Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca6-14-06227/USCOURTS-ca6-14-06227-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION 

Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) 

File Name: 16a0156p.06 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT 

_________________ 

YAQOB TAFAN THOMAS, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v. 

JOSEPH P. MEKO, Warden, 

Respondent-Appellee. 

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No. 14-6227 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Kentucky at Lexington. 

No. 5:11-cv-00148—William O. Bertelsman, District Judge. 

Argued: March 7, 2016 

Decided and Filed: July 7, 2016 

Before: KETHLEDGE, DONALD, and ROTH, Circuit Judges.*

_________________ 

COUNSEL 

ARGUED: William Neal, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF LAW, Knoxville, 

Tennessee, for Appellant. James C. Shackelford, OFFICE OF THE KENTUCKY ATTORNEY 

GENERAL, Frankfort, Kentucky, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: William Neal, Lucille A. Jewel, 

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF LAW, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. 

James C. Shackelford, OFFICE OF THE KENTUCKY ATTORNEY GENERAL, Frankfort, 

Kentucky, for Appellee. 

 *

The Honorable Jane R. Roth, Senior Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third 

Circuit, sitting by designation. 

>

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_________________ 

OPINION 

_________________ 

KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. A Kentucky jury found Yaqob Thomas guilty of murder 

and evidence-tampering. Thomas filed successive applications in state court for relief from his 

conviction. When those applications failed, he submitted an application for a writ of habeas 

corpus in federal district court. The district court dismissed Thomas’s application as untimely 

after concluding that Thomas’s second state-court application for relief had not been “properly 

filed” and thus did not toll the limitations period for Thomas’s federal habeas application. We 

respectfully disagree and reverse. 

 In December 2002, Thomas joined Gregory Baltimore and Dionte Burdette at a Waffle 

House in Lexington, Kentucky to eat dinner and complete a cocaine sale. Baltimore had 

arranged the transaction so that Thomas would pay Burdette $7,000 for seven ounces of cocaine 

and pay Baltimore a $2,000 “agent’s fee.” After they finished eating, they walked to Burdette’s 

SUV in the restaurant parking lot. Thomas sat in the back seat; Burdette and Baltimore sat up 

front. Soon Thomas grabbed Burdette by the neck, held a handgun to his head, and demanded 

that Burdette turn over his cocaine. When Burdette refused, Thomas shot him in the knee and 

again demanded the cocaine. Burdette said that he did not have the cocaine and that another 

man, waiting across the street, did. Thomas then shot Burdette three times in the chest, fled with 

Baltimore on foot, and threw his handgun into the woods. Burdette later died at a hospital. 

 At Thomas’s November 2004 murder trial, the Commonwealth presented testimony from 

Baltimore and Burdette’s mother, Donna Brooks, to whom Thomas had confessed. The jury 

found Thomas guilty and the trial court sentenced him to 40 years in prison. In January 2006, 

the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed Thomas’s conviction and sentence. 

 In May 2006, Thomas filed a motion to vacate his criminal judgment on grounds of 

ineffective assistance of counsel. He presented his motion under Kentucky Rule of Criminal 

Procedure 11.42, which requires that the movant “state all grounds for holding the sentence 

invalid of which the movant has knowledge. Final disposition of the motion shall conclude all 

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issues that could reasonably have been presented in the same proceeding.” Ky. R. Crim. P. 

11.42(3). The trial court denied Thomas’s motion, the court of appeals affirmed, and in October 

2008 the Kentucky Supreme Court declined review. 

 In March 2009, Thomas filed another motion for post-conviction relief, alleging that he 

had recently discovered evidence (namely, Burdette’s funeral program) that prosecutors had 

failed to produce to Thomas and that Thomas says he could have used to impeach Brooks’s 

testimony. This time, Thomas argued that he had a right to relief under multiple procedural 

provisions, including Kentucky Rule of Criminal Procedure 11.42 and Kentucky Rule of Civil 

Procedure 60.02. The latter rule (which resembles Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60 in some 

respects) permits relief from a judgment where the movant presents “newly discovered evidence 

which by due diligence could not have been discovered in time to move for a new trial[,]” or 

presents “any other reason of an extraordinary nature justifying relief.” Ky. R. Civ. P. 60.02(b), 

(f). Unlike Rule 11.42, Rule 60.02(f) contains no bar on successive motions. 

 In January 2010, the trial court denied Thomas’s filing on the merits. It first interpreted 

Thomas’s filing as separate motions: one under Rule 11.42 and another under Rule 60.02. As to 

the Rule 11.42 motion, the court held that the prosecution’s alleged failure to hand over 

impeachment evidence had not prejudiced Thomas at trial: “the Court absolutely make[s] a 

Finding of Fact and Conclusion of Law that this information, even if brought out at the trial of 

this case, would not establish, by any stretch of the imagination, a reasonable probability that the 

result of the trial would have been different.” As to Thomas’s Rule 60.02 motion, the court held 

that Thomas’s allegations “add nothing that remotely justif[ies] any relief to Thomas. . . . It is 

absolutely crystal-clear that Thomas has not established anything remotely close to a showing 

that would justify the relief sought in this case[.]” 

 In June 2011, the Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed. Unlike the trial court, the Court 

of Appeals held that Thomas’s Rule 11.42 motion was “procedurally bar[red]” by the rule 

against successive motions for relief because Thomas “was certainly aware of the existence of 

the funeral program prior to his first” motion for post-conviction relief. But the Court of 

Appeals adjudicated Thomas’s Rule 60.02 motion on the merits, finding “no merit in [Thomas’s] 

claims” and concluding that the trial court had not “abused its discretion in denying relief.” 

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 Meanwhile, in April 2011—shortly before the Kentucky Court of Appeals issued its 

ruling—Thomas filed a habeas application in federal district court, as well as a motion to hold 

his federal proceedings in abeyance pending the resolution of his state-court proceedings. The 

district court granted that motion. 

 Thomas’s state-court proceedings finally ended in August 2013, when the Kentucky 

Supreme Court denied review of Thomas’s Rule 11.42 and 60.02 motions. In federal district 

court, Thomas then sought to amend his application for habeas relief. Warden Joseph Meko 

objected, arguing that Thomas’s habeas application was untimely. The district court agreed and 

dismissed the application after concluding that Thomas’s “second post-conviction motion for 

collateral relief did not toll the [federal habeas] statute of limitations” because the motion was 

“not properly filed” in state court. 

 We review de novo the district court’s dismissal of Thomas’s application. Board v. 

Bradshaw, 805 F.3d 769, 771 (6th Cir. 2015). The federal habeas statute provides that a “1-year 

period of limitation shall apply to an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in 

custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court.” 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). Subject to 

exceptions not applicable here, that period is measured from “the date on which the judgment 

became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such 

review[.]” Id. Here, that date was April 19, 2006, when Thomas’s time to petition for certiorari 

review of his conviction in the U.S. Supreme Court expired. The limitations period for 

Thomas’s federal habeas petition thus began running on that date. 

 But the limitations clock soon stopped. The habeas statute provides that the “time during 

which a properly filed application for State post-conviction or other collateral review . . . is 

pending shall not be counted toward any period of limitation under this subsection.” 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2244(d)(2). About a month after Thomas’s criminal judgment became final, Thomas filed his 

first state-court motion for post-conviction relief. That motion was properly filed—thus tolling 

the limitations period—and remained pending until October 2008, at which point the clock for 

his federal limitations period began running again. Five months later, in March 2009, Thomas 

filed a second round of state-court motions for post-conviction relief, which, if properly filed, 

again tolled his limitations period. Id. Thomas did not file his federal habeas petition until 

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another two years later, at which time his March 2009 motions remained pending. Thus, if his 

March 2009 motions were “properly filed” as that term is used in § 2244(d)(2), his federal 

habeas petition was timely; if not, then not. 

 The question whether an application for state post-conviction relief was properly filed is 

“quite separate from the question whether the claims contained in the application are meritorious 

and free of procedural bar.” Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U.S. 4, 9 (2000) (emphasis in original). “[A]n 

application is ‘properly filed’ when its delivery and acceptance are in compliance with the 

applicable laws and rules governing filings.” Id. at 8 (emphasis omitted). Thus, a state-court 

application can be properly filed even when the claims within it were not “properly presented or 

raised.” Id. at 10 (emphasis in original). For example, an application might consist entirely of 

claims that are procedurally defaulted, and yet—depending on the terms of the state rule—the 

application itself would be properly filed. Id. at 9. 

 Here, the state trial court construed Thomas’s March 2009 application for post-conviction 

relief as two motions arising separately under Rule 11.42 and Rule 60.02. The court then 

rejected both motions on the merits. The Court of Appeals likewise rejected Thomas’s 

60.02 motion on the merits, but held that his 11.42 motion was successive and thus procedurally 

barred. (Although a procedural bar does not necessarily equate to a rule governing filings, the 

Kentucky courts seem to treat Rule 11.42(3) that way, and in any event Thomas conceded at oral 

argument that his 11.42 motion was not properly filed.) Thus, neither the trial court nor the 

Kentucky Court of Appeals rejected Thomas’s 60.02 motion on the ground that it failed to 

comply with state “laws and rules governing filings.” Artuz, 531 U.S. at 8. Instead both courts 

rejected that motion on the merits. Hence the 60.02 motion was “properly filed” for purposes of 

28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2). 

 The warden responds that Thomas’s Rule 60.02 motion was an obvious attempt to 

circumvent the bar of Rule 11.42(3), and that we should therefore treat his 60.02 motion as 

improperly filed. But the Kentucky courts can police their own rules. Just as federal courts 

sometimes construe a motion under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) as a successive petition for purposes of 

28 U.S.C. § 2244, see, e.g., Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U.S. 538, 547 (1998), so too the 

Kentucky courts could have construed Thomas’s March 2009 filing as a single motion whose 

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filing was barred by Rule 11.42(3). Instead, they treated the filing as two separate motions—and 

denied Thomas’s Rule 60.02 motion on the merits without ever suggesting that the motion was 

improperly filed. 

 The warden also cites Williams v. Birkett, 670 F.3d 729 (6th Cir. 2012), but that decision 

only underscores the weakness of the warden’s argument here. In Williams, this court held that a 

Michigan rule against successive motions for state post-conviction relief was a rule governing 

the filing of such motions. But that rule explicitly instructs state courts to “return without filing

any successive motions for relief from judgment.” Mich. Ct. R. 6.502(G)(1) (emphasis added); 

see Williams, 670 F.3d at 730 (“Michigan law does not allow the filing of second motions for 

post-conviction relief”) (emphasis added). Kentucky Rule 11.42(3) says nothing of the sort here. 

Instead Rule 11.42(3) sets forth a rule of res judicata: “[f]inal disposition of [a post-conviction] 

motion shall conclude all issues that could reasonably have been presented in the same 

proceeding.” Ky. R. Crim. P. 11.42(3). 

 Rules governing filings, in the main, speak to the court clerk; rules setting forth a 

procedural bar speak to the court itself. (Statutes of limitations are the exception, since they are 

handled by the courts but considered a filing rule for this purpose. See Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 

544 U.S. 408, 417 (2005)). And by the Kentucky courts’ own description in this case, Rule 

11.42(3) is a “procedural bar” prohibiting Thomas from obtaining relief on claims he could have 

raised in earlier proceedings. Thomas v. Commonwealth, No. 2010–CA–000227–MR, 2011 WL 

2553519, at *3 (Ky. Ct. App. June 10, 2011). Thus, as applied by the Kentucky courts here, 

Rule 11.42(3) did not preclude Thomas from filing a motion to vacate his judgment under Ky. R. 

Civ. P. 60.02(f). 

 The district court’s judgment is reversed, and the case remanded for further proceedings 

consistent with this opinion. 

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