Source: https://casetext.com/case/torres-v-senkowski
Timestamp: 2020-04-10 01:37:54
Document Index: 799727176

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 125', '§ 110', '§ 265', '§ 2254', '§ 2244', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2244', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2244', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 1631']

Torres v. Senkowski, 316 F.3d 147 | Casetext Search + Citator
Torres v. Senkowski
The Second Circuit therefore denied Patterson's second or successive application with respect to claims one…
"AEDPA imposes `stringent limits on a prisoner's ability to bring a second or successive application for a…
Full title:Angelo TORRES, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Daniel SENKOWSKI, Superintendent…
Date published: Jan 9, 2003
316 F.3d 147 (2d Cir. 2003)
holding that a state cannot waive AEDPA's requirement that circuit courts rather than district courts must authorize successive habeas motions or applications because the requirement is jurisdictional
Summary of this case from Gardner v. Galetka
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 2002 WL 732150, Jack B. Weinstein, J.
This appeal presents the question whether AEDPA's authorization requirement can be waived. On the basis of our decisions in Corrao v. United States, 152 F.3d 188 (2d Cir. 1998), and Liriano v. United States, 95 F.3d 119 (2d Cir. 1996) (per curiam), we conclude that the authorization requirement is jurisdictional and therefore cannot be waived.
In a judgment rendered August 6, 1981, after a jury trial in New York State Supreme Court, Kings County (Sybil Hart Kooper, Justice), Torres was convicted of murder in the second degree, N.Y. Penal Law § 125.25[1], attempted murder in the second degree, id. §§ 110.00 125.25[1], and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, id. § 265.03. Torres was sentenced to consecutive terms of imprisonment of twenty-five years to life for the murder conviction and twelve and one-half to twenty-five years for the attempted murder conviction, to run concurrently with a term of imprisonment of seven and one-half years to fifteen years for the weapons possession conviction.
Torres's first direct appeal to the Appellate Division was denied on February 6, 1984. People v. Torres, 99 A.D.2d 933,
472 N.Y.S.2d 526 (2d Dep't 1984). Leave to appeal that decision to the New York Court of Appeals was denied on April 25, 1984. People v. Torres, 62 N.Y.2d 654, 476 N.Y.S.2d 1050, 464 N.E.2d 1001 (1984) (Jasen, J.). On October 11, 1984, Torres filed pro se in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York his first application for a writ of habeas corpus, which was denied on the merits. Torres v. Jones, No. CV-84-4223 (E.D.N.Y. May 22, 1985).
AEDPA imposes "stringent limits on a prisoner's ability to bring a second or successive application for a writ of habeas corpus." Adams v. United States, 155 F.3d 582, 583 (2d Cir. 1998) (per curiam). AEDPA's gatekeeping provisions require that second and successive § 2254 applications be dismissed unless "the claim relies on a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive . . . by the Supreme Court" or presents facts that "could not have been discovered previously" and tend to show actual innocence. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2). Torres filed a first habeas application before AEDPA's effective date, and he filed the instant habeas application after AEDPA's effective date. We have not yet decided whether applying AEDPA's gatekeeping requirements in these circumstances would create an impermissible retroactive effect. See Roccisano v. Menifee, 293 F.3d 51, 56 (2d Cir. 2002); Rodriguez v. Mitchell, 252 F.3d 191, 202 (2d Cir. 2001). As in Roccisano and Rodriguez, however, we are not required to reach that question here. Irrespective of whether we apply the pre-AEDPA or post-AEDPA substantive standard, Torres's application would be treated procedurally as a motion for permission to file a second habeas application, and it would be denied. See Roccisano, 293 F.3d at 56-61; Rodriguez, 252 F.3d at 202.
Under AEDPA's authorization requirement for second and successive § 2254 applications, the district court should have transferred Torres's application to this Court, rather than deciding it on the merits. Corrao v. United States, 152 F.3d 188, 190-91 (2d Cir. 1998); Liriano v. United States, 95 F.3d 119, 123 (2d Cir. 1996) (per curiam). As we observed in Corrao, "reaching the merits of an uncertified second or successive § 2255 petition impermissibly circumvents the AEDPA's gatekeeping provisions." 152 F.3d at 191.
This case differs from Corrao in two respects, however. First, Corrao involved a motion by a federal prisoner under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, whereas Torres is a state prisoner and therefore filed his application under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. For these purposes, however, there is no material difference between § 2254 and § 2255. Cf. Liriano, 95 F.3d at 122 (establishing "the procedure to be followed when, as occurred in this case, a second or successive petition for habeas corpus by a state prisoner, or § 2255 motion by a federal prisoner, is filed in a district court in this circuit unaccompanied by the required § 2244(b)(3) motion"). The language of AEDPA indicates that AEDPA's authorization requirement applies equally to successive § 2254 applications and § 2255 motions. For the same reasons a district court is required to transfer a second or successive motion under § 2255 to this Court, Corrao, 152 F.3d at 190-91, a district court therefore must also so transfer a second or successive § 2254 application.
Compare 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A) ("Before a second or successive application permitted by this section is filed in the district court, the applicant shall move in the appropriate court of appeals for an order authorizing the district court to consider the application."); with id. § 2255 ("A second or successive motion must be certified as provided in section 2244 by a panel of the appropriate court of appeals. . . .").
No matter how powerful a petitioner's showing, only this court may authorize the commencement of a second or successive petition. . . . [T]he new prior-approval device is self-executing. From the district court's perspective, it is an allocation of subject-matter jurisdiction to the court of appeals. A district court must dismiss a second or successive petition, without awaiting any response from the government, unless the court of appeals has given approval for its filing. Even an explicit consent by the government to beginning the case in the district court would be ineffectual. . . . A second or successive collateral attack may no more begin in the district court than a criminal prosecution may commence in the court of appeals.
Nuñez v. United States, 96 F.3d 990, 991 (7th Cir. 1996) (emphasis in original); see also Pease v. Klinger, 115 F.3d 763, 764 (10th Cir. 1997) (per curiam) ("There is no dispute that the 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition [that petitioner] filed in the district court . . . was a successive petition. . . . The district court had no jurisdiction to decide [his] successive § 2254 petition without authority from the court of appeals."). Irrespective of the State's purported waiver, the district court had no jurisdiction to decide Torres's application on the merits.
The pre-AEDPA standard required "a petitioner seeking to file a second or successive petition raising a claim that he failed to include in his initial petition `[to] show cause for failing to raise it and prejudice therefrom.'" Rodriguez, 252 F.3d at 203 (quoting McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 494, 111 S.Ct. 1454, 113 L.Ed.2d 517 (1991)). To show cause, the petitioner must establish that "`some objective factor external to the defense impeded counsel's efforts to raise the claim' in the prior petition — factors such as interference by officials or the unavailability of relevant facts." Id. (quoting McCleskey, 499 U.S. at 493-94, 111 S.Ct. 1454). To show prejudice, "[h]e must establish . . . that the errors `worked to his actual and substantial disadvantage, infecting his entire trial with error of constitutional dimensions.'" Id. (quoting Femia v. United States, 47 F.3d 519, 524 (2d Cir. 1995)) (emphasis omitted). If a petitioner fails to show cause and prejudice, "the failure may nonetheless be excused if he or she can show that a failure to entertain the claim would result in a `fundamental miscarriage of justice,' [which] occurs only in those `extraordinary instances when a constitutional violation probably has caused the conviction of one innocent of the crime.'" Roccisano, 293 F.3d at 61 (quoting McCleskey, 499 U.S. at 494-95, 111 S.Ct. 1454).
To reach a coherent result in this case and to prevent confusion for district courts in future cases, we conclude that AEDPA's authorization requirement applies to all second and successive habeas petitions, even those that may be governed by the pre-AEDPA abuse-of-the-writ standard. The Seventh Circuit has reached the same conclusion. Discussing its holding in Burris v. Parke, 95 F.3d 465 (7th Cir. 1996) (en banc), that the pre-AEDPA standard applies to a petitioner whose first habeas petition was filed before the effective date of AEDPA, the Seventh Circuit concluded that
holding that the Second Circuit "ha not yet decided whether applying AEDPA's gatekeeping requirements in these circumstances would create an impermissible retroactive affect"
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In Torres, as in other cases before and after Torres, e.g., Maldonado v. United States, 344 F.3d 244, 246 (2d Cir. 2003); Roccisano, 293 F.3d at 56-61; Rodriguez v. Mitchell, 252 F.3d 191, 202 (2d Cir. 2001), the Second Circuit declined to answer that question because it found that under both the AEDPA's second-or-successive-application rule and the pre-AEDPA abuse-of-writ doctrine, the subsequent habeas application would not be authorized. Torres, 316 F.3d at 151.
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