total misapprehension of the appropriate judicial handling of a Petition such as the one that he filed. And lest he also misunderstand how well established the principles stated in Ben-Yisrayl are, this Court has again reviewed a host of other cases that reconfirm and apply the identical principles. By way of example, in an effort to dispel any possible notion that Morris' Petition was subjected by this Court to anything other than a universally applicable doctrine exemplified by Ben-Yisrayl, this memorandum order has attached two pages of a later Seventh Circuit opinion (Campbell v. Smith, 770 F.3d 540, 546-47 (7^th Cir. 2014).

In summary, Morris' current Motion is denied as totally without merit in law. This Court will not, as he seeks, vacate either the Opinion or its order dismissing his Section 2254 Petition.

/s/_________

Milton I. Shadur

Senior United States District Judge Date: December 23, 2016

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