Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-09-05085/USCOURTS-caDC-09-05085-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Antoine Jones
Petitioner
Anthony F. Shelley
Appointed Amicus Curiae for Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 2, 2011 Decided March 6, 2012 

No. 09-5085 

IN RE: ANTOINE JONES, 

PETITIONER

On Petition for Writ of Mandamus 

Anthony F. Shelley, appointed by the court, argued the 

cause as amicus curiae. With him on the briefs were Dawn E. 

Murphy-Johnson, Michael N. Khalil, and Jeffrey M. Hahn.

 *

Antoine Jones, pro se, filed a brief. 

Alexander D. Shoaibi, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued 

the cause for respondent. With him on the briefs were Ronald 

C. Machen, Jr., U.S. Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, 

Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before: BROWN, Circuit Judge, and WILLIAMS and 

GINSBURG, Senior Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN. 

 

*

 The Court thanks the amicus curiae for their able assistance in this 

case. 

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BROWN, Circuit Judge: In 2007, a jury acquitted Antoine 

Jones on a number of drug-related charges, but failed to reach 

a verdict on conspiracy to distribute and possession with 

intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base. The government 

retried Jones on the unresolved conspiracy count and obtained 

a conviction in 2008. The court imposed a life sentence. 

Between the first and second trials, Jones filed a pro se

complaint alleging federal officials violated the Fourth 

Amendment by conducting warrantless searches of his 

apartment and a warehouse leased in his name. Jones sought 

$1 million in damages and an investigation of the 

Immigration and Customs officials that performed the 

searches. 

On May 28, 2008—after Jones’ conviction in the second 

trial—the district court dismissed Jones’ civil case sua sponte. 

Under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486–87 (1994), a 

plaintiff seeking to recover damages for harm “caused by 

actions whose unlawfulness would render a conviction or 

sentence invalid . . . must prove that the conviction or 

sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by 

executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized 

to make such determination, or called into question by a 

federal court’s issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.” In the 

district court’s view, Heck mandated dismissal of Jones’ case 

because Jones had not “demonstrated that his conviction or 

sentence ha[d] already been invalidated,” and his Fourth 

Amendment claims, “if proved, would render his conviction 

invalid.” Jones v. Gikas, No. 07-1068, 2008 WL 2202264, at 

*1 (D.D.C. May 27, 2008). 

More than eight months after that dismissal, on January 

31, 2009, Jones filed a document in district court styled as a 

“Motion for Leave to File Notice of Appeal pro se by 

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Plaintiff” (the “January Motion”). Jones, who had been 

incarcerated since 2005, claimed he had never received a 

notice of dismissal, and had only become aware of the 

dismissal when he requested and obtained a copy of the case 

docket in December 2008. He asserted he requested a copy of 

the dismissal opinion after seeing the docket, received the 

opinion on January 13, 2009, and filed the January Motion 

shortly thereafter. Based on those circumstances, he asked 

the “Court of Appeal to accept [his] ‘EXCUSABLE’ time[] 

delay and [his] pro se Brief on this issue.” His “pro se Brief” 

argued primarily that dismissal under Heck was improper 

because his claims, if proven, would not necessarily imply 

that his criminal conviction was invalid. 

 In a February 26, 2009 Minute Order, the district court 

denied Jones leave to file the January Motion. Jones 

responded by filing a document he styled a “Notice of 

Appeal,” which stated he wished to obtain review of the 

denial of the January Motion. We determined Jones was 

appealing the district court’s denial of leave to file a notice of 

appeal, and therefore deemed Jones’ filing a petition for writ 

of mandamus. 

 On the face of things, mandamus is unwarranted because 

the district court properly denied Jones leave to file. Jones 

submitted the January Motion more than eight months after 

the district court entered its dismissal, well past the 60-day 

deadline imposed by Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(B), and past the 

180-day deadline imposed by Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(6)(B) for 

reopening the period to file an appeal. But Jones claims the 

January Motion was timely under one of two theories: 

because Rule 4(a)(1)(B)’s 60-day filing period started on the 

date when he learned of the dismissal (sometime in December 

2008), or the date when he received a copy of the dismissal 

opinion (January 13, 2009), rather than the date when the 

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district court entered its dismissal (May 28, 2008); or because 

the January Motion should have been construed as a timely 

motion for relief from judgment under Fed. R. Civ. P. 

60(b)(1). 

 Neither theory holds water. Jones’ contention that we 

should push back the start of the filing period is based on 

Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 270 (1988), where the 

Supreme Court held a pro se prisoner’s notice of appeal was 

“filed” for the purposes of Fed. R. App. P. 4(a) when “he 

delivered the notice to prison authorities for forwarding,” not 

when the district court actually received the notice. Jones 

urges us to extend Houston to hold that a pro se prisoner’s 

period for filing a notice of appeal begins when he receives 

notice of the judgment from which he wishes to appeal. But 

the statutory basis for Fed. R. App. P. 4(a), 28 U.S.C. § 2107, 

precludes such a holding. First, Section 2107(a) states the 

filing period for a notice of appeal begins “after the entry of 

[the] judgment, order or decree” that is being appealed. We 

cannot plausibly hold the “entry” of Jones’ dismissal only 

occurred when he received notice of it. Second, Section 

2017(c) allows courts to reopen the filing period if a party 

does not receive notice of the judgment within 21 days of its 

entry, but only (at the latest) “upon motion filed within 180 

days after entry of the judgment.” Jones filed the January 

Motion more than 180 days after the entry of dismissal, and 

we may not create equitable exceptions to the 180-day 

deadline. See In re Sealed Case (Bowles), 624 F.3d 482, 487–

89 (D.C. Cir. 2010). 

 Nor can we fault the district court for failing to construe 

the January Motion as a Rule 60(b)(1) motion. Motions under 

Rule 60(b) request that the district court relieve a party from a 

final judgment. And even if the district court here was 

mindful of its “obligation to construe pro se filings liberally,” 

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Toolasprashad v. Bureau of Prisons, 286 F.3d 576, 583 (D.C. 

Cir. 2002), it did not abuse its discretion by refusing to view 

the January Motion as seeking such relief. Instead, the 

Motion gave every indication that Jones was seeking appellate 

review: the Motion was titled a “Motion for Leave to File 

Notice of Appeal pro se by Plaintiff”; stated that, on “this 31st

day of January, 2009, plaintiff is filing a notice of Appeal and 

requesting the Court of Appeal to accept my ‘EXCUSABLE’ 

time[] delay”; and directed its explanation of why the district 

court erred at this Court. We have previously found that 

certain motions should have been construed as Rule 60(b) 

motions, but those motions have always requested relief from 

the district court. See, e.g., Hall v. CIA, 437 F.3d 94, 99 (D.C. 

Cir. 2006) (construing untimely motion for reconsideration 

under Rule 59(e) as a Rule 60(b) motion); Toolasprashad, 

286 F.3d at 582–83 (construing motion for enlargement of 

time to file a motion for reconsideration as a Rule 60(b) 

motion). 

 Because we deny Jones’ petition for mandamus, we do 

not reach the merits of the district court’s dismissal under 

Heck. But we note the tension between the district court’s 

ruling and the Supreme Court’s observation in Heck itself that 

“a suit for damages attributable to an allegedly unreasonable 

search may lie even if the challenged search produced 

evidence that was introduced in a state criminal trial resulting 

in the § 1983 plaintiff’s still-outstanding conviction.” 512 

U.S. at 487 n.7. The Court reasoned that, “[b]ecause of 

doctrines like independent source and inevitable discovery, 

and especially harmless error, such a § 1983 action, even if 

successful, would not necessarily imply that the plaintiff’s 

conviction was unlawful.” Id. 

* * * 

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Two years after the district court dismissed Jones’ civil 

case ̧ this Court reversed Jones’ conviction. See United States 

v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir. 2010). The Supreme 

Court recently affirmed that ruling. See United States v. 

Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012). Because Jones can now show 

that the dismissal of his civil suit was “based on an earlier 

judgment that has been reversed or vacated,” he might 

consider filing a motion in district court under Fed. R. Civ. P. 

60(b)(5). See Robinson v. Connell, No. 9:05-CV-1428 

(GLS/ATB), 2010 WL 6268444, at *2 (N.D.N.Y. Sept. 8, 

2010) (magistrate report and recommendation) (Second 

Circuit remanded civil claim, which had been dismissed under 

Heck, to district court to consider motion under Rule 60(b)(5) 

after criminal sentence was allegedly vacated), on remand 

from No. 08-1992-pr (2d Cir. Aug. 25, 2009). In the 

alternative, Jones might consider re-filing his complaint. 

Although Jones expresses concern that re-filing might raise 

“statute of limitations issues,” Pet. Br. 13–14 n.3, the 

Supreme Court has implied that, even if Jones’ claims had 

accrued before the district court dismissed them under Heck, 

the statutes of limitations should be tolled as long as the bar of 

Heck prevented Jones’ suit from going forward. See Wallace 

v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 395 n.4 (2007) (“Had petitioner filed 

suit upon his arrest and had his suit then been dismissed under 

Heck, the statute of limitations, absent tolling, would have run 

by the time he obtained reversal of his conviction. If under 

those circumstances he were not allowed to refile his suit, 

Heck would produce immunity from § 1983 liability, a result 

surely not intended.”). 

Jones’ petition for mandamus, however, is 

 Denied. 

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