Court Opinion

ID: 9479613
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:23:31.367691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:09.547522
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
I certainly agree with the majority’s conclusion that an ad prosequendum writ is not a detainer and is not subject to the anti-shuttling provisions of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers. Therefore, petitioner Flick properly loses on the merits, and his complaint would have been dismissed by motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) had such a motion been brought. Neitzke v. Williams, — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989), clearly instructs, however, that this does not automatically make the complaint dismissible sua sponte under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d). Neitzke is careful to recognize “the surfeit of meritless in forma pauper-is complaints in the federal courts,” id. 109 S.Ct. at 1832, but limits sua sponte dismissals to claims “based on an indisputably meritless legal theory” and “claims whose factual contentions are clearly baseless.” Id. at 1833. Here, the claim of indisputable lack of merit would have to be based on United States v. Mauro, 436 U.S. 340, 357-61, 98 S.Ct. 1834, 1845-48, 56 L.Ed.2d 329 (1978). But there is no indication that the district court viewed this problem as involving Mauro or the lack of parallel between a detainer and an ad prosequendum writ.
It is important that we view the allegations of a complaint not ex post, from the vantage of an appellate court that has sifted through the allegations and determined them to be without merit, but ex ante, as a paying litigant would. It is here only at the appellate level that we have at last divined precisely why Flick’s complaint lacks merit. That it took the resources of an appellate court to provide an accurate analysis should indicate that Flick’s complaint is not based on an “indisputably mer-*783itless legal theory.” Given the mandate of the Supreme Court in Neitzke, it is difficult to conclude that Flick’s claim was “frivolous” for purposes of a section 1915(d) dismissal. The fact that we can at this point see ahead to the result of a motion for dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) should not alter that conclusion. I therefore respectfully dissent on this point.