Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-17607/USCOURTS-ca9-12-17607-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Rowan Brooks
Appellant
James A. Yates
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ROWAN BROOKS,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

JAMES A. YATES, Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 12-17607

D.C. No.

1:11-cv-01315-

LJO-JLT

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of California

Lawrence J. O’Neill, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

January 5, 2016—San Francisco, California

Filed March 28, 2016

Before: J. Clifford Wallace, Alex Kozinski,

and Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, Circuit Judges.

Per Curiam Opinion;

Concurrence by Judge Kozinski

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2 BROOKS V. YATES

SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus

The panel affirmed in part and reversed in part the district

court’s denial of California state prisoner Rowan Brooks’s

motion for relief from judgment under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)

following the dismissal of his habeas petition as untimely,

and remanded.

The panel held that the district court did not abuse its

discretion in holding that Brooks failed to demonstrate that he

was entitled to Rule 60(b) relief under a theory of “actual

innocence.” The panel wrote that assuming arguendo that the

“Schlup gateway” is available to support a Rule 60(b) motion,

Brooks has fallen well short of raising sufficient doubt about

his guilt to undermine confidence in the result of the trial. 

The panel noted further that the declarations Brooks sent to

offer as evidence of actual innocence were not “new” for

purposes of Rule 60(b).

The panel held that the district court abused its discretion

in finding that Brooks was not abandoned by his counsel. 

The panel explained that the question with respect to

Brooks’s Rule 60(b) motion is not whether his counsel,

Gregory Mitts, abandoned Brooks for purposes of equitable

tolling, but whether extraordinary circumstances prevented

Brooks from taking timely action to prevent or correct an

erroneous judgment. The panel held that the record

demonstrates that Mitts was grossly negligent in his

* 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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BROOKS V. YATES 3

representation of Brooks at the time the district court ordered

Brooks to show cause why his petition should not be

dismissed as untimely.

The panel observed that the district court did not make

findings with respect to whether Brooks acted diligently in

pursuing relief from the district court’s judgment dismissing

his petition, a requirement for relief under Rule 60(b)(6), and

remanded for the district court to make such a determination. 

Concurring, Judge Kozinski wrote separately to highlight

that Mitts continues to practice law in California with no

mark on his record that would apprise prospective clients of

the grave risks of hiring him to represent them.

COUNSEL

Peggy Sasso, Assistant Federal Defender, Fresno, California,

argued the cause and filed the brief for the petitionerappellant. With her on the brief was Heather E. Williams,

Federal Defender.

David Andrew Eldridge, Deputy Attorney General,

Sacramento, California, argued the cause and filed the brief

for the respondent-appellee. With him on the brief was

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California, Michael

P. Ferrell, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Brian G.

Smiley, Supervising Deputy Attorney General.

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4 BROOKS V. YATES

OPINION

PER CURIAM:

Rowan Brooks, currently serving an indeterminate

sentence of twenty-five years to life in a California state

prison for first-degree murder, appeals from the denial of his

motion for relief from judgment under Federal Rule of Civil

Procedure 60(b) following the district court’s dismissal of his

habeas petition as untimely. We have jurisdiction under

28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm in part, reverse in part, and

remand.

I

The district court did not abuse its discretion in holding

that Brooks failed to demonstrate that he was entitled to Rule

60(b) relief under a theory of “actual innocence.” “[W]here

an otherwise time-barred habeas petitioner demonstrates that

it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have

found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, . . . his

constitutional claims [may be] heard on the merits.” Lee v.

Lampert, 653 F.3d 929, 937 (9th Cir. 2011) (en banc) (citing

Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298 (1995)).

Brooks has failed to cite any cases where actual

innocence was held to constitute an “extraordinary

circumstance” for Rule 60(b)(6) purposes. Assuming

arguendo that the “Schlup gateway” is available to support a

Rule 60(b) motion, Brooks has fallen well short of raising

“sufficient doubt about [his] guilt to undermine confidence in

the result of the trial.” Schlup, 513 U.S. at 317.

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BROOKS V. YATES 5

Furthermore, the declarations Brooks seeks to offer as

evidence of actual innocence were available when he filed his

initial habeas petition. Such evidence was thus not “new” for

purposes of Rule 60(b). See Hamilton v. Newland, 374 F.3d

822, 825 (9th Cir. 2004).

II

A

“[G]ross negligence by counsel amounting to ‘virtual

abandonment’ can be an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ that

justifies [relief under] Rule 60(b)(6).” Mackey v. Hoffman,

682 F.3d 1247, 1251 (9th Cir. 2012) (alteration omitted)

(quoting Cmty. Dental Servs. v. Tani, 282 F.3d 1164,

1169–71 (9th Cir. 2002)). In such circumstances, “a petitioner

may be excused from the consequences of his attorney’s

conduct where that conduct effectively severs the principalagent relationship.” Foley v. Biter, 793 F.3d 998, 1002 (9th

Cir. 2015).

Here, the district court abused its discretion in finding that

Brooks was not abandoned by his counsel, Gregory Mitts.

The district court focused its inquiry on Mitts’s performance

leading up to the habeas petition’s late filing and determined

that because Mitts’s miscalculation of the filing deadline was

“[s]imple attorney negligence,” Brooks was not entitled to

equitable tolling. This was not the proper inquiry. The

question with respect to Brooks’s Rule 60(b) motion is not

whether Mitts abandoned Brooks for purposes of equitable

tolling, an inquiry that would involve analyzing the entire

course of Brooks’s federal habeas proceedings. Cf. Rudin v.

Myles, 781 F.3d 1043, 1056–59 (9th Cir. 2014) (evaluating

the availability of equitable tolling for separate time periods

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6 BROOKS V. YATES

in post-conviction proceedings); Luna v. Kernan, 784 F.3d

640, 650–51 (9th Cir. 2015) (describing the “stop clock”

approach). Instead, the proper inquiry is whether

“extraordinarycircumstances prevented [Brooks]from taking

timely action to prevent or correct an erroneous judgment,”

see Foley, 793 F.3d at 1002 (quoting Hamilton, 374 F.3d at

825)—the relevant judgment being the district court’s

ultimate dismissal of the petition.

The record demonstrates that Mitts was grossly negligent

in his representation of Brooks at the time the district court

ordered Brooks to show cause why his petition should not be

dismissed as untimely. See Mackey, 682 F.3d at 1251. Mitts

neither responded to the order, nor even notified his client

that it had been issued, despite repeated inquiries from

Brooks about the status of his petition. Having received no

response to the order to show cause, the district court entered

judgment dismissing the petition as untimely.

1 Mitts’s

behavior was not mere negligence, but rather virtual

abandonment—“neglect so gross that it is inexcusable” and

thus “vitiat[es] the agency relationship that underlies our

general policy of attributing to the client the acts of his

attorney.” Id. (alteration in original) (quoting Cmty. Dental

Servs., 282 F.3d at 1168, 1171).

1

It was only through his wife that Brooks discovered that his petition

had been untimely filed and ultimately dismissed. In response to Brooks’s

subsequent chastisement of Mitts and demand that Mitts rectify the

situation, Mitts incorrectly “explained that the statute of limitations for

filing the petition [was] jurisdictional and there was nothing that could be

done to cure the late filing.”

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BROOKS V. YATES 7

B

Even where a petitioner is abandoned by counsel, the

petitioner must also show that he diligently pursued his rights

before relief can be granted under Rule 60(b)(6). See

Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 537–38 (2005); Foley,

793 F.3d at 1004.

Here, the district court did not make findings with respect

to whether Brooks was reasonably diligent. The State argues

that Brooks is not entitled to relief under Rule 60(b)(6)

because Brooks found out about the final order dismissing his

habeas petition as untimely within three days of the entry of

judgment, yet did not invoke available remedies such as a

Rule 59(e) motion or appeal.

Reasonable diligence “does not require an overzealous or

extreme pursuit of any and every avenue of relief”; instead,

it “requires the effort that a reasonable person might be

expected to deliver under his or her particular circumstances.”

Doe v. Busby, 661 F.3d 1001, 1015 (9th Cir. 2011). On

remand the district court must determine whether Brooks

acted diligently in pursuing relief from the district court’s

judgment dismissing his petition.

III

We grant Brooks’s motion to take judicial notice of state

court trial documents but deny it with respect to letters

received from counsel and drafts of letters sent to counsel.

AFFIRMED in part, REVERSED in part, and

REMANDED.

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8 BROOKS V. YATES

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge, concurring:

I join and applaud the majority’s sound disposition. I

write separately in fulfillment of our venerable obligation “to

the public [to issue] a civil reprehension of advocates, where

there appeareth cunning counsel [or] gross neglect.” Francis

Bacon, Essays, Civil and Moral in 3 Harvard Classics 7, 139

(Charles W. Eliot ed., 1909). As the principal opinion

demonstrates, Brooks’s federal habeas counsel, Gregory H.

Mitts, satisfied both of these categories by ignoring Brooks’s

communications, missing deadlines and then concealing his

dereliction. In doing so, he jeopardized his client’s chance to

obtain federal habeas relief. Maj. at 6. Yet Mitts continues

to practice law in California with no mark on his record that

would apprise prospective clients of the grave risks of hiring

him to represent them. See Attorney Search: Gregory

Henrick Mitts - #71981, State Bar of California,

http://members.calbar.ca.gov/fal/Member/Detail/71981 (last

visited Mar. 7, 2016).

The facts are even worse than one would gather from

reading the majority opinion. After Mitts was retained in

March 2010, Brooks apparently sent a letter (not in the

record) suggesting how the case might be handled. In

October, Mitts sent an imperious response admonishing

Brooks not to “micromanage” the case from prison. The

letter also mentioned offhand that the California Supreme

Court had denied Brooks’s pending post-conviction relief

petition, but didn’t say when. Nevertheless, Mitts assured

Brooks that he was “aware of the time constraints attendant

to” filing his federal habeas petition.

That turned out to be untrue. Brooks’s federal habeas

deadline expired just days after Mitts wrote to Brooks, but

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BROOKS V. YATES 9

Mitts sat on his thumbs. Over the next year, Mitts

systematically ignored a stream of letters that Brooks sent

inquiring about the status of his case. In May 2011, Brooks

wrote to Mitts pointing out his “lack of regular

communication” and asking Mitts to call him at the prison. 

Brooks wrote again the following month, explaining that

Mitts’s silence was “extremely frustrating.” Having heard

nothing, Brooks wrote yet again in July. To facilitate a

response, Brooks enclosed questions to which Mitts could

provide “yes/no” answers and brief explanations. Brooks

begged Mitts to “PLEASE ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

AND MAIL THEM . . . WITHIN 2 WEEKS.” Brooks

continued to send letters to Mitts approximately once a month

over the next four months. In August, he reminded Mitts of

his responsibility to “be in contact and communicate with

[your] client” and mentioned that he had been waiting

“almost a year” for responses to his “11 previous letters.” In

October, Brooks sent Mitts an “urgent” letter imploring him

to communicate, even if it meant referring him to a paralegal.

In August 2011, ten months after the deadline expired,

Mitts finally deigned to file a federal habeas petition,

apparently without notifying Brooks. When the district court

issued an order to show cause as to why the petition shouldn’t

be dismissed as untimely, Mitts didn’t file a response or

notify Brooks of the order. Mitts later explained that he did

not respond to the show-cause order because he couldn’t

contest the court’s untimeliness finding. When the magistrate

judge recommended that the petition be dismissed, Mitts

didn’t object. The district court thus entered final judgment

on a habeas petition that Brooks didn’t even know had been

filed on his behalf. Mitts has never explained why he missed

the filing deadline by almost a year, or why he did not notify

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10 BROOKS V. YATES

his client immediately of the default and subsequent court

orders.

Lawyers make mistakes, including missing deadlines. It

is nothing to be proud of but it does happen from time to time

and doesn’t usually amount to misconduct. But lawyers have

a responsibility to communicate with their clients and keep

them reasonably apprised of the status of their cases. They

must also notify them promptly of significant developments,

which, of course, include the sinking of the case. The client

can then make an informed choice whether to continue with

the lawyer who caused the default or hire another lawyer who

can effectively argue the first lawyer’s ineptitude.

A lawyer who comports himself as Mitts did is not only

a hazard to clients, but also a menace to the profession and to

the courts. Mitts’s actions consumed countless hours of this

court’s and the district court’s time in dealing with his

obstinate incompetence. If Mitts was so lackadaisical in

Brooks’s case, we can only imagine what problems he’s

caused, or is likely to cause, other clients. Potential clients,

who will put their lives in Mitts’s hands, as Brooks did, are

entitled to know that this lawyer ignores client inquiries,

misses jurisdictional deadlines and does not own up to his

mistakes.

I am unaware of any disciplinary action currently

underway to address what appears to have been misconduct

by Mitts. The State Bar of California may not yet be aware

of Mitts’s behavior. Perhaps now it will be.

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