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

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 13-3911

ROBERT GACHO,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

KIM BUTLER, Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 13 C 4334 — Robert W. Gettleman, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JUNE 2, 2015 — DECIDED JULY 2, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge. Robert Gacho is one of many Illinois 

prisoners who had the misfortune to appear before the late 

Judge Thomas Maloney, a corrupt judge who served on the 

Cook County Circuit Court from 1977 until his indictment 

for bribery in 1991 in connection with the Operation 

Greylord investigation. Gacho was convicted of murder in 

Judge Maloney’s court in 1984 and has been trying to mount 

state and federal collateral attacks on his conviction since 

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1991. His most recent federal habeas petition alleges that his 

conviction was tainted by the judge’s corruption and also 

that his trial attorney was operating under an impermissible 

conflict of interest and was otherwise ineffective.

Gacho’s long quest for state postconviction relief is not

yet resolved, however, so he asked the federal court to

excuse the normal requirement that he exhaust his statecourt remedies. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(B)(ii). The district 

judge denied this request and dismissed Gacho’s § 2254 

petition for lack of exhaustion. Gacho appealed.

We dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. The district 

court dismissed the § 2254 petition without prejudice and 

with leave to refile when the state postconviction proceedings are finished. That’s a nonfinal, nonappealable order.

Gacho remains free to refile his petition in the district court

once he has exhausted his state remedies.

I. Background

After midnight on December 12, 1982, Aldo Fratto and 

Tullio Infelise paid a visit to Gacho’s home hoping to sell him 

three-quarters of a kilo of cocaine. The next morning Fratto 

and Infelise were found in the trunk of a car, tied up and 

shot repeatedly. Fratto was already dead; Infelise was at 

death’s door. Before he died, however, Infelise identified the

assailants as “Robert Gotch, Dino and Joe.” Gacho was 

immediately arrested, along with Dino Titone and Joseph 

Sorrentino, and he confessed his involvement in the murders

that same day, proofreading and signing a written statement.

The three men were charged with murder, aggravated 

kidnapping, and armed robbery. Gacho and Titone stood 

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trial in Judge Maloney’s court; Titone’s case was tried to the 

bench and Gacho’s to a jury. (Sorrentino was tried separately.) Gacho’s girlfriend Katherine De Wulf was the star witness for the prosecution. She had witnessed the key events of 

December 12, and her testimony largely aligned with

Gacho’s confession, which was also admitted at trial. The 

jury found Gacho guilty and he was sentenced to death.

As the world now knows, Judge Maloney was corrupt; he 

has “the dubious distinction of being the only Illinois judge 

ever convicted of fixing a murder case.” Bracy v. Gramley, 

520 U.S. 899, 901 (1997). In 1991 he was indicted by a federal 

grand jury on multiple bribery charges stemming from the

Operation Greylord investigation. He was convicted in 1993

and sentenced to a term in federal prison. Gacho claims that 

Maloney solicited a bribe from him but his family could not 

raise the money to pay the judge’s price. Titone’s family, on 

the other hand, paid Maloney $10,000 to fix his case, but he 

was convicted anyway.

Gacho now argues that a judge as corrupt as Maloney 

would surely have needed to compensate for his bribeinduced acquittals by throwing the book at defendants—like 

him—who either didn’t or couldn’t pay up. The Supreme 

Court has recognized this theory of corruption, known as 

“compensatory bias.” See id. at 905.

A crooked judge wasn’t Gacho’s only problem. He also 

claims that his trial lawyer was unscrupulous. Gacho hired 

Robert McDonnell, a Chicago attorney with well-known 

underworld connections; McDonnell was the son-in-law of 

Sam Giancana, longtime boss of the Chicago Outfit. A prosecutor alerted the court to a possible conflict of interest:

McDonnell had previously represented members of the 

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Infelise family, raising an obvious ethical concern given that 

Gacho stood accused of murdering Tullio Infelise. Gacho 

waived the conflict on the record, but he now contends that 

his waiver covered only the conflict created by McDonnell’s 

prior association with the victim’s family; he did not know 

that McDonnell continued to represent a member of the 

Infelise family at the time of his trial. This continuing conflict

of interest and other tactical errors at trial form the basis of 

Gacho’s Sixth Amendment claim that McDonnell’s representation was ineffective.

Gacho’s death sentence was set aside on direct appeal, see 

Illinois v. Gacho, 522 N.E.2d 1146 (Ill. 1988), and he returned 

to Judge Maloney’s court for resentencing. The judge imposed a sentence of life. Gacho filed his first state postconviction motion in 1991, as the Operation Greylord indictments were being unsealed. He amended the motion in 1997 

and supplemented it more than a decade later in 2008. He 

raised the same claims he now brings in his § 2254 petition: 

Maloney was corrupt, and McDonnell was conflicted and 

ineffective. Illinois moved to dismiss the supplemented state 

petition, and in 2009 that motion was granted. In 2012 the 

Illinois Appellate Court reversed in part and remanded the 

case to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing on Gacho’s 

judicial corruption and conflict-of-interest claims. The

hearing took place on August 6, 2013, and on October 6, 

2013, the trial court denied Gacho’s claims. That latest order 

is now before the Illinois Appellate Court; briefing was 

nearly complete when we heard oral argument in this case. 

Meanwhile, back in 1997—six years after he filed his first 

state postconviction petition—Gacho initiated a parallel 

action in the Northern District of Illinois seeking habeas 

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No. 13-3911 5

relief under § 2254. This was followed by a second § 2254 

petition in December 1999. In both petitions Gacho sought 

relief from an “unjustifiable” delay in the state-court proceedings. The district court consolidated the petitions and in 

November 2001 dismissed them without prejudice, concluding that the delays were the fault of defense counsel and 

thus Gacho was not eligible for relief from his requirement 

to exhaust state-court remedies. Gacho v. Harrington, No. 

13 C 4334, 2013 WL 5993458, at *1 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 7, 2013). 

In May 2013 Gacho filed another § 2254 petition—his 

third. He again asked to be excused from the exhaustion 

requirement because of inordinate delay in the state courts. 

The district court again denied his request. The judge noted

that “[p]roceedings in the state court ... are currently moving at a reasonable rate and there is no inordinate delay that 

must be remedied by initiating a merits-based review of 

petitioner’s postconviction claims in federal court.” Id. at *2. 

Since Gacho’s state-court remedies were now moving along, 

the judge dismissed the petition for lack of exhaustion. The 

dismissal was “without prejudice to petitioner refiling at the 

conclusion of the state postconviction proceedings.” Id. at *4.

Gacho appealed.1

 1 We recruited pro bono counsel for Gacho and now thank Robert Palmer 

and the Notre Dame Law School for their able efforts on their client’s 

behalf.

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II. Discussion

Section 2254 generally requires state prisoners to exhaust 

available state-court remedies before seeking habeas review 

in federal court:

(b)(1) An applicant for a writ of habeas 

corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be 

granted unless it appears that—

(A) the applicant has exhausted the remedies 

available in the courts of the State; or

(B)(i) there is an absence of available State 

corrective process; or

(ii) circumstances exist that render such process 

ineffective to protect the rights of the applicant.

28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1) (emphases added).

Gacho asks us to intervene in his quest for state collateral

relief by excusing the exhaustion requirement and addressing the merits of his due-process and Sixth Amendment 

claims. He argues that the 25 years he has spent languishing 

in state postconviction proceedings is an inordinate delay, 

making the state process “ineffective to protect his rights”

within the meaning of subsection (b)(1)(B)(ii) of § 2254. 

Gacho’s appeal runs into a jurisdictional impediment: 

The district court dismissed the § 2254 petition without 

prejudice to refiling once the state postconviction proceedings have run their course. That makes it a nonfinal order. 

With limited exceptions not relevant here, our jurisdiction 

extends only to appeals from final decisions of the district 

court. 28 U.S.C. § 1291; see also Mostly Memories, Inc. v. For 

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No. 13-3911 7

Your Ease Only, Inc., 526 F.3d 1093, 1097 (7th Cir. 2008) (“A 

dismissal without prejudice is normally nonfinal because the 

plaintiff remains free to refile his case.”).

This is not the first time we have addressed this kind of 

jurisdictional defect in the context of an unexhausted § 2254

petition. In Moore v. Mote, the district court dismissed a state 

prisoner’s § 2254 petition for failure to exhaust state remedies because his claims remained “pending before a state 

post-conviction court.” 368 F.3d 754, 755 (7th Cir. 2004). But 

the court had expressly left the door open to reviving the 

federal case when the state proceedings concluded. The 

judge dismissed the petition without prejudice and “with 

leave to refile ... once Moore exhausts his state court remedies.” Id. We held that the court’s order was nonfinal and 

thus not appealable under § 1291 “because it explicitly 

contemplates the court’s continuing involvement in the 

case.” Id. Accordingly, we dismissed the appeal for lack of 

appellate jurisdiction. Id. at 756. 

The situation here is identical. Gacho’s state postconviction claims remain pending before the Illinois Appellate 

Court. The district court dismissed his § 2254 petition for 

failure to exhaust, but the dismissal was without prejudice 

and the judge’s order specifically invited Gacho to refile his

petition when the state process concludes. It’s hard to see 

how Gacho can avoid the same jurisdictional fate as Moore.2

 2 A look at other circuits shows that our decision in Moore is not an 

outlier. The Ninth Circuit, for example, recently held that it lacked 

appellate jurisdiction in similar circumstances involving protracted state 

postconviction litigation. See Stanley v. Chappell, 764 F.3d 990 (9th Cir. 

2014) (dismissing an appeal from a district court’s nonfinal stay-andabeyance order). The Fourth and Fifth Circuits also have also treated the 

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There are a few limited circumstances under which a 

habeas petitioner can get around the seemingly nonfinal 

nature of a dismissal without prejudice, but they’re not 

implicated here. The common theme in these cases is that an 

ostensibly nonfinal order is functionally final. If, for example, a petitioner “will not be able to amend her complaint” 

after dismissal without prejudice and thus cannot refile it, 

then the dismissal is “final” for the purposes of appellate 

review. See Larkin v. Galloway, 266 F.3d 718, 721 (7th Cir. 

2001). Similarly, if a new, subsequent federal petition would 

be time-barred, then the dismissal without prejudice would 

be effectively final. See Dolis v. Chambers, 454 F.3d 721, 723 

(7th Cir. 2006). Here, however, there is no procedural impediment stopping Gacho from resubmitting his federal petition

once he has exhausted his state-court remedies.

Gacho argues that Moore is distinguishable because it did 

not involve a claim of excessive delay. As he sees it, “the 

issue of excessive delay is separate from, and independent 

of, the issue of exhaustion of state remedies,” and because 

this is a case about excessive delay, a “pure” exhaustion case

like Moore isn’t controlling. This argument confuses the 

merits with the antecedent question of appellate jurisdiction. 

 

dismissal of a § 2254 petition without prejudice as not vesting appellate 

jurisdiction. See Curtis v. Quarterman, 340 F. App’x 217, 218 (5th Cir. 2009) 

(per curiam) (“A dismissal without prejudice generally does not operate 

as an adjudication on the merits ... .”); Brown v. Dir., Va. Dep’t of Corr., 

6 F. App’x 122, 122 (4th Cir. 2001) (per curiam) (“Brown appeals the 

district court’s order dismissing his petition ... without prejudice ... . 

Because Brown may reinstate his suit by merely providing information 

requested by the district court, we lack jurisdiction to decide this 

appeal.”).

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Our decision in Moore did not address the correctness of 

the district court’s exhaustion determination; instead, we 

dismissed for want of appellate jurisdiction because the 

district court’s decision lacked the finality necessary for an 

appealable order under § 1291. See 368 F.3d at 756. This case 

is in exactly the same procedural posture. Gacho’s argument 

about excessive delay is an argument about exhaustion—or 

more particularly, it’s a plea to excuse his failure to exhaust

under the exception in § 2254(b)(1)(B)(ii). Here, just as in 

Moore, the district court dismissed Gacho’s § 2254 petition 

without prejudice to refiling once the state-court proceedings are complete, “explicitly contemplate[ing] the court’s 

continuing involvement in the case.” Id. at 755. That leaves 

us without jurisdiction. 

Gacho also relies on a recent unpublished order in which 

we addressed and decided a similar excessive-delay claim, 

observing in a footnote that there is “no general rule that 

dismissals without prejudice are nonfinal orders and therefore nonappealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.” Monegain v. 

Carlton, 576 F. App’x 598, 601 n.4 (7th Cir. 2014) (quoting 

Schering-Plough Healthcare Prods., Inc. v. Schwarz Pharma, Inc., 

586 F.3d 500, 506 (7th Cir. 2009)). Monegain affirmed the 

district court’s dismissal order on the merits rather than 

dismissing the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

But Monegain did not even mention—let alone disturb—

Moore. And insofar as the Monegain footnote relied on Schering-Plough, we think it read too much into that opinion. It’s 

true that in Schering-Plough we disclaimed any “general rule 

that dismissals without prejudice are nonfinal orders and 

therefore nonappealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291,” id., but the 

context of that observation is critical. We said there is no 

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such “general rule” because sometimes dismissals without 

prejudice are functionally final orders and therefore appealable. Id. We noted, for example, that if all dismissals without 

prejudice were nonappealable, then “dismissals for want of 

jurisdiction would not be appealable, and of course they 

are.” Id. On the other hand, we explained that dismissals 

without prejudice are nonfinal and not appealable when the 

district judge “has not finished with the case, and appeal 

would therefore be premature.” Id. What matters, in other 

words, is the functional finality of the order (as in Larkin and 

Dolis), and “if the defect that required dismissal is immediately curable,” then the dismissal isn’t really final. Id. at 507. 

In short, Schering-Plough does nothing to unsettle Moore.

Perhaps the “defect” that required dismissal in Moore—lack 

of exhaustion—was not “immediately curable” as would be, 

say, a formal or technical error in a complaint. But whether 

the defect that led to dismissal can be easily or immediately 

cured is merely an indicator of the true touchstone of appellate jurisdiction: finality. Schering-Plough’s reference to 

curability doesn’t disturb Moore because the defect in 

Moore’s petition was in the process of being remedied as his 

case moved through the state-court system. Because Moore 

remains good law and is controlling here, we lack appellate 

jurisdiction.

We close by noting that the glacial pace of the state-court 

proceedings is troubling, though the reasons for the long 

delay are not entirely clear. At least since 2008, the case has 

crawled along slowly but steadily and appears to be close to 

final resolution. If the state courts do not grant relief, the 

district court left the door open to refiling the § 2254 petition. 

Because the court’s order is nonfinal, however, Gacho’s 

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appeal must be and hereby is DISMISSED for want of appellate jurisdiction.

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