99-4162 Edwards v. U.S.

Listen to this article

“The policy on which the [Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266 (1988)] Court relied – that is, that institutional constraints prevent prisoners from monitoring the delivery of a notice of appeal after it has been entrusted to the prison authorities – applies with equal force to the filing of a motion under Rule 59(e). We need not decide here whether there is any kind of paper, or any circumstance, under which a district court would be entitled to hold a pro se prisoner litigant to an actual receipt standard, but we are confident that this would be an exceptional situation. As the Houston Court put it, the ‘pro se prisoner [ ] cannot personally travel to the courthouse to see that the notice is stamped “filed” or to establish the date on which the court received the notice.’ 487 U.S. at 271. We hold, therefore, that the mailbox rule applies to motions filed pursuant to Rule 59(e). This in turn means that Edwards may proceed with his appeal: he has certified to this court that he deposited the motion in the prison mailbox with the correct postage on August 10, 1999, two days before the August 12, 1999, deadline.

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Lozano, J., Per Curiam.