Williams v. Pfister et al

Filing 35

MEMORANDUM Order: Petitioner's motion objecting to respondent's failure to provide document number reference notes with their motion 34 is denied. Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 9/15/2015:Mailed notice(clw, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ex rel.
KEVIN WILLIAMS (#R26594),
Petitioner,
v.
RANDY PFISTER, Warden,
Pontiac Correctional Center,
Respondent.

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Case No. 15 C 3183

MEMORANDUM ORDER
After this Court issued its July 14, 2015 opinion that directed the Illinois Attorney
General's Office, pursuant to Rule 5 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United
States District Courts ("Section 2254 Rules"), to respond to the 28 U.S.C. § 2254 1 action brought
by pro se prisoner Kevin Williams ("Williams"), that Office's filing of a detailed narrative
describing Williams' post-conviction efforts in the state court system before he attempted to turn
to this federal court led to the issuance of this Court's September 1, 2015 memorandum opinion
and order ("Opinion") that explained why Williams' Section 2254 petition (the "Petition") was
unquestionably untimely and was hence barred by limitations under Section 2244(d)(1). Nothing
daunted, Williams has now tendered a hand-printed document captioned "Pro Se Petitioner's
Motion Objecting To Respondent's Failure To Provide Document Number Reference Notes With

1

All further references to Title 28's provisions will simply take the form "Section --,"
omitting the prefatory "28 U.S.C. §."

Their Motion" ("Motion"). Because that Motion is totally without merit, this brief memorandum
order explains why it must be denied.
What Williams complains about specifically is that at several points in the Attorney
General's response ("Response") a reference is made to pages included in Dkt. No. 10, without
copies of those pages having been provided to Williams. No doubt he has accurately reported
his nonreceipt of those pages (indeed, it appears that the Assistant Attorney General assigned to
the case did not provide Williams with any of the 95 pages that make up Dkt. No. 10), and if
anything in the Response had left a meaningful need for input by Williams this Court would have
ordered him to file a reply pursuant to Section 2254 Rule 5(e).
But as the Attorney General's Motion To Dismiss as Time-Barred made plain, and as is
confirmed by the four pages from Dkt. No. 10 to which Williams refers (copies of which pages
are attached to this memorandum order), they simply support the position advanced in the
Motion To Dismiss and endorsed by this Court's Opinion that two of Williams' attempted state
court post-conviction efforts were not "properly filed" for tolling purposes under Section
2244(d)(2).
That then was indeed "the end of the matter" in terms of eliminating any possibility of
federal habeas relief at this late date, as was held in Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408, 414
(2005) and since repeated by the United States Supreme Court. In sum, Williams' current
Motion is denied.

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Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date: September 15, 2015
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ATTACHMENT