October 11, 2011 Supreme Court of the United States Office of the Clerk 1 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20543

Re: In Re Sephora K. Davis, Docket No. 09-10613 Dear Sir/Madam: I am informed that the clerks office has taken the position that the proposed motion is not allowed under the courts rules. Based upon what follows, I request that the clerk either a) reconsider its position; b) grant a waiver of the rules, file the motion and present it to the Court; or c) submit this letter and accompanying documents to the Circuit Justice (Justice Ginsburg), as a motion under Rule 22 requesting a ruling that the motion is permitted by the rules, or in the alternative a waiver of the rules. Undersigned counsel was retained in this matter pro bono, in part because counsel of record has sought political asylum in Canada owing to the same facts and circumstances that prompted the petition in the first place. The asylum request is under consideration by the Canadian government, a hearing on the matter having been held on September 29th in Toronto. In response to the hearing officers request for further documentation, counsel of record submitted a letter to the Canadian authorities dated October 3, 2011, a true copy of which is attached. Counsel of records absence from the United States has made further personal contact with his client impossible (He, as a refugee claimant, has had his passport confiscated by the Canadian government and effectively cannot return to the US; and she, being on postrelease supervision, cannot leave New York.) Without counsel of records participation and personal contact, no new petition can be prepared. Thus, without reconsideration or a waiver of the rules this situation will effectively deprive the Petitioner of her right to counsel, her right to relief from this or any other Court, as well as deprive the Court of a significant and perhaps unique opportunity to correct a profound misapprehension of the law of due process by public prosecutors across the country, a misapprehension that has been perhaps inadvertently fostered by the Court itself.1

See, e.g., Albright v. Oliver, 510 US 266 (1994), opinion of Rehnquist, J., footnote 6 (plurality opinion), in which the Court misstates the opinion of United States v. Agurs, 427 US 97 (1976) as saying that this Courts holdings in Mooney v. Holohan, 294 US 103 (1935) and Napue v. Illinois, 360 US 264 (1959) related only to the Defendants right to a fair trial under the due process clause of the fifth amendment; whereas Agurs does not say that, and neither do Mooney or Napue. Yet, the Pottawattamie case (this Courts Docket 08-1065) showed that this error, stemming chiefly from this footnote in Albright, has astonishingly, and somewhat self-servingly, been adopted wholesale by the nations prosecutors and the United States government itself. This is precisely the issue presented by the within Petition.

The Petition was originally prompted not just by the plight of the Petitioner, but by the importance of the issue presented to this Court and to the country, which was demonstrated in the briefing and argument of the Pottawattamie case (Docket 08-1065) in 2009, a case that settled in January of 2010 before the Court could decide it. In the last term the issue and the form in which it was presented took on even greater significance, for the reasons cited in the proposed motion. But the window of opportunity for the Court to properly consider this important issue and the petition is perishable: the Petitioners post-release supervision will end in March of 2012, rendering the Petition moot. This leaves just enough time for the Court to schedule the matter for argument and render a decision after due deliberation and in accordance with the Courts regular practice. Yet this would require the Court to entertain the motion now. It is submitted that the Courts rules permit the motion and that Rule 17.2, and therefore F.R. Civ. P. 60(b)(6) must be applied by analogy, since although the Petition is brought based upon the Courts appellate jurisdiction it is nevertheless an original application in this Court and subject to the procedural rules prescribed by Congress for original actions and proceedings in federal courts generally. In the alternative, it is submitted that the facts and circumstances outlined above justify a waiver of the rules, either by the clerk acting on its own authority or by Order of the appropriate Circuit Justice. I have enclosed an original and ten (10) copies of the proposed motion for filing, along with two additional copies of the motion, this letter and the letter of counsel of record to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada to provide the required number of copies for a motion to the Circuit Justice under Rule 22. Yours very truly,

NORMAN A. PATTIS