Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_13-cv-03267/USCOURTS-cand-3_13-cv-03267-5/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Gary Swarthout
Respondent
Terrell Whitfield
Petitioner

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United States District Court 

Northern District of California 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 

TERRELL WHITFIELD, 

Petitioner, 

v. 

GARY SWARTHOUT, 

Respondent. 

Case No. 13-cv-03267-RS (PR) 

ORDER OF DISMISSAL

INTRODUCTION 

Petitioner seeks federal habeas relief from his state convictions. Respondent moves 

to dismiss as untimely the petition for such relief. (Docket No. 19.) Petitioner has not 

filed any response to the motion. For the reasons discussed herein, respondent’s motion is 

GRANTED. The petition is DISMISSED. 

DISCUSSION 

A. Standard of Review 

Federal habeas petitions must be filed within one year of the latest of the date on 

which: (1) the judgment became final after the conclusion of direct review or the time 

passed for seeking direct review; (2) an impediment to filing an application created by 

unconstitutional state action was removed, if such action prevented petitioner from filing; 

(3) the constitutional right asserted was recognized by the Supreme Court, if the right was 

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CASE NO. 13-cv-03267-RS

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newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactive to cases on collateral 

review; or (4) the factual predicate of the claim could have been discovered through the 

exercise of due diligence. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). “[W]hen a petitioner fails to seek a 

writ of certiorari from the United States Supreme Court, the AEDPA’s one-year limitations 

period begins to run on the date the ninety-day period defined by Supreme Court Rule 13 

expires.” Bowen v. Roe, 188 F.3d 1157, 1159 (9th Cir. 1999). 

Relief from this one year deadline is available in the form of statutory and equitable 

tolling. For purposes of statutory tolling, the time during which a properly filed 

application for state post-conviction or other collateral review is pending is excluded from 

the one-year limitations period. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2). 

A petitioner is entitled to equitable tolling “only if he shows ‘(1) that he has been

pursuing his rights diligently, and (2) that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his 

way’ and prevented timely filing.” Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 649 (2010) (quoting 

Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408 (2005)); Miles v. Prunty, 187 F.3d 1104, 1107 (9th Cir. 

1999) (“When external forces, rather than a petitioner’s lack of diligence, account for the 

failure to file a timely claim, equitable tolling of the statute of limitations may be 

appropriate.”) Equitable tolling is not granted as a matter of course. In fact, it is 

“unavailable in most cases.” Miranda v. Castro, 292 F.3d 1063, 1066 (9th Cir. 2002) 

(quoting Miles, 187 F.3d at 1107). “[T]he threshold necessary to trigger equitable tolling 

[under AEDPA] is very high, lest the exceptions swallow the rule.” Id. (citation omitted). 

B. Timeliness of the Petition 

In 2010, petitioner was convicted in state court of second degree robbery. In 2011, 

he was sentenced to 13 years in state prison for that conviction. (Mot. to Dismiss 

(“MTD”), Ex. 1 at 5.). On March 29, 2012, the state appellate court affirmed his 

conviction. On June 13, 2012, the state supreme court denied his petition for review. On 

September 11, 2012, his conviction became final because the 90 days in which he could 

have filed a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court had passed. At that point, 

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petitioner had one year, that is, until September 12, 2013, to file a timely federal habeas 

petition. The petition he filed on June 14, 2013,1

 nearly two months before the deadline, 

was timely. 

The action was dismissed on August 15, 2013, however, because petitioner failed to 

pay the filing fee or file an application to proceed in forma pauperis (“IFP”). On 

September 25, petitioner filed a motion to reopen and an amended petition. On October 

10, the Court denied the motion because the petition was not signed. After two years of 

silence, petitioner filed a signed amended petition and an IFP application on December 4, 

2015. On December 14, the Court reopened the action, denied the IFP application, and 

directed the petitioner to pay the filing fee. On January 21, 2016, the Court dismissed the 

action because petitioner failed to pay the filing fee by the deadline. On February 2, the 

Court reopened the action at the request of petitioner, and set a new payment deadline. 

Petitioner timely paid the filing fee and the Court issued an order to show cause to 

respondent, who filed the present motion to dismiss. 

The petition will be dismissed as untimely. There was no operative petition from 

October 2013 to December 2015. During that time, the federal limitations clock started 

ticking. By December 2015, the federal filing deadline had passed. 

Tolling will not save the petition. Statutory tolling is not available. Such tolling is 

available for the time during which an application for state post-conviction or other 

collateral review is pending. Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 181-82 (2001). Because 

petitioner filed no such application, there is no tolling period to consider. The Court notes 

that federal petitions, such as the ones filed and dismissed during this action, do not qualify 

as applications for state post-conviction or other collateral review, and therefore they 

 

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 Petitioner is entitled to this filing date, rather than the July 15, 2013 date listed in the 

docket. The Court assumes that he put the petition in the prison mail the day he signed it 

(June 14, 2013) and will use that as the filing date under the prisoner mailbox rule. See 

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

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cannot toll the statutory period. Id.

Equitable tolling will not save the petition. First, petitioner filed no response to the 

motion to dismiss. Therefore, he has failed to show he is entitled to equitable tolling. 

Second, while the Court might grant equitable tolling for the short gaps in between case 

dismissals and reopenings, there is no present reason to grant it for the lengthy, 

unexplained two-year gap between October 2013 and December 2015. In that time, 

petitioner filed nothing and did not communicate with the Court. The petition will be 

dismissed. 

CONCLUSION 

For the reasons stated above, respondent’s motion to dismiss the petition as 

untimely (Docket No. 19) is GRANTED. The petition is DISMISSED. 

A certificate of appealability will not issue. Petitioner has not shown “that jurists of 

reason would find it debatable whether the petition states a valid claim of the denial of a 

constitutional right and that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the district 

court was correct in its procedural ruling.” Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000). 

The Clerk shall terminate Docket No. 19, enter judgment in favor of respondent, and close 

the file. 

IT IS SO ORDERED. 

Dated: November ___, 2016

_________________________ 

 RICHARD SEEBORG 

 United States District Judge 

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