IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

EASTERN DIVISION

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ex rel.)

CESAR MARIN #N-0222l, )

)

Petitioner, )

)

v. ) No. 12 C 46

)

MARC G. HODGE, WARDEN, )

)

Respondent. )

MEMORANDUM ORDER

Cesar Marin (“Marin”) has filed a self-prepared 28 U.S.C.

§2254 Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus (“Petition”) in which 1 2

he seeks relief from a nearly-three-decades-old conviction on

charges of murder, armed robbery and attempt murder, with a 75-

year custodial sentence applicable to the first of those charges. 

This Court has conducted the preliminary review called for by

Rule 4 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United

States District Courts (“Section 2254 Rules”), and it finds that

an immediate dismissal of the Petition is called for.

First, however, it is necessary to clear up a

misunderstanding on Marin’s part as to the required filing fee

for his Petition. Although federal habeas proceedings by state

 All further references to Title 28’s provisions will 1

simply take the form “Section--.”

 “Self-prepared” is employed here in the sense that Marin 2

has used the printed form of Petition provided by this District

Court’s Clerk’s Office, supported by handprinted inserts and a

detailed 19-page handprinted statement coupled with a number of

documentary exhibits.
court prisoners call for payment of a modest $5 filing fee, Marin

has submitted an In Forma Pauperis Application (“Application”) on

a Clerk’s-Office-supplied form. That Application is denied, and

Marin is ordered to pay the $5 filing fee on or before

January 23, 2012.3

To turn to the Petition itself, Marin’s conviction and

sentence go back to 1982. After a partially successful appeal

that resulted in a remand for resentencing, which took place on

May 27, 1982, Marin then made two attempts to obtain postconviction relief from the state court system. Both were

ultimately unsuccessful, the first through an Illinois Appellate

Court affirmance at the end of September 1988 and the second

through an Illinois Appellate Court decision at the beginning of

October 2000.

It is painfully obvious from that time sequence that Marin

needs to find a source of relief from the one-year limitation

period prescribed by Section 2244(d)(1). Under that statute the

limitation period runs from the latest of:

 (A) the date on which the judgment became final by

the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of

the time for seeking such review; 

 To facilitate that payment, this Court is 3

contemporaneously transmitting a copy of this memorandum order to

the trust fund officer at Lawrence Correctional Center, where

Marin is in custody. It is expected that the authorities there

will charge Marin’s trust fund account and transmit the $5 fee to

this District Court’s Clerk’s Office, with this case number

(12 C 46) to be designated on the remittance.

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 (B) the date on which the impediment to filing an

application created by State action in violation of the

Constitution or laws of the United States is removed,

if the applicant was prevented from filing by such

State action; 

 (C) the date on which the constitutional right

asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court,

if the right has been newly recognized by the Supreme

Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on

collateral review; or 

 (D) the date on which the factual predicate of the

claim or claims presented could have been discovered

through the exercise of due diligence. 

To that end Marin seeks to invoke what he calls the “new

rule” established in accordance with the United States Supreme

Court’s decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000).

And he seeks to buttress that by citing to a number of other

federal and state court cases.

But none of those cases does Marin any good, for both

Apprendi and the subsequent holding that Apprendi applies

retroactively go back more than a decade, and not one of the many

other cases that Marin cites comes even close to a vintage that

would qualify it for compliance with Section 2244(d)(1). In

short, Marin has struck out by many years in his effort to bring

himself within the Section 2244(d)(1) one-year limitation period. 

And that being so, it is an understatement to quote the Section

2254 Rule 4 language that “it plainly appears from the petition

and any attached exhibits that the petitioner is not entitled to

3
relief in the district court.” Accordingly this Court complies

with that Rule 4 mandate to dismiss the Petition, and it denies

Marin’s contemporaneous motion for the appointment of counsel as

moot.

________________________________________

Milton I. Shadur

Senior United States District Judge

Date: January 9, 2012

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