Source: https://casetext.com/case/freeman-v-page-2
Timestamp: 2020-02-21 17:58:39
Document Index: 62056266

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2244', '§ 2254', '§ 2244', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 2244', '§ 2244', '§ 2244']

Freeman v. Page, 208 F.3d 572 | Casetext
Freeman v. Page
As noted in Weekley, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals relied on prior decisions of the Seventh and Ninth…
The Seventh Circuit has recommended that district courts stay mixed petitions. Freeman v. Page, 208 F.3d 572,…
Full title:Willie Freeman, Petitioner-Appellant, v. James H. Page, Warden,…
Date published: Mar 28, 2000
208 F.3d 572 (7th Cir. 2000)
holding that dismissal is "not proper" if it could "jeopardize the timeliness of a collateral attack"
Summary of this case from Ford v. Hubbard
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 98-CV-2247 — Michael P. McCuskey, Judge.
Thomas A. Bruno (argued), Bruno Associates, James Kuehl, Urbana, IL, for Petitioner-Appellant.
William L. Browers, Kendall Mills (argued), Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for Respondent-Appellee.
Statutes of limitations for collateral relief in federal court are part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. A one-year period for most state prisoners begins on "the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review". 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(A). For Willie Freeman, that means either October 6, 1994, when the Supreme Court of Illinois denied his petition for leave to appeal, or January 4, 1995, ninety days later (and the last day on which he could have filed a petition asking the Supreme Court of the United States to issue a writ of certiorari). Which of these is "the conclusion of direct review" is a question left open in Gendron v. United States, 154 F.3d 672, 674 n. 2 (7th Cir. 1998), and one we shall not have to tackle here. Freeman did not commence his federal collateral attack until October 22, 1998, about four years later. The district court dismissed his petition as untimely, relying on McClain v. Page, 36 F. Supp.2d 819 (C.D.Ill. 1999). But Freeman contends that much of the intervening period should not be counted toward his year to file.
The AEDPA took effect on April 24, 1996, and we stated in Lindh v. Murphy, 96 F.3d 856, 865-66 (7th Cir. 1996), reversed on other grounds, 521 U.S. 320 (1997), that no petition filed by April 23, 1997, may be dismissed as untimely. Gendron took this liberality one step further by holding that all delay prior to April 24, 1996, is excluded from the calculation. Thus although by his own calculation Freeman accumulated more than a year of countable time before April 24, 1996, and did not file by April 23, 1997, Gendron requires us to ignore all of the pre-AEDPA time. It is as if "the date on which the judgment became final" were April 24, 1996. Freeman took two and a half years more to file under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, but he insists that most of that time is excludable under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2):
Freeman commenced a collateral attack in Illinois court on November 22, 1995, and it remained pending until October 31, 1997, when the state's court of appeals affirmed the order denying his petition. People v. Freeman, No. 4-96-0484 (Ill.App. 4th Dist. Oct. 31, 1997). Freeman then waited almost an entire additional year to file his federal collateral attack, but given Lindh and Gendron he acted in time — if, and only if, the application for collateral relief in state court was "properly filed." The district judge held that it was not "properly filed" because the state judges did not address Freeman's petition on the merits, but instead dismissed it as untimely under Illinois law. Freeman does not contest the district court's major premise that an untimely petition is not "properly filed" for the purpose of sec. 2244(d)(2). Accord, Bennett v. Artuz, 199 F.3d 116, 121-23 (2d Cir. 1999) ("properly filed" means "an application for state post-conviction relief recognized as such under governing state procedures"); Lovasz v. Vaughn, 134 F.3d 146, 148 (3d Cir. 1998) (a "properly filed application" is "one submitted according to the state's procedural requirements, such as the rules governing notice and the time and place of filing"); Holloway v. Corcoran, 980 F. Supp. 160 (D.Md. 1997) (an application is "properly filed" only if timely), appeal dismissed, 1998 U.S. App. Lexis 19174 (4th Cir. Aug. 14, 1998) (adopting the district court's reasoning); Villegas v. Johnson, 184 F.3d 467, 469 (5th Cir. 1999) (a "properly filed application" is "one submitted according to the state's procedural requirements, such as the rules governing notice and the time and place of filing"); Austin v. Mitchell, 200 F.3d 391, 395 n. 2 (6th Cir. 1999) (an application is "properly filed" only if timely); Dictado v. Ducharme, 189 F.3d 889, 892 (9th Cir. 1999) ("properly filed application" means "an application submitted in compliance with the procedural laws of the state in which the application was filed"); Hoggro v. Boone, 150 F.3d 1223, 1226 n. 4 (10th Cir. 1998) (a "properly filed" petition must be "timely"); Webster v. Moore, 199 F.3d 1256, 1258 (11th Cir. 2000) (an application is "properly filed" only if timely). Still, Freeman insists, we should treat his petition as timely despite the state courts' resolution of the state-law dispute.
725 ILCS 5/122-1(c). Because leave to appeal had been denied on October 6, 1994, Freeman had six months, or until April 6, 1995, to get a collateral attack under way unless he could show that the delay (until November 22, 1995) "was not due to his culpable negligence." He attempted to do this by alleging that Stateville Correctional Center, the prison where he has been held, "was on lock-down for a substantial period of time prior to and after July 1, 1995." Both the state's circuit court and its court of appeals held this allegation too vague; because Freeman did not provide particulars (for which days was the prison locked down? how did the lockdown prevent him from filing?), the state judges held that they could not credit Freeman's assertion that prison officials are to blame for the tardiness. That interpretation of what it means to show "that the delay was not due to . . . culpable negligence" is a matter of state law only, and we must accept the state court's answer. Gilmore v. Taylor, 508 U.S. 333 (1993); Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62 (1991); Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37 (1984); Smith v. Phillips, 455 U.S. 209 (1982); Henry v. Mississippi, 379 U.S. 443, 447 (1965); Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157, 166 (1961); Gryger v. Burke, 334 U.S. 728, 731 (1948); Bute v. Illinois, 333 U.S. 640, 668 (1948); Herbert v. Louisiana, 272 U.S. 312, 316 (1926). The way in which "not due to . . . culpable negligence" works under Illinois law is not an abstraction declared in some other case, of questionable application to Freeman's. In litigation between Freeman and the state, state judges concluded that Freeman failed to prove that delay was "not due to his culpable negligence". Normal principles of issue preclusion (collateral estoppel) prevent Freeman from getting a second opinion.
To be completely correct, we should say that this language was at the time the fifth sentence of § 5/122-1; it did not become a separately lettered subsection until 1996. The statute has been further amended since and now reads: "No proceedings under this Article shall be commenced more than 6 months after the denial of a petition for leave to appeal or the date for filing such a petition if none is filed or more than 45 days after the defendant files his or her brief in the appeal of the sentence before the Illinois Supreme Court (or more than 45 days after the deadline for the filing of the defendant's brief with the Illinois Supreme Court if no brief is filed) or 3 years from the date of conviction, whichever is sooner, unless the petitioner alleges facts showing that the delay was not due to his or her culpable negligence." The further amendments do not apply to Freeman's petition and would not affect the outcome even if they did.
Freeman's submission in state court placed special emphasis on July 1, 1995, because § 5/122-1 changed dramatically that day. On and after July 1, 1995, a state prisoner must act within the shortest of the multiple periods mentioned in the statute. Until then, the prisoner could choose the longest period — which for Freeman ended on December 1, 1995, three years after his conviction. Freeman's petition in late November would have been timely under the old version of the statute, and it may well be that Freeman filed then because he did not realize that the statute had been amended. But he recognized in state court that the amendment applies to him, just as the state's appellate court held. See also People v. Bates, 124 Ill.2d 81, 124 Ill. Dec. 407, 529 N.E.2d 227 (1988) (holding that an earlier amendment to sec. 5/122-1 applies to all prior convictions). Bates concluded that the statutory escape hatch (the petitioner's ability to show that "delay was not due to . . . culpable negligence") justifies immediate application. What is more, "immediate" in law is not immediate in fact. Unlike the AEDPA, which took effect as soon as the President signed the enrolled bill, the amendment to sec. 5/122-1 had a deferred effective date. See Illinois Constitution Art. IV sec. 10. The change was made by sec. 15 of Public Act 88-678, II Laws of Illinois 2732 (1994), which was approved by the legislature on November 15, 1994, and signed by the Governor on December 15. Id. at 2735. Persons affected by the law had six and a half months to file under the old law — and, as the statute's main period of limitations is six months (from the final appellate decision), this allowed ample maneuvering room to all those who paid attention. Most prisoners don't keep up with the session laws (though this one might have given rise to scuttlebutt), but a state may decide the effective dates of its laws, provided that they are published — and Illinois publishes its session laws, though they are not as widely available as the compiled statutes. Freeman had almost nine months between the denial of his petition for leave to appeal and the effective date of the amendment, three months more than prisoners since have had to file collateral attacks.
Perhaps, however, the words "properly filed" in § 2244(d)(2) do not take their meaning from state practice. Freeman makes a feeble argument along these lines, reminding us that the federal law of forfeiture has a cause-and-prejudice exception. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72 (1977). True enough, but sec. 2244(d) creates a free-standing statute of limitations; it is not just a reprise of forfeiture principles that have developed in common-law fashion. Whether the 1995 amendment to Illinois law would be "cause" to relieve Freeman of a forfeiture under judge-made law, cf. Liegakos v. Cooke, 106 F.3d 1381 (7th Cir. 1997), is beside the point. Unless the state petition was "properly filed," Freeman loses.
A better argument — though one Freeman does not make — might be that an action is "properly filed" when the petitioner offers a colorable argument for his position under state law, even if the state eventually rejects the petition on procedural grounds. But we are not authorized to rewrite the statute so that "properly filed" becomes "plausibly filed" or some equivalent phrase ("filed in good faith," "filed with a bona fide argument for the application or modification of state law," etc.). Nor are we disposed to create a conflict among the circuits (to adopt this approach, we would have to disagree with the many cases cited at page 3 above). As written, § 2244(d)(2) poses an objective question: whether the filing in state court was "proper." Changes of the sort we have mentioned would convert an objective standard to a subjective one, making the law much more difficult to apply. Whether a collateral attack is "properly filed" can be determined in a straightforward way by looking at how the state courts treated it. If they considered the claim on the merits, it was properly filed; if they dismissed it for procedural flaws such as untimeliness, then it was not properly filed. The objective approach not only facilitates decisionmaking but also gives the parties a clear benchmark. Everyone knows exactly when the federal petition is due. A subjective approach, however, would leave these essential questions unanswered until there had been substantial litigation, for there is no right answer to a question such as "how close to being `properly filed' is close enough?". Cf. Cooter Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 399-405 (1990); Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552 (1988).
Our cases to date follow the objective approach. For example, Tinker v. Hanks, 172 F.3d 990 (7th Cir. 1999), holds that an unsuccessful application in state court for leave to file a second or successive collateral attack does not toll the time to commence a collateral attack in federal court. Tinker observed that, if the state court had permitted the filing, then the application would have been "properly filed" for purposes of sec. 2244(d)(2), but we held that when the state court does not permit the filing, that decision is conclusive under sec. 2244(d)(2). We did not ask whether Tinker had made a plausible showing; we asked only whether the state court deemed the filing proper under state law. A prisoner who seeks but does not receive a dispensation from state court — an authorization to file another petition in Tinker, a finding of "no culpable negligence" here — has not achieved a "properly filed" state collateral challenge.
Our court has been generous to prisoners. Lindh and Gendron together restarted every state prisoner's clock on April 24, 1996. We extended the time a little more in Jones v. Bertrand, 171 F.3d 499 (7th Cir. 1999), by applying the "prison mailbox rule" to collateral attacks. In Taliani v. Chrans, 189 F.3d 597 (7th Cir. 1999), we held out the possibility that some prisoners may invoke equitable tolling or estoppel (neither of which is applicable here) to justify untimely petitions. Freeman himself has been using borrowed time throughout: a strict application of § 2244(d) would have slammed the door on April 24, 1996, because more than a year of countable time had expired by then. Lindh and Gendron gave Freeman an extra year. It would not be appropriate to bend the statute yet further on Freeman's behalf.
holding that the "interpretation of what it means to show `that the delay was not due to . . . culpable negligence' is a matter of state law only, and we must accept the state court's answer"
Summary of this case from Hughes v. McCann
holding that collateral attack dismissed by the state courts as procedurally untimely under state law was neither properly filed nor excused, as claims were considered to be patently without merit and petitioner failed to establish a lack of culpable negligence
Summary of this case from U.S. ex Rel. Adams v. Pierson
finding no basis for equitable tolling where the statute of limitations was changed to shorten the time for filing a PCRA only four months prior to the filing of the petition
Summary of this case from Fahy v. Horn
Summary of this case from Pelzer v. Superintendent Lawrence Mahally & Pa Attorney Gen.
Summary of this case from Schlager v. Coleman
Summary of this case from Snyder v. Kauffman
Summary of this case from Webb v. Gavin
Summary of this case from Jackson v. Coleman
Summary of this case from Cusatis v. Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole
Summary of this case from Ross v. Varano
Summary of this case from Calvo v. Crosby
Summary of this case from Thompson v. Crosby
Summary of this case from Frazier v. Crosby
Summary of this case from Brinkley v. Gillis
recognizing the ability of district courts to stay proceedings and hold a habeas petition in abeyance when dismissal would jeopardize the timeliness of the collateral attack
Summary of this case from Williams v. Beard
noting that the proper action for petitioner was "filing in both courts" and requesting that the district judge stay the federal proceedings
Summary of this case from In re Hearn
stating that outright dismissal of a mixed federal habeas petition "is not proper when that step could jeopardize the timeliness of a collateral attack"
noting that district courts have discretion to stay habeas corpus action while prisoner exhausts state court remedies if dismissal could jeopardize timeliness of collateral attack
Summary of this case from Bacallao v. Foster
involving untimely initial petition
Summary of this case from Talbot v. Jenkins
explaining that a court determines a post-conviction petition to be properly filed by looking at how the state courts treated it; if the state court dismissed it for procedural flaws, such as untimeliness, then it was not properly filed
Summary of this case from Cannon v. Jones
noting that dismissal not proper when it could jeopardize timeliness of collateral attack; federal action should be stayed until state court decides what to do
Summary of this case from Wilson v. Thurmer