What the Record Establishes
- The State asks the federal court to dismiss the petition without prejudice for failure to exhaust available state remedies.
- The exhaustion statute the motion invokes contains an exception where state process is “ineffective to protect the rights of the applicant.”
- On four of the motion’s eighteen factual representations, the document cited says the opposite of the sentence citing it — and in each case the State filed that document itself.
What They Have Not Produced
- Any written March 10, 2026 order dismissing either post-conviction petition. None appears in the State’s seventeen exhibits.
- What the three documents identified in the Rule 3.3 notice contain.
- Whether the Office knew, on August 7, that an Illinois appellate clerk had refused this litigant’s filing that day.
Everything in this archive converges here. The State of Illinois has now taken a position, in writing, in a United States District Court, about whether its own courts were usable by this litigant. That question is no longer rhetorical. It is the issue in a pending motion.
What the State filed
Fourteen pages arguing that the petitioner has an available state remedy he has not used, and that his account of being locked out describes “merely the procedures every pro se criminal defendant must comply with.” Behind it, 283 pages of exhibits filed in seventeen separate attachments and cited by letter alone — no PageID, no attachment number, no index. Five of the seventeen were filed as images and cannot be word-searched.
What came back three days later
A concordance mapping every exhibit letter to its attachment and PageID span, offered to the court “whatever the disposition” of the motion it accompanied. A thirty-nine-page proposed reply behind 253 Bates-numbered exhibit pages. And a declaration under 28 U.S.C. § 1746 whose method is stated in a single line on its face: This is not a contest between competing narratives. It is Dkt. 51 measured against the State’s own instruments, dates, and words.
The four places the record answers the brief
- “Dismissal for want of prosecution.” The certified transcript the State filed says the court would “strike his pleading,” “[t]ake it off the call,” and that “if he wishes to resurrect it that’s up to him.” The certified case summary records “Status” and “Case Called.” Neither instrument contains the word the motion needs.
- The April 28, 2026 certiorari expiration. Every deadline in the motion is computed from it. The petitioner’s filing states that the same Office waived response in his United States Supreme Court matter at 15:16:42 on that date.
- “Nothing prevents petitioner from taking public transportation or seeking a ride.” The footnote on the same page states he may not legally drive to the courthouse, and the State’s own Exhibit M is the outstanding warrant that would be executed if he arrived.
- “He may reinstate those petitions.” The order the State filed as its own Exhibit O discharged his counsel nunc pro tunc to October 6, 2025 — five months before the hearing he is faulted for missing.
The documents
| Date | Docket entry | Pages | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-07 | Dkt. 51 — The State’s Motion to Dismiss the Habeas Petition, August 7, 2026N.D. Ill. No. 1:26-cv-01077 — Office of the Illinois Attorney General | 14 | 8096e7ccb52d… |
| 2026-08-07 | Dkt. 52 — Notice of Motion, Presentment August 19, 2026N.D. Ill. No. 1:26-cv-01077 | 2 | c4b4bb525da3… |
| 2026-08-10 | Dkt. 53 — Motion for Leave, the Concordance the State Did Not Supply, and the Proposed ReplyN.D. Ill. No. 1:26-cv-01077 — filed pro se | 298 | cf9056c81a68… |
| 2026-08-10 | Dkt. 54 — Declaration Authenticating the State’s Own Record Contradicting Dkt. 51N.D. Ill. No. 1:26-cv-01077 — declaration under 28 U.S.C. § 1746 | 20 | 265458b149ca… |