Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_05-cv-01263/USCOURTS-cand-3_05-cv-01263-3/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 28:2254 Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus (State)

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

GAYLIN LYNN BURLESON,

Petitioner,

v.

SCOTT KERNAN,

Respondent. /

No. C 05-1263 SI (pr)

ORDER DENYING REQUEST FOR

STAY AND ABEYANCE

Petitioner has requested a stay of the proceedings in this habeas action so that he may

return to state court to exhaust state court remedies as to a new claim he wants this court to

consider. The new claim he wants to assert is that he was denied his right to a jury trial in

connection with certain sentence enhancements and the restitution order. Respondent has

opposed the request, arguing that a stay is inappropriate because the claim sought to be

exhausted is meritless. 

A district court may stay a mixed habeas petition to allow the petitioner to exhaust his

unexhausted claims in state court. Rhines v. Webber, 544 U.S. 269, 277-78 (2005). In Rhines,

the Court discussed the stay-and-abeyance procedure for mixed habeas petitions. Rhines

cautioned district courts against being too liberal in allowing a stay because a stay works against

several of the purposes of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

("AEDPA") in that it "frustrates AEDPA's objective of encouraging finality by allowing a

petitioner to delay the resolution of the federal proceedings" and "undermines AEDPA's goal of

streamlining federal habeas proceedings by decreasing a petitioner's incentive to exhaust all his

claims in state court prior to filing his federal petition." Rhines, 544 U.S. at 277. A stay and

Case 3:05-cv-01263-SI Document 34 Filed 11/15/07 Page 1 of 5
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abeyance "is only appropriate when the district court determines there was good cause for the

petitioner's failure to exhaust his claims first in state court," the claims are not plainly meritless,

and there are no intentionally dilatory litigation tactics by the petitioner. Id. at 277-78.

Burleson’s request falters under the Rhines requirements. 

Burleson was sentenced to 40 years to life. The jury found true the allegations that

Burleson had suffered a 1971 murder conviction, a 1983 robbery conviction and a 1985 robbery

conviction. He received a 25-to-life sentence based on the jury's findings that he had suffered

prior convictions for the murder and two robberies. He also received three 5-year enhancements

for his prior convictions based on findings made by the judge. 

In the new claim he wants to assert, Burleson relies on a line of Supreme Court cases that

started with Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000). The rule from that line of cases is

that, "under the Sixth Amendment, any fact that exposes a defendant to a greater potential

sentence [than the statutory maximum] must be found by a jury, not a judge, and established

beyond a reasonable doubt, not merely by a preponderance of the evidence." Cunningham v.

California, 127 S. Ct. 856, 863-64 (2007). The relevant statutory maximum "'is not the

maximum sentence a judge may impose after finding additional fact, but the maximum he may

impose without any additional findings." Id. at 860 (quoting Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S.

296 303-04 (2004)). 

Staying this action while Burleson exhausts the claim is not appropriate because the claim

appears plainly meritless, see Rhines, 544 U.S. at 277, and he will be unable to show that an

eventual rejection of it by the state court would be contrary to or an unreasonable application of

clearly established federal law, as set forth by the Supreme Court. Burleson's claim runs into

the problem that the statutory maximum for his crime is life imprisonment because he was

sentenced under California's Three Strikes law. See CT 3157 (defendant was sentenced pursuant

to California Penal Code § 667(b)-(I) or § 1170.12). The claim he wants to pursue concerns the

minimum number of years he must serve on that life sentence before he is eligible for parole.

Nothing in the judge's determinations of the sentence enhancements will cause Burleson's

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sentence to extend beyond the life maximum to which he was sentenced and for which he may

be imprisoned based on the third strike conviction. That the Apprendi line of cases does not

apply is evidenced by the fact that an indeterminate sentencing scheme is one of the proposed

solutions to the jury trial problems caused by determinate sentencing schemes the Court has

invalidated. See, e.g., Blakely, 542 U.S. at 305 (citing with approval Williams v. New York, 337

U.S. 241 (1986) (judge's consultation of facts outside the trial record to decide whether to

sentence defendant to death did not violate the jury trial right because the indeterminate

sentencing scheme allowed the judge to sentence the defendant to death or imprisonment)); see

also id. at 332 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (noting that one of the alternatives to Guidelines-type

sentencing scheme is indeterminate sentencing, such as California's former system). In Blakely,

the Court explained that indeterminate sentencing that gives a judge greater judicial power to

set the sentence does not infringe on the province of the jury: "It increases judicial discretion,

to be sure, but not at the expense of the jury's traditional function of finding the facts essential

to the lawful imposition of the penalty. Of course, indeterminate schemes involve judicial

factfinding, in that a judge (like a parole board) may implicitly rule on those facts he deems

important to the exercise of his sentencing discretion. But the facts do not pertain to whether

the defendant has a legal right to a lesser sentence–and that makes all the difference insofar as

judicial impingement upon the traditional role of the jury is concerned." Blakely, 542 U.S. at

308-09. Furthermore, to the extent Burleson's argument depends on an overruling of existing

Supreme Court precedent, see Request For Stay, Exh. A, pp. 22-24 (arguing that AlmendarezTorres v. United States 523 U.S. 224 (1998), was wrongly decided), his prospects for success

under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) are especially bleak.

Staying this action while Burleson exhausts state court remedies is not appropriate for the

separate reason that Burleson has not shown good cause for this failure to exhaust his claim first

in state court, see Rhines, 544 U.S. at 277. Burleson is trying to pursue a claim known to him

since 2000. He alleged in his motion for new trial on March 30, 2000, that the element of force

had not been submitted to the jury on the murder and two robberies, the enhancement could not

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be imposed. See CT 3083. Although he initially cast it as an insufficient evidence claim, in an

April 20, 2000 response to the prosecution's opposition, Burleson asserted a denial of his right

to a jury trial on prior conviction sentencing enhancement allegations. See CT 3147-3150. This

is the same claim he is trying to raise seven years later. 

Burleson's efforts to urge that his claim gained life only after the U.S. Supreme Court

decided Cunningham v. California, 127 S. Ct. 856 (2007), are unpersuasive. Cunningham dealt

with a part of California's sentencing law (i.e., the sentence triad of lower/middle/upper terms)

not at issue in the present case. In Cunningham, the Court held that California's determinate

sentencing law (“DSL”) violated the Sixth Amendment because it allowed the sentencing court

to impose an upper term sentence based on aggravating facts that it found to exist by a

preponderance of the evidence. Id. at 860, 870-71. The court was directed under the sentencing

law to start with a “middle term” and then move to an “upper term” only if it found aggravating

factual circumstances beyond the elements of the charged offense. Id. at 862. Concluding that

the middle term was the relevant statutory maximum, and noting that aggravating facts were

found by a judge and not the jury, the Supreme Court held that the California sentencing law

violated the rule set out in Apprendi. Id. at 871. Burleson's sentence was not chosen from the

lower/middle/upper term triad but instead was an indeterminate term. In other words, because

he was a repeat offender with sentence enhancement allegations pertaining to his prior

convictions, he was sentenced under a different part of the California sentencing law than that

invalidated in Cunningham. In no way did he need to wait for Cunningham to be decided to

assert the claim he now wants to exhaust. The fact that Cunningham was the first in the

Apprendi line to address a California sentence does not matter: the Supreme Court will not do

fifty decisions to address the sentencing schemes in each of the fifty states so a prisoner cannot

claim a need to wait until the Supreme Court tackles the sentencing laws in that particular

prisoner's state. In sum, Cunningham did nothing to advance Burleson's position or to enable

him to argue a claim that had theretofore been barred. 

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For the foregoing reasons, petitioner's request for a stay and abeyance is DENIED.

(Docket # 27.)

 IT IS SO ORDERED.

DATED: November 15, 2007 

 SUSAN ILLSTON

United States District Judge

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