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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA federal inmate who was transferred from an Indiana prison to a facility in Florida will continue his habeas proceedings in Indiana federal court after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a writ of mandamus in the inmate’s favor.
Kevin Hall was pursuing habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the Southern Indiana District Court when he was transferred out of an Indiana federal prison and into a prison in the Middle District of Florida. After Hall’s physical transfer, the Indiana district court likewise transferred the habeas case to of Florida, believing the Indiana Southern District had lost jurisdiction.
The 7th Circuit, however, issued a writ of mandamus overturning the transfer order, though Judge Diane Wood noted that it is only Hall’s case, not Hall himself, that will return to the Hoosier State. She cited to Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944), which involved the transfer of a Japanese American woman from an internment camp in California to Utah.
“What is of interest is the (Supreme) Court’s discussion of the jurisdiction of the district court in California to issue the writ of habeas corpus, given the fact that Endo had been moved to Utah while the case was ongoing,” Wood wrote. “After noting that there was a government official – the Acting Secretary of the Interior – who was within the jurisdiction of the California district court and who could thus carry out any order that court issued in Endo’s case, the Court held that ‘the District Court acquired jurisdiction in this case and that the removal of Mitsuye Endo did not cause it to lose jurisdiction where a person in whose custody she is remains within the district.’”
In the instant case, the Indiana district court held that the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426 (2004), had abrogated the relevant holding of Endo, but the 7th Circuit disagreed.
“Hall’s petition mirrors Endo’s: he filed in the correct court and named his immediate custodian, and only later was he moved to a different place of detainment. And as in Endo, there is a respondent within the jurisdiction of the original court that has authority to comply with any order that may issue,” Wood wrote. “Throughout these proceedings, the Bureau of Prisons has been Hall’s ultimate custodian. Just as the Acting Secretary of the Interior could respond to the court’s order in Endo, the Bureau can take any necessary action here.”
Finally, the 7th Circuit panel rejected the government’s arguments that Hall cannot challenge the transfer until he appeals from final judgment, that Hall already has an adequate remedy in a separate pending motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, and that Hall did not suffer prejudice from the venue transfer.
“We hereby order the district court for the Southern District of Indiana to rescind its order of transfer to the Middle District of Florida,” the panel – also including judges Frank Easterbrook and Michael Kanne – concluded. “The district court must also notify the district court in Florida where Hall’s case is now pending that it must relinquish its jurisdiction and send the file back to Indiana.”
The case is In re: Kevin T. Hall, 20-3245.
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