Opinion ID: 719651
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Timeliness standards

Text: 17 1-1. Appellate counsel in capital cases shall have a duty to investigate factual and legal grounds for the filing of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. All petitions for writs of habeas corpus should be filed without substantial delay. 18 1-1.1. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus will be presumed to be filed without substantial delay if it is filed within 60 days after the final due date for the filing of appellant's reply brief on the direct appeal. 7 19 1-1.2. A petition filed more than 60 days after the final due date for the filing of appellant's reply brief on the direct appeal may establish absence of substantial delay if it alleges with specificity facts showing the petition was filed within a reasonable time after petitioner or counsel became aware of information indicating a factual basis for the claim and became aware, or should have become aware, of the legal basis for the claim. 20 1-1.3. Alternatively, a petition may establish absence of substantial delay if it alleges with specificity facts showing that although petitioner or counsel was aware of the factual and legal bases for the claim before January 16, 1986 (the date of finality of In re Stankewitz (1985) 40 Cal.3d 391, 396-397, fn. 1, 220 Cal.Rptr. 382, 708 P.2d 1260), the petition was filed within a reasonable time after that date. 21 1-2. If a petition is filed after substantial delay, the petitioner must demonstrate good cause for the delay. A petitioner may establish good cause by showing particular circumstances sufficient to justify substantial delay. 22 1-3. Any petition that fails to comply with these requirements may be denied as untimely. 23 Standards at 745-46 (emphasis added). 24 The first uncertainty in these Standards inheres in the requirement that petitions for habeas corpus should be filed without substantial delay. If the petition is filed after substantial delay, then the petitioner must demonstrate similarly uncertain good cause for the delay. The source of these requirements is, in part, a footnote in In re Stankewitz, 40 Cal.3d 391, 220 Cal.Rptr. 382, 708 P.2d 1260, 1262 n. 1 (1985) (explaining that petitioner must point to particular circumstances sufficient to justify substantial delay). In that case, the petitioner filed his first habeas corpus petition a year and a half after obtaining newly-discovered evidence, while direct review of his murder conviction and death sentence was still pending. Id. 220 Cal.Rptr. at 383, 384 n. 1, 708 P.2d at 1261, 1262 n. 1. The California Supreme Court held that petitioner had made a sufficient showing of justification for delay. Id. at 384 n. 1, 708 P.2d at 1262 n. 1. Neither the Standards nor Stankewitz, however, established what amount of delay the court would consider substantial, nor did either set out criteria for determining good cause to excuse such delay. They also did not prescribe whether and when untimeliness might be waived altogether, even though good cause had not been shown. 25 The vagueness of the Standards could have been cured by narrowing judicial construction in the years immediately following their issuance. We find no such cases, however. The California Supreme Court did attempt to explain at great length its requirements under the Standards in In re Clark, 5 Cal.4th 750, 21 Cal.Rptr.2d 509, 855 P.2d 729 (1993), but Clark was not decided until a few days after the California Supreme Court denied Morales's petition. 26 Clark asserted that a petitioner whose conviction was affirmed before announcement of the Standards was nevertheless on notice of the delay rules per Stankewitz. Id. 21 Cal.Rptr.2d at 531, 855 P.2d at 750. Thus, any substantial delay in the filing of a petition after the factual and legal bases for the claim are known or should have been known must be explained and justified. Id. at 533, 855 P.2d at 752. Clark also stated, however, that counsel's obligation to investigate possible claims was created only by the [Standards], and consequently claims discovered after investigation commencing after the date of publication of the Standards (June 6, 1989) and presented promptly thereafter are timely. Id. 27 Despite Clark 's emphasis on the duties of counsel that pre-existed the Standards (as well as the Clark opinion itself), Clark did acknowledge that no clear guidelines [regarding departure from the habeas corpus rules] have emerged in our past cases. Id. 21 Cal.Rptr.2d at 517, 855 P.2d at 737. Clark was an attempt to clear up such uncertainties. We need express no opinion on whether the attempt succeeded, so that timeliness under the Standards invoked post-Clark would constitute an adequate and independent state ground of decision; Morales's petition was denied before Clark. 28 We find so much variation in application of California's timeliness requirements before Clark that we conclude that no discernible clear rule then existed for petitions filed more than 90 days after the due date of the reply brief on direct appeal. For example, Morales asserts that at the time his case was litigated in the district court, the California Supreme Court had denied 35 habeas petitions filed three years or more after affirmance on direct appeal, and more than half of those denials had not been on grounds of untimeliness. Only 6 cases had been denied on untimeliness alone. The State does not dispute these figures, but asserts that uneven enforcement of the timeliness requirement is simply a reflection of the fact that some discretion is involved in applying the rule. According to the State, the kinds of variation demonstrated by Morales do not call the rule into question unless there is a showing of deliberate manipulation to avoid federal review. The State relies upon Howlett v. Rose, 496 U.S. 356, 110 S.Ct. 2430, 110 L.Ed.2d 332 (1990), which stated that States may apply their own neutral procedural rules to federal claims, unless those rules are pre-empted by federal law. Id. at 372, 110 S.Ct. at 2441. 29 We cannot accept the State's contention as it is put forth, nor do we find Howlett apposite. Howlett involved the question whether a state defense of sovereign immunity to a federal-law claim could be available in state court when it would not be so in federal court. The concern was that the state was discriminating against a federal cause of action, and the Court's neutrality ruling was simply a response to that concern. The actual holding in Howlett was that the state immunity rule was substantive and preempted by federal law. Id. at 375-81, 110 S.Ct. at 2442-46. 30 Neutrality is not enough when a rule is applied or not applied wholly at random. We must emphasize that the issue here is not whether the State is allowed to invoke its rule irregularly for its own purposes. The question is whether invocation of a state rule that is applied only randomly may preclude a federal court from entertaining a petitioner's federal claim on the merits. We conclude that the answer to that question is no. The Supreme Court has stated that a state procedural ground is not 'adequate' unless the procedural rule is 'strictly or regularly followed.'  Hathorn v. Lovorn, 457 U.S. 255, 262-63, 102 S.Ct. 2421, 2426-27, 72 L.Ed.2d 824 (1982) (quoting Barr v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 146, 149, 84 S.Ct. 1734, 1736, 12 L.Ed.2d 766 (1964)). The Court has added no requirement of a showing of manipulative intent on the part of the state court. 31 It is true, as the State argues, that procedural rules need not be utterly mechanical. That the application of a rule requires the exercise of judicial discretion does not render the rule inadequate to support a state decision. In fact, a bright-line rule for delay can operate more harshly than a discretionary rule. See, e.g., Coleman, 501 U.S. at 727-29, 111 S.Ct. at 2553-54 (affirming dismissal of claims barred in state court because petition filed three days late). But judicial discretion is the exercise of judgment according to standards that, at least over time, can become known and understood within reasonable operating limits. To bar federal review, a state procedural rule must be consistently applied. Wells v. Maass, 28 F.3d 1005, 1010 (9th Cir.1994). 32 It is theoretically possible, we suppose, to reconcile and explain all of the California Supreme Court decisions entertaining on the merits or rejecting as untimely petitions that are three or more years old. Those divergent decisions may indeed represent consistent exercises of discretion rather than random applications of or exceptions to the timeliness rule. But we have no way of knowing whether that is the case. The California Supreme Court's denials of habeas petitions that Morales relies upon were accomplished by brief minute entries in what has been described as post-card denial. We can discern no apparent relationship between the time of delay and the findings concerning timeliness. Nor could Morales be expected to do so. 33 We faced a similar problem in Siripongs v. Calderon, 35 F.3d 1308, 1318 (9th Cir.1994), where we held that the district court's dismissal of petitioner's claims in a successive habeas petition on procedural grounds was error. We ruled that a state procedural rule that is discretionary and not applied consistently cannot act as a bar to federal review.... [T]he federal courts should not insist upon a petitioner, as a procedural prerequisite to obtaining federal relief, complying with a rule the state itself does not consistently enforce. Id. 34 In Siripongs, the California Supreme Court had not identified a particular procedural rule that it relied on for default, as it did in Morales's case. 8 We noted this deficiency, holding that a procedural default based on an ambiguous order that does not clearly rest on independent and adequate state grounds is not sufficient to preclude federal collateral review. Id. at 1317-18. We also relied, however, on the fact that, at the time the habeas petition was denied by the state court, the state procedural rules regarding filing of successive petitions were not consistently enforced. Id. at 1318. Indeed, we recognized that the strict standards announced in [Clark ] did not guide the California courts in 1991, when Siripongs' state petition was denied. Id. We conclude that the latter rationale of Siripongs is fully applicable here. Here, as in Siripongs, we find that the state court's procedural rule was not consistently enforced at the time Morales's petitions were denied. Although the State and the district court distinguish Siripongs because it involved a successive petition for habeas review, that fact casts no doubt upon Siripongs' general principle of consistent enforcement of a procedural bar. Nor is Siripongs our first endorsement of that principle: In order to constitute adequate and independent grounds sufficient to support a finding of procedural default, a state rule must be clear, consistently applied, and well-established at the time of the petitioner's purported default. Wells, 28 F.3d at 1010. 35 We note that two district courts in this circuit have reached the same conclusion we do with regard to the particular rule at issue in this case. In Karis v. Vasquez, 828 F.Supp. 1449, 1463 (E.D.Cal.1993), the petitioner had filed a successive habeas petition in the California Supreme Court and had failed to explain or justify his delay. The state court summarily dismissed his claims. The district court held that California's rule concerning delay as a bar to habeas is standardless both substantively and as to duration, did not provide petitioner with adequate notice of when his claims would be barred, and consequently did not bar federal relief. Id. at 1464; cf. Odle v. Calderon, 884 F.Supp. 1404, 1413-14 (N.D.Cal.1995). The Karis court explained that discretion per se does not invalidate a state rule as an independent and adequate state ground, if the discretion is exercised according to clear and articulated standards. See Karis, 828 F.Supp. at 1463-64. On the other hand, if it is exercised in an  'ad hoc rather than a principled basis,'  it does not bar federal review. Id. at 1463. (citation omitted). 36 We conclude that California's rule on timeliness was not clear, consistently applied, and well-established at any time after Morales's convictions were affirmed and before he filed his first state habeas petition. See Wells, 28 F.3d at 1010. It consequently cannot serve as an adequate and independent state ground sufficient to support a procedural default. See id. 37