Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-09-55306/USCOURTS-ca9-09-55306-0/pdf.json

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

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

EDUARDO HERNANDEZ,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

MARION SPEARMAN,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 09-55306

D.C. No.

2:07-cv-06754-PA-JC

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Percy Anderson, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

February 3, 2014—Pasadena, California

Filed August 22, 2014

Before: Harry Pregerson and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit

Judges, and Carol Bagley Amon, Chief District Judge.*

Opinion by Judge Berzon

* The Honorable Carol Bagley Amon, Chief District Judge for the U.S.

District Court for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.

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2 HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN

SUMMARY**

Habeas Corpus

Reversing the district court’s dismissal of a federal habeas

corpus petition as untimely after the district court refused to

apply the “prison mailbox” rule to calculate the dates of the

petitioner’s filings, and remanding for further proceedings,

the panel held that the mailbox rule applies when a pro se

habeas petitioner gives his petition to a third party to mail

from within the prison.

COUNSEL

Tony Faryar Farmani (argued), Farmani, APLC, San Diego,

California, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Stephanie C. Brenan (argued), Deputy Attorney General;

James William Bilderback, II, Supervising Deputy Attorney

General, Office of the California Attorney General, Los

Angeles, California, for Respondent-Appellee.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN 3

OPINION

BERZON, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner Eduardo Hernandez’s federal habeas corpus

petition was dismissed as untimely after the district court

refused to apply the “prison mailbox” rule to calculate the

dates of Hernandez’s filings. The district court found the rule

inapplicable because a prisoner other than Hernandez

delivered the petition to prison authorities for mailing to the

clerk of court. We hold that the prison mailbox rule applies

to such a circumstance and, accordingly, reverse the dismissal

of Hernandez’s petition.

I.

Hernandez, a California prisoner, is serving two

indeterminate life terms and eighteen years for grand theft

and kidnapping in connection with a carjacking. After

unsuccessfully seeking post-conviction relief in state court,

he filed a pro se federal habeas corpus petition. The Warden

moved to dismiss Hernandez’s petition as untimely, alleging

that it was filed outside the Anti-Terrorism and Effective

Death Penalty Act’s (“AEDPA”) one-year filing deadline. 

See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1).

A magistrate judge issued a Report and Recommendation,

which agreed that the petition was untimely. First, in the

instances in which a prisoner other than Hernandez had

delivered Hernandez’s pro se petition for post-conviction

relief to prison authorities for mailing to the court, the

magistrate judge refused to consider the date that such a

petition was delivered to prison authorities as the filing date,

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4 HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN

as courts generally must under the prison mailbox rule. See

Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 276 (1988).

Next, the magistrate judge reasoned that Hernandez’s

conviction became final on August 9, 2005, with the result

that, absent tolling, the federal habeas petition was due

August 9, 2006. The magistrate judge determined that:

(1) the limitations period was statutorily tolled while

Hernandez’s first state habeas petition was pending in

California superior court, from October 28, 2005 to

December 20, 2005; and (2) Hernandez was not entitled to

statutory tolling for the roughly eight-month interval before

his next filing, because Hernandez’s next state petition was

filed in the same court as his first and was not limited to an

elaboration of the facts relating to the claims raised in the first

petition. See King v. Roe, 340 F.3d 821, 823 (9th Cir. 2003)

(per curiam) (abrogated on other grounds byEvans v. Chavis,

546 U.S. 189 (2006)).

Finally, the magistrate judge applied statutory tolling for

the period the second state habeas petition was actually

pending before the California Superior Court, from August

17, 2006 to August 24, 2006, and then assumed, without

deciding, that Hernandez was entitled to statutory tolling for

the time between the denial of the second state petition and

the California Supreme Court’s summary denial of

Hernandez’s fourth state petition on August 29, 2007. Based

on this assumption, the statute of limitations began ticking

again on August 30, 2007, at which point Hernandez had

forty-seven days, or until October 15, 2007, to file his federal

habeas petition. Hernandez did not file until October 18,

2007, making his petition three days late under the magistrate

judge’s calculations.

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HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN 5

Over Hernandez’s objections, the district court adopted

the magistrate judge’s Report and Recommendation in full

and, without considering the merits of his federal claims,

dismissed the petition with prejudice.

We granted Hernandez a certificate of appealabilityon the

timeliness question, appointed counsel, and ordered that the

parties address “whether the mailbox rule applies when a

petitioner gives his petition to a third party (e.g., jailhouse

lawyer) to mail from within the prison.” After carefully

considering the Report and Recommendation and the parties’

arguments, we hold that the mailbox rule applies when a pro

se habeas petitioner gives his petition to a third party to mail

from within the prison. As the district court’s determination

that Hernandez’s petition was untimely relied on the contrary

conclusion, and therefore on an erroneous calculation of

filing dates, we reverse and remand for further proceedings

not inconsistent with this opinion.

II.

A. Prison Mailbox Rule

A pro se prisoner’s notice of appeal from the denial of a

federal habeas petition is filed “at the time . . . [it is] delivered

. . . to the prison authorities for forwarding to the court clerk.” 

Houston, 487 U.S. at 276. The rule applies equally to a pro

se prisoner’s filing of a California state habeas petition.1

1 Although the point is not disputed, we note that the prison mailbox rule

applies in Hernandez’s case because his habeas petition “arise[s] from

convictions in California — a state that does not reject the prison mailbox

rule and which has indeterminate rather than fixed time limitations for

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6 HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN

Stillman v. LaMarque, 319 F.3d 1199, 1201 (9th Cir. 2003). 

To benefit from the mailbox rule, (1) a prisoner must proceed

without counsel, and (2) the petition must be delivered to

prison authorities for mailing to the court within the

limitations period. Id.

Application of the rule has never turned on the identity of

the prisoner who physically delivers the petition to prison

authorities. After examining the precedential underpinnings

of the mailbox rules, we conclude that there is no reason it

should.

Writing for the Supreme Court in Houston, Justice

Brennan explained the impetus behind the Court’s adoption

of the mailbox rule: “The situation of prisoners seeking to

appeal without the aid of counsel,” he said, “is unique.” 

487 U.S. at 270. Unrepresented prisoners “cannot take the

steps other litigants can take to monitor the processing of

their notices of appeal . . . before the . . . deadline.” Id. at

270–71. The Court recognized that “the pro se prisoner has

no choice but to entrust the forwarding of his notice of appeal

to prison authorities whom he cannot control or supervise and

who may have every incentive to delay,” and that a prisoner

litigant’s “control over the processing of his notice

necessarily ceases as soon as he hands it over to the only

public officials to whom he has access — the prison

authorities.” Id. at 271. Unlike represented litigants and

litigants who are not incarcerated, pro se prisoners have no

control of their court filings after delivery to prison

authorities: “No matter how far in advance the pro se prisoner

filing habeas petitions.” Orpiada v. McDaniel, 750 F.3d 1086, 1089 (9th

Cir. 2014).

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HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN 7

delivers his notice to the prison authorities, he can never be

sure that it will ultimately get stamped ‘filed’ on time.” Id.

In applying Houston to ascertain the date not only of a

notice of appeal but also of a state habeas filing, we

previously reasoned that unrepresented state prisoners filing

state habeas petitions are equally “powerless and unable to

control the time of delivery of documents to the court,” so

“the conditions that led to the adoption of the mailbox rule

are present.” Saffold v. Newland, 250 F.3d 1262, 1268 (9th

Cir. 2000), overruled on other grounds, Carey v. Saffold,

536 U.S. 214 (2002). These conditions are also present when

a prisoner gives his petition to another prisoner to mail from

within the prison.

Those cases that have refused to extend the prison

mailbox rule have done so in circumstances where the litigant

had a degree of control that a prisoner who asks another

prisoner to mail his petition lacks. Courts have refused, for

example, to apply the prison mailbox rule to cases in which

a prisoner is assisted by counsel, Stillman, 319 F.3d at 1202;

to cases in which a prisoner delivers a filing to the prison

authorities for mailing to someone other than the clerk of

court, id.; Paige v. United States, 171 F.3d 559, 560–61 (8th

Cir. 1999); and to cases in which a prisoner gives a petition

to a third party who is not confined in prison for filing

through regular channels, Cook v. Stegall, 295 F.3d 517, 521

(6th Cir. 2002). In such cases, the prisoner is not in the

“unique situation” Houston identified, either because he is not

relying on prison authorities to get his petition to the clerk of

court by the deadline, or because he has an unconfined

representative free to file papers on his behalf. Additionally,

as the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recognized in Cook,

applying the prison mailbox rule to petitions mailed from

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8 HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN

prison to third parties “would allow prisoners to mail habeas

petitions to third parties for substantive revisions while

claiming their earlier mailing date as the filing date,” thus

“circumvent[ing] statutes of limitations.” 295 F.3d at 521.

Applying the prison mailbox rule to Hernandez’s filings

raises none of the concerns expressed in Stillman and Cook,

and vindicates the purpose expressed in Houston. Hernandez

had no choice but to avail himself of prison authorities for

mailing his habeas petitions to the courts. Once the petitions

were deposited with the prison authorities, neither he nor the

prisoner who deposited the petitions could monitor the status

of the mailings to ensure prompt delivery.

Moreover, the operative date remains the date the petition

was delivered to prison authorities, see Huizar v. Carey,

273 F.3d 1220, 1223 (9th Cir. 2001), not the date Hernandez

gave the petition to the second prisoner for delivery. Because

the date on which his petitions were delivered to prison

authorities is readily ascertainable through the same systems

that monitor a prisoner’s own deliveries, there is no risk that

applying the prison mailbox rule in this circumstance would

circumvent the statute of limitations by allowing for

substantive revisions to the petition after the delivery date.

The district court’s contrary reasoning is unpersuasive. 

The district court asserted that “extending the mailbox rule to

situations in which an inmate entrusts another inmate to

provide materials to prison authorities for mailing, would

appear to run counter to an underlying rationale of the

mailbox rule — that the pro se prisoner has no choice but to

rely upon prison authorities, and thus should not be

prejudiced by their potential dilatoriness.” But the fact that

Hernandez entrusted the depositing of his petition with prison

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HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN 9

authorities to a fellow prisoner does not at all change the fact

that once that delivery was timely accomplished, albeit

indirectly, Hernandez “ha[d] no choice but to rely upon

prison authorities” to mail the petition to the courts.

The Warden notes that part of the rationale behind the

Supreme Court’s Houston decision is the relative ease with

which prison authorities and the State may dispute a

prisoner’s assertions of timeliness by recourse to logs

maintained by prison authorities. See 487 U.S. at 275. In

contrast, the Warden contends, applying the prison mailbox

rule to the circumstances of this case would make it difficult

to refute false claims of timeliness. Not so. Prison logbooks

could reflect the name of the prisoner who deposited the

petition with the prison authorities. From there, it is a simple

matter for the court and the Warden to match the logbook

entry to the proof of service signed and dated by the third

party prisoner, using the same process via which the court

and the Warden would use to verifythe prisoner’s own claims

of depositing the petition with prison authorities. 

Alternatively, prisons could require prisoners depositing mail

on behalf of another prisoner to provide the name of the

prisoner on whose behalf they are mailing documents.

We therefore hold that the prison mailbox rule applies

when a prisoner delivers a habeas petition on behalf of

another prisoner to prison authorities for forwarding to the

clerk of court, and that Hernandez’s petition was filed “at the

moment it [was] delivered to prison officials for forwarding.” 

Houston, 487 U.S. at 272.

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10 HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN

B. Statutory Tolling

Hernandez claims that, in addition to erroneously holding

the prison mailbox rule inapplicable, the district court erred

by refusing to statutorily toll the 237-day2interval between

the California Superior Court’s denial of Hernandez’s first

state habeas petition and the filing of his second state habeas

petition in that same court. We disagree, and affirm the

district court’s decision not to toll this period.

1

AEDPA requires “a state prisoner seeking a federal

habeas corpus remedy to file his federal petition within one

year after his state conviction has become ‘final.’” Carey v.

Saffold, 536 U.S. 214, 216 (2002); 28 U.S.C.

§ 2244(d)(1)(A). “[H]owever, . . . the 1-year period does not

include the time during which an application for state

collateral review is ‘pending’ in the state courts.” Carey,

536 U.S. at 216–17; 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2).

Collateral review in California “differs from [the systems]

of other States in that it does not require, technically

speaking, appellate review of a lower court determination,”

and “[i]nstead . . . contemplates that a prisoner will file a new

‘original’ habeas petition” at each level of the state courts.

Carey, 536 U.S. at 221. A second distinguishing feature of

the California post-conviction review process is that

2 The district court calculated that this interval was 239 days, but that

calculation relied on the erroneousrefusal to apply the prisonmailbox rule

to the filing of Hernandez’s second state habeas petition in the California

Superior Court.

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HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN 11

California “determines the timeliness of each filing according

to a ‘reasonableness’ standard,” id., rather than a deadline.

Federal courts toll AEDPA’s statute of limitations when

a “properly filed” petition is before a California court, as well

as during the time period “between a lower [California]

court’s decision and the filing . . . of a further original state

habeas petition in a higher [California] court,” so long as the

petitioner files in the higher court within a “reasonable time,”

as defined by California law. Id. at 217; see Gaston v.

Palmer, 417 F.3d 1030, 1036 (9th Cir. 2005) (the “period

during which a properly filed habeas application is actually

before a state court” is tolled), amended on petition for

rehearing, 447 F.3d 1165 (9th Cir. 2006).

When a petitioner files a second state habeas petition in

the same court, rather than in a higher level of the California

court system, statutory tolling is not “appropriate for the

period between two state habeas petitions,” unless “the

second petition is ‘limited to an elaboration of the facts

relating to the claims in the first petition.’” Stancle v. Clay,

692 F.3d 948, 951 (9th Cir. 2012) (quoting King, 340 F.3d at

823). Where that prerequisite is met, courts must then

determine whether the petition was timely. Banjo v. Ayers,

614 F.3d 964, 970 (9th Cir. 2010).

2

Hernandez filed his second state habeas petition in the

same court as the first rather than moving to a higher level of

review. He therefore must demonstrate that his second state

habeas petition was “limited to an elaboration of the facts

relating to the claims in the first petition,” Stancle, 692 F.3d

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12 HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN

at 951 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted), and

that it was timely, Banjo, 614 F.3d at 970.

The first requirement is dispositive here: Hernandez did

not limit this second state habeas petition “to an elaboration

of the facts relating to the claims in the first petition,”

Stancle, 692 F.3d at 951, because he added “a new claim” to

the second petition, id. at 954. Hernandez’s second state

habeas petition alleged that Hernandez’s trial counsel was

ineffective because he failed to move to suppress evidence —

an allegation wholly absent from the first petition. Although

the first petition raised ineffective assistance of counsel,

“ineffective assistance claims are not fungible, but are instead

highlyfact-dependant.” Hemmerle v. Schriro, 495 F.3d 1069,

1075 (9th Cir. 2007). Because Hernandez’s claim that

counsel was ineffective for failing to suppress evidence was

a new claim, he is not entitled to statutory tolling for the gap

between the denial of his first state habeas petition and the

filing of his second state habeas petition at the same level.

III.

The district court assumed, but did not decide, that

Hernandez was entitled to statutory tolling for the entire

period between the denial of the second state petition on

August 24, 2006 and the California Supreme Court’s

summary denial of Hernandez’s fourth state petition on

August 29, 2007. On remand, the district court should

address the Warden’s contention that Hernandez is not

entitled to tolling for this entire period, so that, even with the

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HERNANDEZ V. SPEARMAN 13

benefit of the prison mailbox rule, his federal petition is not

timely.

3

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district

court is REVERSED, and the matter is REMANDED for

further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

3 Hernandez also argues that he is entitled to equitable tolling. We do

not consider equitable tolling unless statutory tolling is insufficient to

render a petition timely, Jorss v. Gomez, 311 F.3d 1189, 1192 (9th Cir.

2002). Consequently, we leave it for the district court to consider

Hernandez’s arguments for equitable tolling in the first instance.

Additionally, in a letter filed with this court shortly before oral

argument, Hernandez argued for the first time on appeal that the statute of

limitations does not bar his petition because he brings an actual innocence

claim. See McQuiggin v. Perkins, 133 S. Ct. 1924 (2013). We do not

generally consider arguments not raised in an opening brief, Smith v.

Marsh, 194 F.3d 1045, 1052 (9th Cir. 1999), and as we are remanding to

the district court, we also leave this un-briefed argument for the district

court to address in the first instance.

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