United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted February 5, 2021*

Decided March 31, 2021 

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

No. 20-1005 

JASON SETH PERRY,

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v. 

RICHARD BROWN, 

Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of 

Indiana, Indianapolis Division. 

No. 1:18-cv-04054-TWP-DML

Tanya Walton Pratt, 

Chief Judge. 

O R D E R

Indiana prisoner Jason Perry petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus under 

42 U.S.C. § 2254 after a hearing officer found him guilty of throwing urine on a prison 

guard, for which he lost 180 days of earned good-time credit and certain privileges. 

Perry claimed that he was deprived of due process at the disciplinary hearing because, 

among other reasons, he went before a biased decisionmaker and never had access to 

* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 20-1005 Page 2 

key evidence. The district court denied his petition, and because Perry fails to show his 

rights were violated, we affirm.

At the time of the incident, Perry was housed at the New Castle Correctional 

Facility. One morning, he received a cup of juice. Some time later, Perry threw the 

contents of the cup at correctional Officer K. Martin as he walked by Perry’s cell. He 

also may have spit liquid at Officer Martin. For his part, Officer Martin identified the 

liquid as urine, not juice. And a video of Perry’s cell showed him throwing the juice out 

of the cup at least an hour before the incident with Officer Martin. 

Disciplinary proceedings followed and resulted in Perry being charged with 

battery, which includes “plac[ing] any bodily fluid or bodily waste on another person.” 

Perry received copies of the conduct report and notice of a disciplinary hearing. So too 

did Perry receive a lay advocate to assist at the hearing. Perry further requested

testimony from several witnesses, who gave written statements instead of live 

testimony due to a staffing shortage within the prison. Finally, Perry sought, but did not 

receive, video of the dayroom on the morning of the incident. 

Before the hearing, the disciplinary hearing officer watched a video of the 

incident and made a report: “Video shows the offender in cell 215 throw a cup of 

something on the Officer. It is inconclusive if he spit it as well. Camera does not record 

sound.” In connection with another disciplinary charge, the hearing officer also viewed 

the video of Perry emptying his cup of juice before the incident with Officer Martin. 

In the end, the hearing officer found Perry guilty based on Officer Martin’s 

report, the witness statements, and photos and video of the incident. Even more 

specifically, the hearing officer found that the liquid Perry threw at Officer Martin could 

not have been juice because of the earlier video footage showing Perry discarding the 

juice. 

Perry unsuccessfully appealed the disciplinary conviction to the New Castle 

Warden and in turn the Indiana Department of Correction. He then filed a habeas 

petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging the disciplinary sanctions. The district court 

rejected Perry’s contentions that he was wrongfully denied access to evidence, the 

hearing officer was biased, and insufficient evidence supported the finding of 

misconduct. 
No. 20-1005 Page 3 

On appeal, the State of Indiana (on behalf of Richard Brown, Warden of Wabash 

Valley Correctional Facility, where Perry is now incarcerated) first contends that we 

lack jurisdiction because Perry did not file a timely notice of appeal. We disagree. 

A state prisoner must appeal from the denial of a habeas petition within 30 days 

of the judgment. See FED. R. APP. P. 4(a)(1)(A); RULES GOVERNING SECTION 2254 CASES, 

Rule 11(b) (“Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a) governs the time to appeal an 

order entered under these rules.”). But the district court may extend the deadline for an 

additional 30 days “upon a showing of excusable neglect.” 28 U.S.C. § 2107(c); FED. R.

APP. P. 4(a)(5)(A). The district court entered judgment on November 6, 2019, so—absent 

a 30-day extension under Rule 4(a)(5)—Perry’s notice of appeal was due on December 6. 

After the initial deadline passed (but within 30 days after it, see FED. R. APP.

P. 4(a)(5)(A)), Perry moved for an extension, briefly explaining that he was working on 

several cases and had been denied certain research materials in the New Castle prison 

library. The district court granted the motion, giving Perry until December 20, 2019. 

This brief extension fell within the 30 days authorized by Rule 4(a)(5)(A), (C). 

Perry missed the December 20 deadline but mailed the court a notice of appeal 

on December 31, 2019. He accompanied the notice with a “Motion to File [a] Late Notice 

of Appeal” in which he explained that, due to delays in prison mail, he had not received 

the court’s order granting his prior extension request until after the new deadline of 

December 20 had passed. The district court construed Perry’s notice of appeal and 

accompanying motion as a motion to file instanter and granted it—effectively giving 

Perry a second extension of time for filing his notice of appeal. 

All of this was proper. Perry ultimately filed his notice of appeal before January 6 

and thus within the time limit allowed by Rule 4(a)(5)(A), (C). On the record before the 

district court, the warden’s argument that Perry provided insufficient reasons to 

warrant the two extensions of time misses the mark. 

As we recently explained in Mayle v. Illinois, the district court is the gatekeeper of 

the excusable-neglect standard under § 2107(c). See 956 F.3d 966, 968 (7th Cir. 2020). The 

court does not always need to make an explicit finding of excusable neglect; a summary 

order suffices if the motion provides “an evident path from the record to the district 

court’s discretionary decision.” Id. at 969. We review only for abuse of discretion. See id. 

The district court acted within the bounds of its discretion. Perry is a pro se

litigant juggling several cases, with limited access to research materials and limited 
No. 20-1005 Page 4 

knowledge of the law. Yes, he neglected to file a notice of appeal on time. But “[t]he 

point of the excusable-neglect standard is that neglect is assumed,” and the district 

court “has discretion to excuse it.” Id. at 968–69. In contending that Perry did not need 

access to the law library to accomplish the ministerial task of filing a notice of appeal, 

the state assumes a level of acumen that is not warranted. Perry said he asked the law 

library for procedural rules; he may have wished to research the timing for filing a 

notice of appeal or the required contents. (Often this information appears at the 

conclusion of a final order disposing of a pro se case, but here it did not.) Sorting that out 

would not have been a good use of the district court’s time. 

Perry also took care to offer a reason for his second request for an extension of 

time. He explained in his December 31 filing that, because of delays in receiving his 

mail, he did not know about the December 20 deadline until after it had passed. The 

district court committed no abuse of discretion in accepting this reason as part of 

granting the second extension. See id. at 969. 

We note, however, that the extensions would not have been justified if Perry had 

not supplied valid reasons for needing them. That was the case in Nestorovic v. 

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, where the plaintiff missed the 

deadline because she was not sure she could find a lawyer to take her appeal. See

926 F.3d 427, 429 (7th Cir. 2019). This was not a valid excuse, we held, because the 

appellant intentionally waited to appeal until she retained counsel; nothing impeded 

her. See id. at 432. Perry’s reasons, in contrast, were unintended delays due to the 

conditions in his prison. In 28 U.S.C. § 2107(c), Congress gave district courts the 

authority to excuse the latter, not to allow litigants to choose to ignore court deadlines. 

So the extensions here were valid, and Perry’s notice of appeal was timely.

On the merits, Perry presses two due-process arguments. Indiana prisoners have 

a liberty interest in earned credit time and must be afforded due process, including the 

rights to present evidence in their defense and to an unbiased decisionmaker. See Wolff 

v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 566 (1974); Piggie v. Cotton, 342 F.3d 660, 666 (7th Cir. 2003). 

First, Perry says that he was denied access to a videotape of the dayroom that 

may have proved his innocence. The warden responds that the video did not show the 

altercation (which did not take place in the dayroom) and therefore could not contradict 

the video of Perry tossing the cup of liquid at Officer Martin. In disciplinary hearings, 

prisoners have no right to “irrelevant or repetitive evidence.” Scruggs v. Jordan, 485 F.3d 

934, 940 (7th Cir. 2007). Perry has never explained how the video could have helped his 

defense. On these facts, he has not demonstrated any right to the video.
No. 20-1005 Page 5 

Second, Perry says his hearing officer was biased, both because he had served as 

a hearing officer for another disciplinary charge against Perry and because he came into 

the hearing with personal knowledge of the case (having seen the relevant videos). We 

rejected a similar argument in Pannell v. McBride, observing that prior knowledge of the 

prisoner or the case does not amount to bias. See 306 F.3d 499, 502 (7th Cir. 2002). We 

would reach a different result if the adjudicator had been directly involved in the 

incident, see Piggie, 342 F.3d at 667, but Perry makes no such allegation. 

AFFIRMED