Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-14-73178/USCOURTS-ca9-14-73178-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Arturo Alexander Barrientos
Petitioner
Loretta E. Lynch
Respondent

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ARTURO ALEXANDER BARRIENTOS,

Petitioner,

v.

LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney

General,

Respondent.

No. 14-73178

Agency No.

A206-548-254

ORDER

Filed July 19, 2016

Before: Jerome Farris, Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain,

and Morgan Christen, Circuit Judges.

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2 BARRIENTOS V. LYNCH

SUMMARY*

Immigration

The panel granted Arturo Alexander Barrientos’s motion

asking the court to exercise its discretion to consider new

evidence not filed with his petition for review which showed

that the petition was timely filed because it complied with the

conditions of the “prison mailbox” rule, Fed. R. App. P.

25(a)(2)(C).

The panel held that under Rule 25(a)(2)(C) this court has

discretion to refuse to consider, or to give less weight to, an

inmate’s declaration or notarized statement submitted after

the inmate’s legal filing. The panel granted Barrientos’s

motion to submit the new evidence, exercised its discretion to

consider his affidavit and the prison’s outgoing mail log, and

concluded that his petition for review was timely filed.

The panel held that it thus had jurisdiction over the

petition for review under 8 U.S.C. § 1252, and resolved the

merits in a memorandum disposition filed concurrently with

this order.

COUNSEL

Nicholas Smith (argued) and Hain-Whei Hsueh, Certified

Law Students; Stephen A. Tollafield, Supervising Counsel;

* 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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BARRIENTOS V. LYNCH 3

Gary A. Watt, Supervising Counsel; Hastings Appellate

Project, San Francisco, California; for Petitioner.

Manuel A. Palau (argued), Trial Attorney; Terri J. Scadron,

Assistant Director; Benjamin C. Mizer, Principal Deputy

Assistant AttorneyGeneral; Office of Immigration Litigation,

Civil Division, United States Department of Justice,

Washington, D.C.; for Respondent.

ORDER

We must determine whether we have jurisdiction over a

petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration

Appeals that our clerk’s office received five days after the

deadline for filing.

I

Arturo Alexander Barrientos, a native and citizen of El

Salvador, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration

Appeals’ decision affirming the immigration judge’s denial

of withholding of removal and protection under the

Convention Against Torture.

A

Under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1), the “petition for review

must be filed not later than 30 days after the date of the final

order of removal.” This deadline is “mandatory and

jurisdictional.” Abdisalan v. Holder, 774 F.3d 517, 521 (9th

Cir. 2014) (en banc) (quoting Stone v. INS, 514 U.S. 386, 405

(1995)). The burden is on Barrientos to establish jurisdiction,

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4 BARRIENTOS V. LYNCH

as he is “the party invoking jurisdiction.” Haroutunian v. INS,

87 F.3d 374, 376 (9th Cir. 1996).

As a general matter, a filing in the court of appeals “is not

timely unless the clerk receives the papers within the time

fixed for filing.” Fed. R. App. P. 25(a)(2)(A) (emphasis

added); see also Fed. R. App. P. 25(a)(2)(B) (treating briefs

and appendices as timely filed if mailed by the required date). 

“[W]hat is most plain about the purpose of the word

‘receives’ is that it rejects a mailbox rule for petitions for

review.” Sheviakov v. INS, 237 F.3d 1144, 1147 (9th Cir.

2001). However, a mailbox rule exists for confined inmates:

A paper filed by an inmate confined in an

institution is timely if deposited in the

institution’s internal mailing system on or

before the last day for filing. If an institution

has a system designed for legal mail, the

inmate must use that system to receive the

benefit of this rule. Timely filing may be

shown by a declaration in compliance with

28 U.S.C. § 1746 or by a notarized statement,

either of which must set forth the date of

deposit and state that first-class postage has

been prepaid.

Fed. R. App. P. 25(a)(2)(C). This rule accompanied Rule

4(c), which addresses filing of a notice of appeal in the

district court, and extended the holding in Houston v. Lack,

487 U.S. 266 (1988), “to all papers filed in the courts of

appeals by persons confined in institutions.” See Fed. R.

App. P. 25(a), advisory committee’s note to 1993

amendment.

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BARRIENTOS V. LYNCH 5

B

Here, the final order of removal is the decision of the

Board of Immigration Appeals, which is dated September 9,

2014. The deadline to file was therefore October 9, 2014. 

The petition for review, although dated October 7, 2014, was

not received by the court until October 14, 2014, which was

five days past the deadline. As a result, the petition would

only be timely filed, and we would only have jurisdiction, if

Barrientos can take advantage of the “prison mailbox” rule.

Barrientos was detained by immigration authorities at the

Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, when

he filed his petition for review, so he is eligible for the

benefits of Rule 25(a)(2)(C) if he complied with its

requirements. To comply with such requirements, an inmate

must deposit a paper in the institution’s internal mailing

system on or before the last day for filing and must use the

institution’s system for legal mail, if it has one. See Fed. R.

App. P. 25(a)(2)(C). In addition, the inmate must direct that

the paper be sent to the court. See Houston, 487 U.S. at 273

(“[D]elivery of a notice of appeal to prison authorities would

not under any theory constitute a ‘filing’ unless the notice

were delivered for forwarding to the . . . court.”).

In this case, Barrientos did not include with his petition a

declaration or notarized statement as described in Rule

25(a)(2)(C). Moreover, he did not state whether the

institution in which he was detained has a system designed

for legal mail or whether he used that system to mail his

petition to our clerk’s office. As a result, Barrientos’s initial

filings failed to demonstrate that he had complied with the

requirements of Rule 25(a)(2)(C), and his petition might have

been untimely. Because we lack jurisdiction over an

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6 BARRIENTOS V. LYNCH

untimely petition, we raised this issue sua sponte and ordered

supplemental briefing from the parties.

C

With Barrientos’s supplemental brief, he has submitted a

motion requesting permission to file new evidence that he did

comply with the conditions of Rule 25(a)(2)(C). He

submitted an affidavit in which he declares that he is

detained; that his detention center has one outgoing mail

receptacle for all mail, including legal mail; that he deposited

his petition for review in the outgoing mail receptacle on

October 7, 2014; and that he included first-class postage

prepaid.

II

Next, we must determine whether to consider and whether

to credit the newly filed evidence of compliance.

A

Although Rule 25(a)(2)(C) states that timelyfilingmaybe

shown with a declaration or notarized statement,1it does not

specify when an inmate must submit such document. The

Eighth Circuit considered this issue in a case regarding Rule

1 As a general matter, we cannot consider extra-record evidence. We

must limit our review of the merits of Barrientos’s petition to “the

administrative record on which the order of removal is based.” 8 U.S.C.

§ 1252(b)(4)(A). However, we may consider evidence, “not in order to

supplement the administrative record on the merits, but rather to determine

whether petitioners can satisfy a prerequisite to this court’s jurisdiction.” 

Nw. Envtl. Def. Ctr. v. Bonneville Power Admin., 117 F.3d 1520, 1528

(9th Cir. 1997).

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BARRIENTOS V. LYNCH 7

4(c), which mirrors the text of Rule 25(a)(2)(C). See Grady

v. United States, 269 F.3d 913, 917–18 (8th Cir. 2001). In

Grady, the court considered the text of Rule 4(c), which does

not expressly require simultaneous filing. Id. at 917. It then

contrasted Rule 4(c) with Supreme Court Rule 29.2, which

does explicitly mandate that the declaration or notarized

statement accompany the inmate’s legal filing. Id. at 917–18. 

The Eighth Circuit explained that such contrast was

intentional. The advisory committee had considered and

“explicitly rejected [Supreme Court Rule 29.2’s]requirement

that a prisoner’s affidavit accompany his notice of appeal.” 

Id. at 918. Thus, the Eighth Circuit concluded that Rule 4(c)

“does not require a prisoner to file an affidavit accompanying,

or attached to, his motion or notice of appeal.” Id. But, it

cautioned:

By determining that a prisoner’s affidavit

need not accompany his legal filing, we do

not suggest that a prisoner may needlessly

delay proceedings without penalty. In the

appropriate case, a district court may refuse to

consider a prisoner’s Rule 4(c) affidavit due

to a lengthy and unwarranted delay in

submission. Or, if a court elects to consider a

prisoner’s greatly-delayed affidavit, the court

may well decide that it deserves less weight

than other evidence in the record. An

affidavit filed long after the events in question

have occurred tends to be less trustworthy

than a promptly-recorded statement because

the passage of time dulls memories.

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Id. Therefore, the court has discretion to reject or to give less

weight to a declaration or affidavit that does not accompany

the inmate’s legal filing.

We are persuaded by the Eighth Circuit’s analysis and

apply its holding in Grady to inmate filings in the court of

appeals. Under Rule 25(a)(2)(C), when a declaration or

notarized statement is submitted after the inmate’s legal

filing, we have discretion to refuse to consider, or to give less

weight to, such declaration or statement.2

B

Here, the government did not oppose Barrientos’s motion

to submit his new affidavit. Moreover, it conceded at oral

argument that, with the new affidavit, the petition was timely

filed. After oral argument, Barrientos submitted a copy of the

outgoing mail log from the Northwest Detention Center, 

which shows that the detention center received mail

addressed to our court from Barrientos on October 8, 2014.3

Given this corroborating evidence and the government’s

concession, we (1) grant Barrientos’s Motion To Supplement

2 Our conclusion aligns with proposed amendments to Rules 4(c) and

25(a)(2)(C)—which are set to take effect December 1, 2016, absent

intervention byCongress. Under such amendments, a contemporaneously

filed affidavit is sufficient, but not necessary, and a non-contemporaneous

affidavit may be considered by the court of appeals in its discretion. See

Amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure 46–49 (U.S.

Apr. 28, 2016) (to be codified at Fed. R. App. P. 4(c), 25(a)(2)(C)),

http://www.uscourts.gov/file/document/2016-04-28-final-packagecongress.

3 We construe Barrientos’s letter submitting the mail log as a motion to

supplement the record, which we grant.

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BARRIENTOS V. LYNCH 9

Court’s Docket, ECF No. 56; (2) exercise our discretion to

consider the affidavit and mail log; and (3) conclude that

Barrientos’s petition for review was timely filed pursuant to

Rule 25(a)(2)(C).

III

As a result, we have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252. 

The merits of the petition are resolved in a memorandum

disposition filed concurrently with this order.

MOTION GRANTED.

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