U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis has approved a 14-day extension for Keith Raniere to submit his response to the Department of Justice’s arguments against granting him a new trial.
Raniere previously filed a Rule 33 motion alleging the FBI tampered with digital image metadata in child pornography evidence presented during his 2019 trial.
The new deadline for Raniere’s response is September 29, marking the second time Judge Garaufis has extended the deadline due to Raniere’s unavailability.
Arthur Aidala, Raniere’s lawyer, told the court he found it challenging to consult with his client, who is incarcerated at USP Tucson and has been in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) for over a year. Meetings and phone calls with attorneys for prisoners confined to the SHU are severely restricted, and mail is often delayed or not delivered at all.
The initial filing deadline was September 1, which the court extended to September 14,.
Aidala sent a letter to the court on the day the filing was due, explaining his office had not been able to discuss the contents of the reply with Raniere, because the prison had only allowed him to see it the day it was due.
Aidala wrote to the court:
Raniere’s incarceration poses logistical challenges to enable him to easily participate with our office in the drafting of his response. To that end, although we have attempted to provide Mr. Raniere with a draft of our Reply, he only just received it today, and we have not yet had adequate opportunity to discuss its contents with him and receive substantive feedback from him.
The judge promptly granted the extension request.
Earlier in the year, the judge granted the DOJ a 30-day extension to respond to Raniere’s initial motion for a new trial.
Raniere was placed in the SHU following a fight with another inmate, Maurice Adonis Withers, in July 2022. Although the BOP cleared Raniere of any wrongdoing, he has remained in the SHU while Withers was released.
Raniere has questioned the justification for his extended SHU stay and sued the BOP and the warden at USP Tucson in a federal lawsuit in Arizona.
Raniere alleges his continued SHU placement aims to hinder his active participation in his Rule 33 motion.
