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HABEAS CORPUS

Latin, You have the body. A writ (court order) that commands an individual or a government official who has restrained another to produce the prisoner at a designated time and place so that the court can determine the legality of custody and decide whether to order the prisoner's release.

Gonzalez v. Crosby

The main issue addressed in Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. __, 125 S.Ct. 2641, __ L.Ed.2d __ (2005), was whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit erred in holding that petitioner's Rule 60(b) motion constitutes a prohibited "second or successive" habeas petition under provisions of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1241 as a matter of law. Section 2244(b) of the AEDPA precludes the filing of second or successive petitions without pre-certification by a court of appeals.

Gonzalez entered a guilty plea in Florida state court for armed robbery and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He did not directly appeal his conviction or sentence, but twelve years later he filed two state habeas petitions attacking his conviction on the basis of newly discovered evidence that showed that his guilty plea had been involuntary and unknowing. The state courts denied his petitions, and in 1997 he filed a federal habeas petition in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleging that his guilty plea had not been entered knowingly and voluntarily.

The district court dismissed his petition as time-barred by AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations, 28 U.S.C. §2244(d). It reached that conclusion by determining that the statute of limitations was not tolled during the 163 days while Gonzalez's second state petition was still pending. The Eleventh Circuit denied a certificate of appealability, and Gonzalez did not file for rehearing or review of that decision, which was rendered in 2000.

Later in 2000, the U.S. SUPREME COURT issued a decision in Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U.S. 4, 121 S.Ct. 361, 148 L.Ed.2d 213, in which it held that a state petition for post-conviction relief can nonetheless toll the federal statute of limitations even if, ultimately, the petition is dismissed as procedurally barred. Almost nine months later, Gonzalez filed a "Motion to Amend or Alter Judgment" in federal district court, ostensibly under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6), which permits a court to relieve a party from the effect of a final judgment.

The district court again denied relief, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the denial. Importantly, and for purposes of Supreme Court review, the appellate court held that the Rule 60(b) motion was substantively a "second or successive" habeas petition, which, under the AEDPA, could not be filed without precertification by the court of appeals.

Justice ANTONIN SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court, which held that, because Gonzalez's Rule 60(b) motion had challenged only the district court's previous ruling on the AEDPA's statute of limitations, it was not the equivalent of a "successive" habeas petition. Therefore, the district court could rule upon it without precertification by the Eleventh Circuit.

The Court held that Rule 60(b) applies in AEDPA's Section 2244 proceedings only to the extent that it is not inconsistent with other applicable federal statutes and rules (28 U.S.C. 2254, Rule 11). Because AEDPA's Section 2244(b) is only invoked where a court is acting pursuant to a prisoner's habeas corpus application, the question becomes whether a Rule 60(b) motion is such an application. The relevant text of Section 2244(b) shows that an application is a filing containing one or more claims. Other statutes and Supreme Court decisions clearly recognize such a claim as an asserted federal basis for relief from a state-court conviction. If a Rule 60(b) motion contains one or more claims, then it is tantamount to a habeas corpus application and therefore would be subject to AEDPA's restrictions on successive petitions.

If there is no claim presented, as in Gonzalez's case, there is no basis for contending that such motion should be treated like a habeas petition. Gonzalez's motion alleged that the federal district court had misapplied the AEDPA's Section 2244(d), relating to the applicable statute of limitations. His motion did not substantively address federal grounds for setting aside his conviction; therefore, allowing his motion to proceed on its own terms would create no inconsistency with the habeas corpus statute or rules.

The district court properly denied relief, according to Justice Scalia. Neither the lack of diligence that Gonzalez showed in filing his very late petition nor any change in law resulting from Artuz rose to the level of an "extraordinary circumstance" justifying relief under Rule 60(b)(6).

Justice Scalia was joined in the majority opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. Justice Breyer filed a separate concurring opinion. Justice John Paul Stevens filed a dissent, joined by Justice David Souter, in which he agreed with the Court's conclusion but disagreed with its decision to rule on the merits of the motion in the first instance.

Mayle v. Felix

The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1241, places a one-year time limit on the filing of habeas corpus petitions in the federal district court. Congress sought to speed up the habeas process through this statute of limitations; another provision bars the filing of multiple petitions. Despite the seemingly unambiguous one-year statute of limitations, the federal courts of appeals were soon faced with prisoners who sought to amend their petitions after the expiration of the AEDPA time limit. The courts of appeals came to contrary conclusions—some allowed the amended petition, while others ruled that they were time-barred because they raised new issues unrelated to matters argued in the original petition. The U.S. SUPREME COURT was again called upon to resolve the issue. In Mayle v. Felix, 544 U.S. __, 125 S.Ct. 2562, __ L.Ed.2d __ (2005), the Court held that habeas petitions could not be amended after the one-year period if the new claims were not related to the initial habeas claims.

Jacoby Felix was convicted in California state court of first-degree murder and second-degree robbery. He received a life sentence. Felix appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial court had violated his SIXTH AMENDMENT right to confront witnesses by allowing the playing of a videotaped statement by a witness. The California Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction, and the California Supreme Court declined his petition to review the case. Felix promptly filed, in a California federal district court, a petition for a writ of habeas corpus that he had written himself. He based his claim on the Sixth Amendment issue. Within a few weeks, the federal district court appointed an attorney to represent Felix and ordered him to file an amended petition.

Eight months later, Felix's attorney filed the amended petition, which contained a FIFTH AMENDMENT claim: Felix argued that he had been coerced by the police, after his arrest, to make incriminating statements that the prosecution used at his trial. The prosecutor moved the court to dismiss the Fifth Amendment claim because Felix had filed it five months after the expiration of the AEDPA one-year time limit. Felix argued that the court should accept this claim because it related back to the date of his original petition. Under Rule 15 (c)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a petitioner may amend a petition when a claim arose out of the "conduct, transaction, or occurrence set forth…in the original pleading." Felix contended that the constitutionality of his criminal conviction was the "transaction" that justified the acceptance of the amended petition. The district court agreed with the prosecutor, dismissing the Fifth Amendment claim because it was not based on the videotaped statement, which was the conduct, transaction, or occurrence at issue. The court also dismissed the Sixth Amendment claim on its merits. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of the Sixth Amendment claim but reversed the Fifth Amendment claim dismissal. The appeals court ruled that the relevant "transaction" under Rule 15 (c)(2) was Felix's "trial and conviction in state court." It was reluctant to define the transaction at a greater level of specificity, as that would divide the trial into a "series of perhaps hundreds of individual occurrences." The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal because the circuit courts were divided over the time to permit amended habeas petitions.

The Court, in a 7-2 decision, overruled the Ninth Circuit. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her majority opinion, noted that a separate set of rules govern federal habeas proceedings started by state prisoners. Habeas Corpus Rule 2(c) mandates that a petition specify all the grounds for relief and the relevant facts to support each ground. In addition, the model form given to help prisoners complete their petitions contains boldfaced text that warns, "If you fail to set forth all grounds in this petition, you may be barred from presenting additional grounds at a later date."

As to the "relation back" interpretation of Rule 15 (c)(2), Justice Ginsburg rejected the Ninth Circuit's "comprehensive definition" that permitted an amended petition so long as the new claim can be traced to the petitioner's trial, conviction, or sentence. Such an approach was much too broad and would invite many new claims. The better approach was to allow relation back "only when the claims added by the amendment arise from the same core facts as the timely filed claims, and not when the new claims depend upon events separate in 'both time and type' form the originally raised episodes." Moreover, a broad interpretation would undermine AEDPA, and its one-year limitation would have "slim significance."

Justice DAVID SOUTER, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, argued that the Court was not compelled to endorse a narrow construction of the relation-back rule. He pointed out that allowing one amended petition would not slow the system down, as any further amendments must be approved by the district court. Finally, he contended that the ruling was unfair to unrepresented prisoners who had to complete the habeas petition without the benefit of a legal background. In contrast, a prisoner who had legal counsel had a better chance of filing a petition that contained all pertinent constitutional claims.

Pace v. DiGuglielmo

The procedural rules governing petitions for writs of habeas corpus from federal courts has grown complicated since Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. No. 104-132. AEDPA sought to reduce the number of habeas filings by imposing strict timelines on petitions. This statutory scheme, however, did not cover all time-limit issues, resulting in numerous reviews by the federal appellate courts. The U.S. SUPREME COURT has issued decisions on these technical legal issues, the most recent being Pace v. DiGuglielmo, __U.S. __, 125 S.Ct. 1807, __ L.Ed.2d __ (2005). The Court ruled that a state postconviction petition that was rejected by the state court as untimely had not been "properly filed" within the meaning of §244(d)(2) of AEDPA. Accordingly, the one-year statute of limitations on filing a federal habeas corpus petition was not tolled (i.e., temporarily suspended), and the prisoner's federal petition had to be rejected.

John Pace pleaded guilty in February 1986 to second-degree murder in a Pennsylvania state court and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He did not file a direct appeal of his guilty plea; instead, in August 1986, Pace filed a petition under the Pennsylvania Post Conviction Hearing Act (PCHA), 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. §9541. His PCHA proceedings ended in 1992 when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Pace's untimely request for discretionary review. Pace waited more than four years before filing another state postconviction petition in November 1996 under the Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. §9541, which had replaced PCHA. PCRA had been amended in 1995 to include a statute of limitations for state postconviction petitions. The trial court dismissed Pace's petition as untimely and meritless under the PCRA. Pace filed an appeal, but the superior court ruled it untimely as well, in December 1998. The state supreme court rejected his petition for review in July 1999.

In late December 1999, Pace filed a federal habeas petition. Although the federal magistrate recommended that the petition be dismissed as untimely under AEDPA, the district court judge rejected this advice. Instead, the court allowed Pace's petition to proceed, concluding that the time during which the PCRA petition was under review (November 1996 to July 1999) tolled the one-year AEDPA filing period. Although the state court had ultimately rejected Pace's petition as untimely, the federal court believed that Pace's petition had been "properly filed" with the state court. In other words, the court had accepted his filing and had considered it. The court relied on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Artuz v. Bennett, 531U.S. 4, 121 S.Ct. 361, 148 L.Ed.2d 213 (2000). In that case, the Court rejected a state's claim that postconviction review had not been "properly filed" for purposes of the AEDPA unless it complied with all mandatory state-law procedural requirements that would bar review of the merits of the application. The Court stated that an application is "filed" when it is delivered to, and accepted by, the appropriate court officer for placement in the court record. Moreover, the question of whether an application had been "properly filed" was "quite separate" from the question of whether the claims contained in the application were meritorious or barred by court procedure. In addition, the state procedural bars at issue in the case placed conditions on obtaining relief but did not place conditions on the actual filing of Bennett's motion.

On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the district court's decision. It reasoned that the PCRA time limit constituted conditions to filing and that when a state court determines that a petition was untimely, it was not "properly filed" for AEDPA purposes. The Supreme Court accepted review because the circuit courts were divided over whether postconviction petitions rejected by state courts as untimely nevertheless had been "properly filed" and thus could toll the one-year AEDPA statute of limitations.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the Third Circuit. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his majority opinion, stated that "in common understanding," a petition that is filed after a time limit is not "properly filed." To hold otherwise would allow a state prisoner to toll the AEDPA's statute of limitations "at will simply by filing untimely state postconviction petitions." That would turn the AEDPA tolling provision into an "extension mechanism" that was contrary to congressional intent and would "open the door to abusive delay." Therefore, when a petition is untimely under state law, "that is the end of the matter" under 2244(d)(2). It was not enough that a court clerk accepted Pace's petition; once the court rejected a petition as untimely, it could not be considered to have been "properly filed."

Justice John Paul Stevens, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices DAVID SOUTER, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and STEPHEN BREYER, contended that petitions such as Pace's that were delivered to, and accepted by, the court clerk and placed in the official record should be considered "properly filed." He expressed concern that state prisoners will add to the work of the federal courts with a "flood of protective filings" to ensure that they do not miss the one-year statute of limitations under AEDPA while their postconviction petitions are under consideration by state courts.

Rhines v. Weber

In Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. __, 125 S.Ct. 1528, 161 L.Ed.2d 440 (2005), the U.S. SUPREME COURT addressed statute-of-limitations problems involving "mixed" habeas corpus petitions (i.e., those that contain claims that have been exhausted in state courts, along with some that have not). The precise question before the Court was whether a federal district court had the discretion to stay the mixed petition while the petitioner presented his unexhausted claims to the state court for the first time.

As background, one of the main reasons that Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1241, was to limit lengthy appeals that typically precede executions. The AEDPA contains a one-year statute of limitations that would have barred death row inmate Charles Rhines from returning to federal court once state courts had finished reviewing challenges to his conviction.

A South Dakota court sentenced Rhines to death following his conviction for stabbing to death a former co-worker who accidentally had happened upon Rhines's burglary of a Rapid City doughnut shop. In December 1996, Rhines filed a petition for state habeas corpus, which was denied, and the Supreme Court of South Dakota later affirmed that denial in February 2000. At that time, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §2254, Rhines filed a petition for federal habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota. Because the AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations was tolled during the time when Rhines' state petition was pending, he still had more than 11 months remaining at the time when he filed the federal petition.

In July 2002, the federal district court concluded that eight of Rhines's 35 claims of constitutional defects in his conviction and sentence had not been exhausted in state court. This decision came approximately 18 months after Rhines had filed his amended federal petition, and the AEDPA one-year statute of limitations had now run. (The Supreme Court had previously held, in Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 121 S.Ct. 2120, 150 L.Ed.2d 251 (2001), that the statute of limitations is not tolled during the pendency of a federal petition.) Accordingly, if the district court had dismissed Rhines's mixed petition at that point, he would have been unable to refile in federal court after exhausting the unexhausted claims in state court.

Faced with this dilemma, the district court granted Rhines's petition to hold his pending federal habeas corpus petition in abeyance while he presented his unexhausted claims before the state court. The district court conditioned the stay with a requirement that Rhines return to federal court within 60 days of completing state court exhaustion. The state appealed the district court's stay to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. That court had previously ruled, in Akins v. Kenney, 341 F.3d 681 (2003), that a district court had no authority to stay a mixed petition absent truly exceptional circumstances. It therefore reversed, vacated the stay, and remanded Rhines's case to the district court to determine whether Rhines could proceed by deleting unexhausted claims. Because appellate courts were split on this issue, certiorari was granted.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 9-0 plurality opinion, held that, under limited circumstances, a district court had the discretion to stay a mixed petition in order for a petitioner to present unexhausted claims to a state court in the first instance, and then to return to federal court for review of the perfected petition. Justice O'Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. Acknowledging "the gravity of this problem and the difficulty it has posed," (referring to the AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations) the Court held that a stay and abeyance was only appropriate "when the district court determines there was good cause for the petitioner's failure to exhaust his claims first in state court." Further, even where there is a showing of good cause for a failure to exhaust, a district court should not employ the stay-and-abeyance procedure when the unexhausted claims are "plainly meritless."

Prior to the AEDPA, there was no statute of limitations on federal habeas corpus petitions. Fourteen years prior to the AEDPA, the U.S. Supreme Court had established, in Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982), that federal courts may not adjudicate mixed petitions and that they must give state courts the first opportunity to decide claims. Lundy imposed a "total exhaustion" requirement and directed federal courts to dismiss mixed petitions without prejudice, allowing petitioners to return to state court.

The Court noted that AEDPA did not deprive federal courts of the discretionary authority to issue stays, but that, in order to further the objectives of AEDPA, stay and abeyance should be available only under limited circumstances. According to the opinion, although a petitioner's interest in obtaining federal review outweighs the competing interests in finality and the speedy resolution of federal petitions, a district court should place reasonable time limits on the trip to state court and back, in order not to frustrate AEDPA's finality goal. The Court also left open a district court's discretion to permit a petitioner to delete the unexhausted claims and to proceed with the exhausted ones.

Justice O'Connor was joined by Justices Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer, and Chief Justice Rehnquist, although Justices Stevens and Souter filed separate concurring opinions. Justice Stevens merely expressed concern that the "good cause" requirement not be construed by courts in a manner that is unduly strict and inflexible, so as to "trap the unwary pro se prisoner."