Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-6984.ZO.html
Timestamp: 2014-09-01 14:40:30
Document Index: 768761265

Matched Legal Cases: ['§2244', '§2254', '§2244', '§2255', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244', '§30', '§12', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244']

JIMENEZ v. QUARTERMAN (No. 07-6984)
CARLOS JIMENEZ, PETITIONER v. NATHANIELQUARTERMAN, DIRECTOR, TEXAS DEPART-MENT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, CORREC-TIONAL INSTITUTIONS DIVISION
After petitioner was sentenced for burglary in 1995, his attorney filed an appellate brief with the Texas Court of Appeals pursuant to Anders v. California, 386 U. S.738 (1967), explaining that he was unable to identify any nonfrivolous ground on which to base an appeal.1 He left a copy of the brief and a letter (advising petitioner of his right to file a pro se brief as set forth in Anders, id., at 744) at the county jail where he believed petitioner to be. Petitioner, however, had been transferred to a state facility and did not receive the delivery. The Texas Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal on September 11, 1996, and served petitioner with notice of the dismissal at the county-jail address that, again, was the wrong address.
Petitioner then filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus on July 19, 2005. To establish the timeliness of his petition, he relied on 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(1)(A), which provides “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review” as the trigger for AEDPA’s 1-year limitations period. Petitioner argued that his judgment thus became final on January 6, 2004,2 when time expired for seeking certiorari review of the decision in his out-of-time appeal. Until that date, petitioner argued, direct review of his state-court conviction was not complete.
The Court of Appeals denied petitioner’s request for a certificate of appealability, finding that he had “failed to demonstrate that reasonable jurists would debate the correctness of the district court’s conclusion that the §2254 petition is time-barred.” Order, No. 06–11240, (May 25, 2007), App. 124, 125. We granted certiorari, 552 U. S.___ (2008), and now reverse and remand for furtherproceedings.3
As with any question of statutory interpretation, our analysis begins with the plain language of the statute. Lamie v. United States Trustee, 540 U. S. 526, 534 (2004)
. It is well established that, when the statutory language is plain, we must enforce it according to its terms. See, e.g., Dodd v. United States, 545 U. S. 353, 359 (2005)
; Lamie, supra, at 534; Hartford Underwriters Ins. Co. v. Union Planters Bank, N. A., 530 U. S. 1, 6 (2000)
Finality is a concept that has been “variously defined; like many legal terms, its precise meaning depends on context.” Clay v. United States, 537 U. S. 522, 527 (2003)
. But here, the finality of a state-court judgment is expressly defined by statute as “the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review.” §2244(d)(1)(A).
With respect to postconviction relief for federal prisoners, this Court has held that the conclusion of direct review occurs when “this Court affirms a conviction on the merits on direct review or denies a petition for a writ of certiorari.” Id., at 527, 528–532 (interpreting §2255, ¶6(1)). We have further held that if the federal prisoner chooses not to seek direct review in this Court, then the conviction becomes final when “the time for filing a certiorari petition expires.” Id., at 527. In construing the similar language of §2244(d)(1)(A), we see no reason to depart from this settled understanding, which comports with the most natural reading of the statutory text. See Lawrence v. Florida, 549 U. S. 327, 332–335 (2007)
(citing Clay, supra, at 528, n. 3). As a result, direct review cannot conclude for purposes of §2244(d)(1)(A) until the “availability of direct appeal to the state courts,” Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U. S. 383, 390 (1994)
, and to this Court, Lawrence, supra, at 332–333, has been exhausted. Until that time, the “process of direct review” has not “com[e] to an end” and “a presumption of finality and legality” cannot yet have “attache[d] to the conviction and sentence,” Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U. S. 880, 887 (1983)
Under the statutory definition, therefore, once the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reopened direct review of petitioner’s conviction on September 25, 2002,4 petitioner’s conviction was no longer final for purposes of §2244(d)(1)(A). Rather, the order “granting an out-of-time appeal restore[d] the pendency of the direct appeal,” Ex parte Torres, 943 S. W. 2d 469, 472 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997), and petitioner’s conviction was again capable of modification through direct appeal to the state courts and to this Court on certiorari review. Therefore, it was not until January 6, 2004, when time for seeking certiorari review in this Court expired, that petitioner’s conviction became “final” through “the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review” under §2244(d)(1)(A).
Respondent objects, observing that the Court has previously acknowledged Congress’ intent “to advance the finality of criminal convictions” with the “tight time line” of §2244(d)(1)(A), Mayle v. Felix, 545 U. S. 644, 662 (2005)
, which “pinpoint[s]” a uniform federal date of finality that does not “vary from State to State,” Clay, supra, at 530, 531.In respondent’s view, permitting a state court to reopen direct review, and thus reset AEDPA’s 1-year limitations period, undermines the policy of finality that Congress established in §2244(d)(1). But it is the plain language of §2244(d)(1) that pinpoints the uniform date of finality set by Congress. And that language points to the conclusion of direct appellate proceedings in state court. The statute thus carries out “AEDPA’s goal of promoting ‘comity, finality, and federalism’ by giving state courts ‘the first opportunity to review [the] claim,’ and to ‘correct’ any ‘constitutional violation in the first instance.’ ” Carey v. Saffold, 536 U. S. 214, 220 (2002)
(quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 420, 436 (2000)
; O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U. S. 838, 844–845 (1999)
; citation omitted). The statute requires a federal court, presented with an individual’s first petition for habeas relief, to make use of the date on which the entirety of the state direct appellate review process was completed. Here, that date was January 6, 2004.
1 Petitioner was indicted in August 1991 for felony burglary of a habitation, in violation of Tex. Penal Code Ann. §30.02 (Vernon 1989), enhanced by a prior felony conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon under Tex. Penal Code Ann. §12.42(c) (Vernon 1974). He entered a plea agreement in which he agreed to plead guilty to the burglary and true to the enhancement in exchange for an order of deferred adjudication. In November 1991, the trial court deferred adjudication of the burglary conviction and ordered that petitioner serve five years of deferred-adjudication probation. In March 1995, the State moved to revoke petitioner’s probation based on four alleged violations of the conditions of his probation. At a November 1995 hearing, petitioner admitted to two of the violations. The court then heard testimony with respect to the other two violations and found that petitioner had committed those violations as well. The court revoked petitioner’s deferred-adjudication probation, adjudicated him guiltyof the enhanced burglary, and sentenced him to a 43-year term of imprisonment.
2 In the District Court, petitioner contended that this date was January 8, 2004, but petitioner’s time for seeking certiorari review actually expired two days earlier.
3 We do not decide whether petitioner is entitled to a certificate of appealability on remand because we are presented solely with the Court of Appeals’ decision on the timeliness of the petition under 28 U. S. C. §2244(d). “When the district court denies a habeas petition on procedural grounds without reaching the prisoner’s underlying constitutional claim,” as here, a certificate of appealability should issue only when the prisoner shows both “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)
(emphasis added). We make no judgment regarding the merits of petitioner’s federal constitutional claims.
4 We do not here decide whether petitioner could have sought timely federal habeas relief between October 11, 1997, when the 1-year limitations period initially expired, and September 25, 2002, when the state court ordered that his direct review be reopened. Were such a petition timely, though, it would not be through application of §2244(d)(1)(A) because we have previously held that the possibility that a state court may reopen direct review “does not render convictions and sentences that are no longer subject to direct review nonfinal,” Beard v. Banks, 542 U. S. 406, 412 (2004)
. We do not depart from that rule here; we merely hold that, where a state court has in fact reopened direct review, the conviction is rendered nonfinal for purposes of §2244(d)(1)(A) during the pendency of the reopened appeal.