Source: https://habeascorpusblog.typepad.com/habeas_corpus_blog/coa/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 10:43:38+00:00

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Gillis offers good advice on one possible method for avoiding filing deadlines for 2255 motions and, more generally, is a good reminder of the value of reading rules of procedure. Often there are little nuggests in there that may get you out of an occasional fix.
The petitioner was convicted in 2007 of dealing crack near a school in violation of 21 U.S.C. 841 and 860(a). The court initially sentenced him to 262 months, but in 2009 it lowered the sentence to 191 months following a remand to reconsider application of the Guidelines' career-offender provisions. Gillis asked his attorney to appeal his new sentence, but counsel failed to file a timely notice. In May, 2011, Gillis filed a pro se § 2255 motion claiming ineffective assistance. The district court dismissed the motion as barred by the one-year deadline of § 2255(f). Gillis waited 201 days to appeal that denial, and the Government moved to dismiss the appeal as untimely.
The Sixth Circuit held that the appeal was timely. The district court never entered a separate judgment after denying the § 2255 motion, and therefore Gillis effectively had 210 days to appeal. The 210 days adds up as follows: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 58(a) requires a separate judgment for all decisions or orders, except for five exceptions. A § 2255 motion is not one of those exceptions. Therefore, the district court’s judgment was not considered “entered” until 150 days after it denied the § 2255 motion. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(7)(A)(ii) (defining “judgment” as entered 150 days after entry in the civil docket in the absence of a separate judgment required under Civil Rule 58(a)). Then, you add to that 150 the standard 60 days to appeal provided for in Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(B) (and Rule 11(b) of the Federal Habeas Rules). Because Gillis filed his appeal within the 210-day window, his appeal was timely.
For those of us practicing primarily in the Second Circuit, there is a wrinkle here. The Sixth Circuit noted that the Second is the only Circuit that has held, in a 1993 case, that , Civil Rule 58(a) does not apply to § 2255 motions because of the “quasi-criminal” nature of such motions. See Williams v. United States, 984 F.2d 28, 29–31 (2d Cir. 1993). However, there is a good argument to be made that Williams was wrongly decided. Federal Habeas Rule 11(b) is clear that Fed. R. App. P. 4(a) governs appellate filing deadlines. That rule, in turn, defines the entry of a judgment with reference to Fed. R. Civ. P. 58(a). There is thus no basis in the governing Rules for the Second Circuit’s “quasi-criminal” gloss. The other circuits to consider the issue have recognize this: the Third, Fourth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits all agree with the Sixth Circuit’s 210-day rule.
Unfortunately for Mr. Gillis, AEDPA’s filing deadlines are not as forgiving as the rules of Federal and Apppellate Procedure. Here the latter rules gave Gillis an extra six months to appeal the denial of his § 2255 motion. But the former, as the Court noted, “are not so lenient with regard to the timeliness of his § 2255 motion in the first place.” Gillis had 14 days from his resentencing in December 2009 to file a direct appeal. (Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)). His lawyer did not do so, and his conviction became final (and the one-year AEDPA clock began to run) on December 26, 2009. That clock ran out on December 26, 2010, but Gillis did not file his pro se § 2255 motion until May 20, 2011.
In another ruling on 2255 procedure, the Sixth Circuit joined the Fourth, Eleventh and D.C. Circuits in holding that a COA is not required to appeal the relief granted after a successful § 2255 motion.
Ajan was originally sentenced to 646 months for various drug, kidnapping and firearm offenses. However, his § 2255 motion was granted, and his sentence vacated, after the parties agreed that one of the § 924(c) firearm convictions was not an offense under the charged statute. Without conducting new sentencing proceedings, the district court ordered entry of an amended judgment reflecting a new sentence of 346 months (the total term for the remaining offenses). Ajan appealed without obtaining a COA.
Petitioners often seek equitable tolling of AEDPA’s statute of limitations. The Sixth Circuit also had some good news for petitioner's on that score as well, at least in the context of Brady claims.
Kenneth Jefferson was originally convicted in federal court in 1999 for his role in a gang selling crack out of Ypsilanti, Michigan throughout that drug’s boom years of the 1980s and 1990s. He was sentenced to twenty years. The Sixth Circuit affirmed his conviction on direct appeal, and the conviction became final ninety days later, on May 12, 2003. However, Jefferson did not file his § 2255 motion until August 2004, making it untimely.
The court rejected the September 20004 date on the ground that “a decision in an unrelated terrorism case could not constitute the factual predicate for prosecutorial-misconduct claims in Jefferson’s case.” And it rejected the September 2005 date because Jefferson had filed his motions in March 2005, which severely undercut an argument that he was not on notice of his claim until five months after he filed it.
The district court complied, gave Jefferson’s motion additional consideration, and again denied it. This time, the court essentially deployed the “kitchen sink” reasoning the habeas practitioners are so used to: the claims are untimely, they do not warrant equitable tolling and, in any event, they are meritless. Case closed.
As Ive said on this blog before, I disagree with the wide application of the assumption that juries would do the same thing if they had more or different information to all manner of different circumstances. Our system operates largely on the theory that jury deliberations are (and should be) a black box. The frequency with which judges retroactively predict what a jury would have done under different circumstances (and the confidence with which they do so) violates that precept. To some extent this is necessary to conserve resources – the courts would be swamped if we had to retry every case where the jury didn’t hear evidence it should have (or where, in the more frequent case, the jury hears something it shouldn’t have). But make no mistake: the Brady materiality standard operates primarily as a practical resource-management tool. It is not a well-considered reflection on the ability of judges to accurately second-guess juries.
In Henderson, the Sixth Circuit applied the prison mailbox rule to reverse the district court's finding that petitioner had procedurally defaulted on claims to the Michigan state courts. Henderson was convicted of armed robbery and carjacking based in part on a lineup identification. Law enforcement officers claimed that Henderson's attorney was present at the lineup, but the attorney denied that he was there. Henderson claimed that his trial attorney was ineffective for failing to raise the issue at trial. However, state courts rejected his claims as untimely because the filing arrived one day late due to failings in the prison mail system.
For the last case, we move to the Seventh Circuit. In Hooper, the Seventh Circuit granted a §2254 petition, reversing the district court and effectively reversing a 32-year-old murder conviction on Batson grounds.
At trial, the court drew a venire of 63 members, seven of whom were black. Two of the seven were removed for cause, and the prosecutor exercised peremptory challenges against the remaining five. The Seventh Circuit held that the Illinois Supreme Court applied Batson unreasonably in four respects. It’s worth going through all four grounds, both because a state Supreme Court making four mistakes on any one issue is notable, and because some of the mistakes would be funny if they were not so troubling.
Finally, the Circuit held that the state court erred unreasonably in excusing the trial judge’s incorrect application of Batson’s three-step sequence of proof.
The Seventh Circuit’s decision may force Illinois to free Hooper, who has served over 32 years for the murders and is now 67 years old. The Court acknowledged that it may be impossible for the state to conduct a “fruitful” Batson hearing more than three decades after the trial (not to mention a retrial). But I think the Court correctly reasoned that it could not let such an unacceptable decision stand. It may have helped that the Illinois Supreme Court decision under review was 24 years old – the Circuit was not throwing stones at the current court. It may have also felt that the trial was also tainted by its judge, Thomas Maloney, who was later convicted of bribery and spent the last 15 years of his life in prison. Maloney was not your ordinary crooked judge: a jury found that he fixed three gang murder trials. It’s not legally relevant to the Batson claim, but Maloney’s presence in the case was just one more taint on the appearance of justice.
First, the Seventh Circuit quickly put the kibosh on habeas petitions asserting claims based on Alleyne v. United States (U.S. Jun. 17, 2013), the recent Supreme Court decision holding that Apprendi extends to facts mandating a mandatory minimum sentence.
In Simpson v. United States, No. 13-2373 (7th Cir. Jul. 10, 2013), the Circuit disposed of Levence Simpson’s request to file a successive § 2255 motion based on Alleyne. Simpson received a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence for drug offenses; the Seventh Circuit affirmed in 2003. His first § 2255 motion, claiming ineffective assistance, was denied in 2006.
Then came Alleyne, which overruled Harris v. United States and held that a judge cannot find facts resulting in a mandatory minimum unless the defendant either admits those facts or waives his entitlement to have a jury make that determination. After Alleyne, Simpson argued that he was entitled to a successive § 2255 based on the “new constitutional rule” created by that decision.
The Seventh Circuit denied Simpson leave to file a successive § 2255. The easiest way to do this would have been to limit it to Simpson's facts: in his case the jury had found, by way of a special verdict, that he conspired to distribute more than one kilogram of heroin and more than 50 grams of crack (thus requiring the 20-year mandatory minimum).
But the Seventh Circuit, no-doubt envisioning a tsunami of Alleyne-based prisoner claims, went a bit further. It conceded (as it had to) that Alleyne established “a new rule of constitutional law.” But the Court noted that Alleyne did not satisfy the second requirement of § 2255(h)(2): that the Supreme Court make the new rule “retroactive to cases on collateral review.” The Supreme Court did not do this; Alleyne came to the Supremes on direct, not collateral, review and the Court's decision says nothing about retroactivity. For good measure, the Circuit noted that other extensions of Apprendi have been held to be non-retroactive.
* For all you history buffs, this months' NY State Bar Journal has a good article about the Boston Massacre trials, one of the most famous joint representations ever. John Adams represented both the British soldiers who fired into the crowd and the officer who was charged with giving the order to fire. These days, such a joint representation would never be allowed. But no one seemed all that concerned at the time.
The Seventh Circuit disagreed with the district court. It found that the Illinois Supreme Court unreasonably applied US Supreme Court precedent by holding that Taylor’s interest in presenting exculpatory witnesses did not conflict with Lowell’s interest in preventing admission of inculpatory testimony.
The Circuit remanded for fact-finding required under Cuyler - whether the conflict of interest between the two brothers adversely affected the attorney’s performance.
In the Second Circuit, pursuant to a decision called Curcio, the Court is required to explain to codefendants who wish to share counsel the risks of joint representation. I don't know what the practice is in the Seventh Circuit, but it sounds as if there should have been more of an effort at the beginning to think through the conflicts between Taylor and his brother. As this decision illustrates, it's better to get those issues out in the open early on rather than dealing with them after trial.
First, the Seventh Circuit quickly put the kibosh on habeas petitions asserting claims based on Alleyne v. United States (U.S. Jun. 17, 2013), holding that Apprendi extends to facts mandating a mandatory minimum sentence.
In Simpson v. United States, No. 13-2373 (7th Cir. Jul. 10, 2013), the Circuit disposed of Levence Simpson’s request to file a successive § 2255 motion based on Alleyne. Simpson received a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence for drug offences; the Seventh Circuit affirmed in 2003. His first § 2255 motion, claiming ineffective assistance, was denied in 2006.
* For all you history buffs, this months' NY State Bar Journal has a good article about the Boston Massacre trials. John Adams represented both the British soldiers who fired into the crowd and the officer who commanded them to fire. These days, such a joint representation would never be allowed, but no one seemed all that concerned at the time.
In Taylor, Levell Taylor was convicted of murder in Illinois and sentenced to 35 years for the 1996 gang-related killing of Bruce Carter. On direct appeal, he claimed that his counsel operated with a conflict of interest by jointly representing both him and his brother, Lowell, in simultaneous murder trials. In particular, Taylor argued that his lawyer’s refused to call certain exculpatory witnesses at his trial because those witnesses might have implicated Lowell. This is a classic conflict claim, but the Illinois Supreme Court found no conflict and affirmed the conviction.
The Circuit remanded for fact-finding required by Cuyler - whether the conflict of interest between the two brothers adversely affected the attorney’s performance.
I don't know why counsel went forward representing both defendants. Maybe there was a good reason, but where there was such a clear conflict in available defenses someone (if not defense counsel, then either the Court or the prosecutor) probably should have raised the issue at some point.
Last week, HCB’s own Alan Lewis received a COA grant from the Second Circuit in Umali v. Heath, No. 12-3243 (2d Cir. COA granted Dec. 18, 2012). Not one to toot his own horn, I will trumpet for him – a Circuit COA grant is rare enough these days that it’s important to keep track of all of them. This one is particularly noteworthy because it gives the Second Circuit a chance to consider one important, but largely ignored aspect of the Supreme Court’s Lafler v. Cooper opinion from last term – the boundary between the contrary to and unreasonable application clauses of AEDPA.
The case began as a New York State murder prosecution against Isaias Umali for killing Dana Blake during a 2003 fight at an East Village club. Blake, a bouncer, was in the process of violently removing Umali’s friend, Jonathan Chan, from the club when Umali stabbed Blake in the thigh/groin, severing Blake’s femoral artery. Surgery to repair the artery failed and Blake died the following day.
Following a trial, Umali was convicted of First Degree Manslaughter and sentenced to 17 years in prison. In his state court appeals he raised several issues relating to his right to present a defense, the trial court’s exclusion of lay and expert witness testimony, as well as the issue on which the Second Circuit granted a COA – the court’s burden shifting instruction on justification.
Umali ’s defense was that, at the time of the stabbing, he believed that Blake was using deadly physical force against Chan. Both defense and prosecution witnesses testified that Blake (a much larger man than Chan) held Chan by the neck or throat and that Chan unsuccessfully tried to free himself from Blake’s grasp. The defense argued that Chan could not breathe and was therefore in grave danger.
In New York, deadly force can be justified where someone reasonably believes that another person is using or is about to use deadly physical force. For those who haven’t cracked a NY Penal Law since the Bar Exam, you’ll recall that this defense has both “subjective” and “objective” components: the defendant must subjectively believe at the time that he is acting to stop deadly physical force upon himself or another, and that belief must be objectively reasonable under the circumstances.
If the evidence convinces you beyond a reasonable doubt that deadly force was necessary to prevent the imminent use – that the defendant believed that deadly physical force was necessary to prevent the imminent use of deadly physical force you must still find the second test, which is the objective test, were defendant’s beliefs reasonable under an objective standard.
If you didn’t catch it, the problem with this explanation is that, by suggesting that the jury had to be “convince[d] beyond a reasonable doubt that . . . the defendant believed that deadly physical force was necessary,” the court shifted the burden of proof on the subjective prong to the defendant. Umali’s trial attorney (HCB’s Alan Lewis) caught it, and asked the judge to re-charge the jury and explain its previous error. The court refused, maintaining that it “correctly said” the justification charge.
A burden-shifting charging error is a big deal. The criminal justice system relies on juries to give effect to major constitutional rights, including the one at issue here: the requirement that the State prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Rights don’t get much more fundamental to American justice than that. Therefore, when a court gives a constitutionally defective instruction, the Supreme Court has held that it is not enough that other parts of the jury charge may have instructed correctly on the same subject. Instead, the court is required to “explain” the defective instruction: “Language that merely contradicts and does not explain a constitutionally infirm instruction will not suffice to absolve the infirmity.” Francis v. Franklin, 471 U.S. 307, 322 (1985).
If you’re reading closely you might be asking yourself, “what about that Franklin case he just mentioned? Doesn’t that require an explanation of the error?” It sure seems to me that it does. But you wouldn’t know that from reading the Court of Appeals’ decision. Even though Umali emphasized the Franklin holding – it is literally the first case cited in Umali’s Court of Appeals’ brief – the opinion refers to Franklin ZERO times. And neither of the two cases the Court of Appeals relied upon for its expression of the legal standard refers to Franklin. See People v Drake, 7 N.Y.3d 28 (2006); People v Fields, 87 N.Y.2d 821 (1995).
Umali petitioned the SDNY for habeas review. The petition was referred to a federal Magistrate Judge, who recommended that District Judge Rakoff deny it. See Umali v. Heath, No. 10 Civ. 1787 (S.D.N.Y. Report & Recommendation filed Oct. 13, 2011) (Gorenstein, M.J.) (“R & R”). Judge Rakoff adopted the R & R and also denied a COA.
To answer the jury instruction question, the R & R applied a modified form of the three-part test of Jackson v. Edwards, 404 F.3d 612, 621 (2d Cir. 2005), asking the following three questions: (1) was the charge incorrect under state law?; (2) if so, was the giving of the faulty charge a denial of due process?; and (3) if so, did the state court’s contrary conclusion constitute an unreasonable application of clear Supreme Court law?
Before getting to the answers, you have to wonder whether the Magistrate asked the right questions – particularly the third, applying AEDPA’s deferential standard of review under the unreasonable application prong. Last term in Cooper, the Supreme Court held that state court decisions that fail to apply controlling Supreme Court precedent to a constitutional claim do not get AEDPA deference because they are “contrary to” clearly established federal law as opposed to an unreasonable application of that law. 132 S. Ct. 1376, 1390. The state court decision at issue in Cooper failed to apply Strickland v. Washington to assess an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Here, there is no doubt that the New York Court of Appeals failed to apply Franklin to Umali’s jury instruction claim, because the court never mentioned the case. So, whence AEDPA deference? By asking the third question above, the district court simply assumed that AEDPA deference would apply. A threshold question for the Circuit will be how to deal with the lower court’s unconsidered application of AEDPA deference in light of Cooper.
As for the first two questions, the Magistrate Judge answered yes and no, respectively. The subjective prong language was incorrect under state law because it incorrectly shifted the burden on to the defendant. However, the faulty charge did not result in a denial of due process because in the context of the entire charge it did not deny Umali of a fair trial.
I’m not sure what Judge Rakoff – an excellent and thoughtful judge – was thinking when he denied COA on this. It is a fair reading of Franklin that a trial court must correct an unconstitutional instruction by, at a minimum, referencing the bad instruction and then explaining why it is incorrect. Clearly that did not happen here. In addition, none of the judge’s correct instructions were as specific as the burden-shifting one. That is, the burden shifting occurred in the only instruction in which the trial judge dealt specifically with the subjective element of justification.
The reasoning behind the R & R seems to be that Umali’s case is different from Franklin because here the correct instructions on burden of proof related to a specific claim or defense (i.e. justification) and therefore it’s okay to expect a lay jury to reason that the correct instruction should override an erroneous instruction applying to an element of that claim or defense. In Franklin, the correct instructions were given only in the abstract, and therefore it was not fair to expect a jury to apply them to override a contradictory instruction as to an element of a claim or defense.
I’m dubious. As a legal matter, Franklin says that abstract or global instructions cannot override contradictory specific instructions. Yet both the NY Court of Appeals and the Magistrate Judge specifically relied on such global instructions (as well as the “more specific” ones relating to justification) to defend the legitimacy of the overall charge. That reliance was misplaced under any reading of Franklin.
But even on a more basic level, the Magistrate’s reasoning makes an unwarranted assumption about the legal reasoning skills of lay jurors. Trial judges should charge each jury as if it knows nothing about the law. If a jury were made up entirely of lawyers (or even law students) it might be reasonable to assume that such a jury could easily reason from a defense to an element of that defense. These are precisely the sort of reasoning skills that those in (or training for) the legal profession regularly employ. But I’m not sure why this level of deductive reasoning is any easier for a lay jury than that deemed too difficult for a jury by the Supreme Court's Franklin opinion.
The Second Circuit did the right thing by granting COA. That will enable it to consider the merits as well as the application of AEDPA deference in light of Cooper. I’m hoping that Cooper begins a shift away from the sometimes unexamined assumption that every state court decision receives deference under AEDPA. State court decisions that fail to apply the correct federal standard should not receive that (or any) level of deference.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued its opinions in the habeas case of Gonzalez v. Thaler and the front-end case Smith v. Cain.
Gonzalez concerned two issues: whether certain requirements about the content of a COA were jurisdictional and when the time period began to run for the one-year statute of limitations when petitioner did not seek review from the highest state court from which review was possible. Both issues are pretty dull.
Sotomayor wrote the opinion and concluded that the content requirements were not jurisdictional. The only jurisdictional requirement of a COA is that a court must issue one. It's the obvious result. As I explained before, the entire issue was laughable. Truly. Eight judges agreed.
For some reason, Scalia dissented. I mean, I read his dissent. And he certainly believes that the contents of the COA should be jurisdictional from his take on the statute and the Court's past jurisdictional jurisprudence. But it's certainly not a better reading of the statute or the prior cases. And from a practical point of view, it's pretty absurd. And Sotomayor said why, but not directly enough -- it is a court that issues the COA. When a court messes something up in an order, a court typically has the power to fix it. We saw the Second Circuit do that recently with respect to a deficient COA. Just send it back to the issuing judge to fix it. It is ridiculous -- truly -- to think that either a federal district court judge or a circuit court judge can deprive the federal courts of jurisdiction based on a mistake that a federal judge made in a COA order. This whole thing was such a waste of the Court's resources.
As for the other issue, the Court reads the language of the statute literally and says that the limitations period begins to run when the time to seek discretionary review in the highest available court expires. It's the obvious result. But the situation in Gonzalez is not that simple. Petitioner had argued that the time should run from when the intermediate appellate court issued its mandate, which starts the clock to run in state court as to when the petitioner can file a state habeas corpus petition. So the mandate has significance in state court. But the habeas statute really doesn't contemplate such procedural subtleties. Sotomayor suggests that, if a mandate is being overly delayed, the petitioner should file his habeas petition in federal court and ask for a stay. I don't think that's a particularly credible option. But now that it has been suggested by the Supreme Court, hopefully federal courts will follow it and allow stays in situations where the state courts have more compicated procedural rules that may interfere with a literal application of the one-year time requirements.
Turning to Smith, it's a nice little decision. As SCOTUSblog noted, it's power is in its brevity. It's an obvious Brady violation that must result in the reversal of the conviction. It's just shocking that it had to get all the way up to the Supreme Court for that to happen.
For some reason, Thomas dissented. I read his dissent. He is fundamentally wrong. It is simply ludicrous to think that the defendant here did not meet the Brady standard -- this was suppressed, favorable impeachment evidence of the main witness against the defendant.
And here is where Thomas's silence at oral argument has an impact. From all media reports, this was a brutal oral argument for the State. From what I remember, Kagan asked the State's attorney whether they had thought about conceding. That's extreme. And from what I remember, no judge spoke up in defense of the state court's decision. So the story here was that the State really didn't have a leg to stand on and their fight to uphold this conviction was nearly in bad faith. At the very least, in severe bad taste.
Of course, Thomas remained silent. No questions of the defendant's attorney about why the conviction should be considered reliable. No helpful questions for the State seeking to explain to the world, under intense media scrutiny, as to why the criminal justice system should accept a criminal convicion under these circumstances.
And then he issued a dissenting opinion. How can anybody who is paying attention see that as credible? It's why oral argument matters, at least in the Supreme Court. It's really a time for the world to get a visual and oral picture of what's going on in this case. The world got to see that this conviction stinks. If Thomas wanted to get the world to see it his way, he should have tried to make that case at oral argument when at least one crucial chapter of the story gets written. Now, nobody who is paying attention is going to agree with him. They saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears that there was something egregiously wrong here.
I have added a couple new cases to the Pending Second Circuit Cases page.
First, in lieu of doing a separate post covering the Second Circuit orders for the past two months (November and December 2011), I'll just mention here that there were zero COA's in November and only one in December. The numbers continue to dwindle.
(1) Was there jurisdiction to issue a certificate of appealability under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c) and to adjudicate petitioner’s appeal?; (2) Was the application for a writ of habeas corpus out of time under 28 U.S.C. §2244(d)(1) due to “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review”?
From SCOTUSblog's preview, I see that the parties spent a good deal of their time debating the COA issue. The debate is over whether the Fifth Circuit's COA order was jurisdictionally deficient in that it did not mention whether reasonable jurists could debate whether petitioner had stated a valid underlying constitutional claim. The Solicitor General weighed in on this issue as well, arguing that the problems with the COA are jurisdictional.
On a certain level, this debate is fine with me. I was more worried about whether the Court would overrule its prior precedent allowing a COA on a procedural issue. That does not appear to be a legitimate fear.
The debate reminds me of the cannon to shoot a fly Second Circuit decision from the other day about the required specificity of a certificate of appealability. I have no problem with courts having to be more exact with COA's and, if they are not, forcing them to be more exact.
But jurisdictional? That's a little nutty. If it is purely a jurisdictional error, then the State would be allowed to move to dismiss based on the insufficient COA order. But under that logic, the Fifth Circuit deprived itself of jurisdiction when it issued an imprecise order. I don't see how a court can deprive itself of jurisdiction like that.
Rather, I would think that a court has the power under the federal rules to correct its own orders to address such a mistake (maybe FRAP 40?). If there is a deficiency in the COA order, then the court should simply be asked to fix it. For example, here, the State could seek reconsideration of the COA grant and argue that the appellate court shouldn't consider the case unless that's fixed. I guess in that way it would be "quasi-jurisdictional." The court can look at the case again and see whether or not the standard has been met. If not, then they can dismiss the appeal that way. But that's how it should go. If the State doesn't raise this procedural defense, then it would be waived and there is nothing wrong with the court considering the case.
And if the district court didn't issue a specific enough order, then like Blackman from the other day, the case would just get remanded for it to get fixed.
I re-read the lower court decision and I still don't get it. It seems very state-specific as to what date should be used as the end date of the appeal. And each one is a totally legitimate way of looking at it. Does the Supreme Court need to step into that mess and say that it needs to be the same date in all cases, regardless of the state's individual procedure? It seems like a waste of time. State law should control on that question in my mind. States' rights! (That's tongue in cheek -- secessionist talk is best left to southern governors with presidential aspirations).
Very brief per curiam* opinion from the Second Circuit today in Blackman v. Ercole. It's actually quite odd. It's more of an internal administrative oversight opinion concerning the method for deciding COA's in the district court, more than a real procedural decision. And it may (I emphasize may) help to solve a perpetual gap in knowledge with respect to when DJ's grant COA's.
*I always want to spell this as "curium," probably because it's how "curiam" is pronounced (or maybe I am just pronouncing it wrong). To note, I did some research to see if "curium" was actually a word. It is (and maybe with an unofficial minor in chemistry I should have known that). Curium is a "silvery metallic synthetic radioactive transuranic element. Its longest lived isotope is Cm 247 with a half-life of 16.4 million years. Atomic number 96; melting point (estimated) 1,350°C; valence 3." I guess that opens up a potential blog post title of "Curium Per Curiam," should a per curiam opinion somehow be described as radioactive.
In Blackman, the EDNY DJ denied habeas relief. Afterwards, the EDNY clerk's office sent the DJ a form to indicate, among other things, whether a COA had been granted. The order denying the petition did not mention this. The judge was asked to check either Yes or No. The DJ checked Yes. But there is nothing on the form to indicate the issue on which a COA was granted.
This upset the Second Circuit. Rather than go after the DJ (whose name was not mentioned at all in the opinion, which is pretty unusual), the Second Circuit attacks the clerk's office for its sloppiness in allowing a DJ to simply check a box. it says, "This does not appear to have been an isolated error, but rather, an oversight triggered by the practice of the Clerk’s Office to notify district judges of requests for COAs using a form that solicits only a 'Granted' or 'Denied' response."
The court says that it does not have the resources to figure out which issue the DJ intended to issue a COA. Apparently, other circuits have had the same problems with its district courts. Thus, the court concludes, "Accordingly, we join our sister circuits that have considered and remanded similarly deficient COAs for specification of issues certified for appeal."
First, let me just say that, in this particular case, I don't think it was too hard to figure out what the issue was on which the COA was granted. The right to remain silent issue was the only issue addressed on the merits in the opinion. The others were clearly procedurally defaulted. And the DJ engaged in a lengthy analysis on the right to remain silent issue. So, I don't think that there was a danger of any resources getting wasted here.
It also feels odd to me that the Second Circuit would do this in a published opinion, rather than as an internal administrative matter. The chief judge could just get on the phone with the different clerk's offices and tell them to stop. An e-mail or memo could have the same effect. Obviously, a published opinion will have the greatest effect, but it's a little like using a cannon to shoot a fly. But this opinion should do the trick.
Despite these quasi qualms I have about the opinion, the upshot, to me, is that this may inspire more judges to either put the COA decision in the order denying the petition (most do, but some do not) or issue a substantive order when granting a COA. If a more substantive order is issued, there is a stronger likelihood that it will end up on Westlaw. This could go towards closing the perpetual gap in knowledge that I have about COA's grants from the district courts that are not a part of the order denying the petition. There aren't many of them, but this case shows that they still do exist.

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