Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-02-01913/USCOURTS-ca8-02-01913-0/pdf.json

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

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The author stepped down as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals

for the Eighth Circuit at the close of business on March 31, 2003. He has been

succeeded by the Honorable James B. Loken. 

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

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No. 02-1913

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Samar Akins,

Appellant,

v.

Michael L. Kenney, Warden of the

Nebraska State Penitentiary,

Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States

District Court for the

District of Nebraska.

 [PUBLISHED]

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Submitted: March 12, 2003

 Filed: September 2, 2003

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Before HANSEN,1

 Chief Judge, LOKEN and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. 

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HANSEN, Circuit Judge.

Samar Akins, a Nebraska inmate, appeals the dismissal of his amended petition

for a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (2000), for failure to exhaust state court

remedies. See O'Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 845 (1999) (requiring inmates

to exhaust state judicial remedies by invoking one complete round of the state's

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established ordinary appellate review procedures). We affirm the judgment of the

district court in part, and we reverse and remand in part. 

I. 

In January 1999, a Nebraska state court jury convicted Akins of robbery, using

a deadly weapon to commit a felony, and operating a motor vehicle to avoid arrest.

The Nebraska Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions but remanded for

resentencing on the motor vehicle count. State v. Akins, No. A-99-593, 2000 WL

707185 (Neb. Ct. App. May 16, 2000). Akins did not seek further review by the

Supreme Court of Nebraska. 

Prior to his resentencing, Akins filed a motion in state court for postconviction

relief, but the state district court denied the motion as premature because resentencing

had not yet occurred. Akins appealed this denial. While his appeal of the

postconviction case was pending, the state district court resentenced Akins on the

underlying remanded charge by order dated August 11, 2000. On September 20,

2000, the Nebraska Court of Appeals dismissed the premature postconviction appeal

without opinion. Akins filed a petition for further review of the postconviction

appeal in the Supreme Court of Nebraska on October 20, 2000, but that court denied

further review on December 13, 2000. Akins filed no direct appeal or postconviction

relief motion following his resentencing on remand in August 2000. 

Akins then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court in

January 2001, asserting claims of ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel,

trial court evidentiary errors, and prosecutorial misconduct. He amended the petition

in June 2001. The state moved to dismiss the petition, asserting it contained

unexhausted claims and urging that Akins may still have an available avenue of relief

because Neb. Rev. Stat. § 29-3001 (1995) proscribes no time limit for the filing of a

postconviction relief motion. The federal district court dismissed the habeas petition

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without prejudice on February 19, 2002, concluding that the petition contained

unexhausted claims. 

We granted a certificate of appealability in this case, noting that although the

dismissal was without prejudice, Akins may be barred from returning to federal court

after exhaustion because more than one year had already passed while his § 2254

petition was pending and the pendency of the federal petition did not toll the one-year

statute of limitation of § 2244(d). See Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 181-82

(2001). We certified two issues for this appeal: (1) whether, under Nebraska law, a

prisoner must file a petition for further review in the Nebraska Supreme Court in

order to exhaust state judicial remedies; and (2) whether the district court should have

stayed (rather than dismissed) the federal habeas petition pending exhaustion of the

available state postconviction remedies in order to preserve federal court jurisdiction.

II.

A.

Akins first argues that Nebraska law did not require him to file a petition for

further review with the Supreme Court of Nebraska in order to exhaust his available

state court remedies. We disagree. In order to satisfy the exhaustion requirement of

28 U.S.C. § 2254(c), "state prisoners [must] file petitions for discretionary review

when that review is part of the ordinary appellate review procedure in the State."

O'Sullivan, 526 U.S. at 847. Consistent with the purpose of the exhaustion rule,

"state prisoners must give the state courts one full opportunity to resolve any

constitutional issues by invoking one complete round of the State's established

appellate review process." Id. at 845. State prisoners are not required to present their

claims through discretionary review if such review would be considered

"extraordinary." Id.

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Nebraska court rules provide for discretionary review in the Supreme Court of

Nebraska of decisions by the Nebraska Court of Appeals. Neb. Ct. Rule of Prac. 2.G

(2003). A petition for further review must be filed within 30 days after the Court of

Appeals' opinion, and a specific format is provided to govern the filing form and

content of the petition. Id. Rule 2.F(1)-(3). Further, the rules provide that no

mandate shall issue in any case during the time allowed for the filing of a petition for

further review. Id. Rule 2.F(7). Nothing in Nebraska law "plainly states that a

petition for further review is an extraordinary remedy outside the standard review

process," Dixon v. Dormire, 263 F.3d 774, 779 (8th Cir. 2001), and in fact, the rules

indicate that such a procedure is considered the ordinary process because the mandate

may not issue until time for filing such a petition has lapsed. Thus, at some point,

Akins was required to have presented his constitutional claims to the Nebraska

Supreme Court through a discretionary petition for further review in order to exhaust

his available state court remedies before proceeding to federal court.

In his initial direct criminal appeal, Akins raised four claims of ineffective

assistance of trial counsel and a claim of structural error from the trial court's failure

to remove Akins' trial counsel due to the asserted conflict between Akins and his

counsel. The Nebraska Court of Appeals declined to reach all but one of the asserted

ineffective-assistance claims, concluding that the record on direct appeal was

inadequate to resolve the other issues. The court denied the remaining claim of

ineffective assistance of counsel on its merits and also denied the claim of structural

error as meritless. Akins did not file a petition for further review to test the Court of

Appeals' decision on any of these issues, nor did he file a direct appeal from the

resentencing, which he might have pursued all the way through the state supreme

court, but did not. 

Following his initial direct criminal appeal, but before resentencing, Akins

filed a premature motion for postconviction relief, which all the state courts dismissed

as premature without reaching the merits of any substantive issues Akins had

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asserted. Consequently, although Akins appealed this premature postconviction relief

motion all the way through the state supreme court, this did not accomplish

exhaustion because the action was dismissed on procedural grounds. 

Akins did not thereafter file a proper postconviction relief motion to assert the

claims from his initial appeal which were rejected by the Court of Appeals as having

an inadequate record for review. There is no time limit preventing him from filing

a postconviction relief motion under Nebraska law to address the issues either that the

state court of appeals initially rejected because the record was inadequate or that

could not have been raised in the direct appeal, such as the claim of ineffective

assistance of appellate counsel. See Neb. Rev. Stat. § 29-3001 (indicating that a

postconviction relief motion may be filed "at any time in the court which imposed

such sentence"). If Akins now filed a state postconviction relief motion, he could

then appeal any adverse postconviction ruling and would have the opportunity to seek

discretionary review in the Nebraska Supreme Court, thus giving the state courts the

opportunity to address the merits of his constitutional issues through one complete

round of ordinary appellate procedure. 

We thus agree with the federal district court's conclusion that Akins has not yet

exhausted his available state court remedies, and he will be required to file a motion

for further review with the state supreme court in order to achieve complete

exhaustion should he choose to bring a new state postconviction relief proceeding.

B.

The second issue designated in the certificate of appealability is whether the

district court should have stayed this § 2254 petition pending Akins' exhaustion of

available state court remedies. Although the state disputes it, and we have some

doubt ourselves about it, Akins asserts that his petition contains both exhausted and

unexhausted claims. (Appellant's Br. at 35-37.) There is no dispute that the federal

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statute of limitations lapsed while his § 2254 petition was pending in the district

court. 

In Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 510 (1982), the Supreme Court adopted a total

exhaustion rule which requires district courts to dismiss habeas corpus petitions that

are mixed, that is, those containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims. This rule

leaves the petitioner with the choice of returning to state court to exhaust available

state court remedies or amending the federal habeas petition to strike the unexhausted

claims and to proceed on only the exhausted claims. Id. When the Court decided

Rose v. Lundy, there was no federal time limit on the petitioner's ability to file a §

2254 petition, and thus there was no risk to the petitioner from dismissing a petition

without prejudice. 

Since the enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of

1996 (AEDPA), federal habeas petitioners are subject to a one-year statute of

limitations. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). This limit may render some petitioners' claims

time-barred upon their return to federal court after exhausting their state court

remedies following a dismissal without prejudice on exhaustion grounds. See

Nowaczyk v. Warden, New Hampshire State Prison, 299 F.3d 69, 79 (1st Cir. 2002).

There is no question that in this case, the dismissal without prejudice jeopardizes Mr.

Akins' ability to seek a later review in federal court because the federal statute of

limitations expired while his habeas petition was pending, and the district court

subsequently dismissed for failure to exhaust. The pendency of a federal proceeding

does not provide a statutory basis for tolling the statute of limitations. Duncan, 533

U.S. at 181. Thus, absent a stay or equitable tolling, Akins will be unable to return

to federal court following exhaustion of his state court remedies.

Several circuits have concluded that a stay is required or is reasonable in cases

of mixed habeas petitions where a dismissal would "jeopardize the petitioner's ability

to obtain federal review" in light of AEDPA's one-year statute of limitation.

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Nowaczyk, 299 F.3d at 79; see also Brambles v. Duncan, 330 F.3d 1197, 1203 (9th

Cir. 2003); Palmer v. Carlton, 276 F.3d 777, 781 (6th Cir. 2002); Zarvela v. Artuz,

254 F.3d 374, 380 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 534 U.S. 1015 (2001); Freeman v. Page,

208 F.3d 572, 577 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 946 (2000). Justice Stevens

stated in his concurring opinion in Duncan that "although the Court's pre-AEDPA

decision in Rose v. Lundy prescribed the dismissal of federal habeas corpus petitions

containing unexhausted claims, in our post-AEDPA world there is no reason why a

district court should not retain jurisdiction over a meritorious claim and stay further

proceedings pending the complete exhaustion of state remedies." Duncan, 533 U.S.

at 182-83 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (citation

omitted). 

While this view may be the "growing consensus," Nowaczyk, 299 F.3d at 79,

it has not yet been adopted by a majority of the members of the Supreme Court or by

this circuit. Absent contrary controlling Supreme Court authority, we are bound to

follow our own precedents and the Supreme Court's view as expressed in Rose v.

Lundy. We have held, post-AEDPA, that "a district court has no authority to hold a

habeas petition containing unexhausted claims in abeyance absent truly exceptional

circumstances, such as when state remedies are inadequate or fail to afford a full and

fair adjudication of federal claims, or when exhaustion in state court would be futile."

Carmichael v. White, 163 F.3d 1044, 1045 (8th Cir. 1998) (citing Victor v. Hopkins,

90 F.3d 276, 279-80 & n.2, 282 (8th Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1153 (1997)).

Habeas petitioners who delay filing for state postconviction relief "should be held

responsible for their failure to fulfill the long-standing requirement that they exhaust

state remedies." Jiminez v. Rice, 276 F.3d 478, 482 (9th Cir. 2001). Akins has

asserted unexhausted claims and there is no showing that it would be futile for him

to pursue his available state court remedy, which he would have been wise to pursue

in the first instance. We cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion

in not granting a stay sua sponte. See Thompson v. Sec. for Dep't of Corr., 320 F.3d

1228, 1229-30 & n.3 (11th Cir. 2003) (holding district court did not abuse its

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discretion by dismissing mixed petition in spite of petitioner's argument that he had

no choice but to file a mixed petition in order to meet the one-year filing deadline of

AEDPA and preserve federal review for the exhausted claims). 

Akins also asserts that the district court should have given him an opportunity

to amend his petition to delete the unexhausted claims and allow him to proceed with

the exhausted claims rather than face a complete dismissal, and thereby avoid the

statute of limitations problem on the exhausted claims. See Jackson v. Dormire, 180

F.3d 919, 920 (8th Cir. 1999) (holding that the petitioner should be given the option

to amend the petition and to proceed only with the claims that had been exhausted by

the time the one-year limitations period expired); see also Victor, 90 F.3d at 282

(noting that a mixed petition must be dismissed or the petitioner must elect to proceed

on only the exhausted claims (applying Rose v. Lundy)). We are not convinced that

Akins has asserted any completely exhausted claims because none of his claims have

been asserted all the way through one complete round of the state's ordinary appellate

procedure. However, he has asserted some claims for which there is no longer a

presently available state court remedy. 

Under Nebraska law, a claim that was or could have been asserted on direct

appeal may not be pursued in a postconviction relief motion. See Hall v. State, 646

N.W.2d 572, 579 (Neb. 2002); State v. Al-Zubaidy, 641 N.W.2d 362, 371 (Neb.

2002). Akins has included in his federal habeas petition some claims that either were

addressed on the merits in his initial direct appeal or were never presented to the

appellate courts, and Akins would not be free to pursue such claims presently in a

postconviction relief proceeding. Therefore, the dismissal of his federal habeas

petition on exhaustion grounds is not appropriate as to claims for which he has no

currently "available procedure" under state law to raise the issues. 28 U.S.C. §

2254(c) (stating conversely that habeas relief may not be granted if the applicant has

the right "by any available procedure" to raise the issue in question). Accordingly,

we remand for further proceedings on those claims. If on remand the state asserts that

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those claims are procedurally barred, Akins should then be given an opportunity to

demonstrate cause and prejudice to excuse his procedural default. 

III

Accordingly, we affirm the district court's judgment that the petition contains

unexhausted claims. We also affirm the district court's refusal to grant a stay sua

sponte and its dismissal of unexhausted claims for which there is a currently available

state court remedy. We reverse the dismissal only as to claims for which there is no

currently available state court remedy, and we remand for further proceedings on

those claims.

 

A true copy.

Attest:

CLERK, U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, EIGHTH CIRCUIT.

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