William Walls v. Erin Posey

── William Walls v. Erin Posey ── Case No.: 24-1509 Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Date: April 06, 2026 Category: General In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 24-1509 WILLIAM WALLS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. ERIN POSEY, Manager of the Treatment and Detention Facility, Respondent-Appellee. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 4:23-cv-4012-SLD — Sara Darrow, Chief Judge. ____________________ ARGUED FEBRUARY 26, 2026 — DECIDED APRIL 6, 2026 ____________________ Before EASTERBROOK, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. William Walls is in state cus- tody following a court’s conclusion that he is a sexually vio- lent person. 725 ILCS 207/1 to 99. He seeks federal collateral review under 28 U.S.C. §2254, principally contending that his custody depends on constitutionally impermissible use of statements that he or a person treating him made while he was in prison. He lost in the district court for procedural rea- sons and must lose here for the same reasons. 2 No. 24-1509 The background is complex, but we strip away unneces- sary detail. In 2015 a state court, following a trial, found that Walls was a sexually violent person who must be confined un- der state law. He immediately appealed pro se—though he was represented by counsel. His lawyer sought a new trial; the state judge denied that motion, and counsel then filed a notice of appeal. The state’s appellate court dismissed Walls’s pro se appeal after he failed to file a brief. Counsel’s appeal lingered on the docket. In 2017 Walls filed a petition under §2254 challenging the 2015 decision, and he lost because he had defaulted in state court by not filing a brief or seeking review in the state’s supreme court. The district judge appar- ently did not know that an appeal from the 2015 decision re- mained pending in state court; the dismissal was based on procedural default rather than failure to exhaust. Walls did not appeal the district judge’s decision to this court. Meanwhile, as the statute requires, 725 ILCS 207/55, the state’s judiciary continued holding hearings to determine whether Walls remains sexually violent. After a trial judge found in 2018 that there was insufficient reason to doubt that Walls still qualified as sexually violent, he filed another notice of appeal. This at last prompted the state’s appellate court to resolve counsel’s appeal from the 2015 decision. In a single opinion covering the 2015 and 2018 decisions, the state’s ap- pellate court affirmed. In re Commitment of Walls, 2022 IL App (1st) 151075-U (Feb. 18, 2022). Walls then filed another petition under §2254, which the district judge dismissed as an unau- thorized second collateral aback on the 2015 order. See 28 U.S.C. §2244(b)(1) (prohibiting repetition of a claim previ- ously rejected), (b)(3) (requiring advance approval from the court of appeals and limiting the grounds on which approval may be given). With the aid of appointed counsel Walls has appealed from this decision. No. 24-1509 3 If Walls is waging a successive contest to the 2015 commit- ment order, dismissal was required. If he is contesting the 2018 order, he is entitled to a decision on the merits—for each state decision imposing a period of custody may be contested independently in federal court, whether or not the same fed- eral objection was or could have been asserted against the ear- lier decision. Magwood v. Pa>erson, 561 U.S. 320 (2010); Martin v. Bartow, 628 F.3d 871, 874 (7th Cir. 2010). We think that Walls is contesting the 2015 decision. Seeing this requires a brief ex- planation of his principal legal theory. In 1993 Wall