Opinion ID: 181698
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Deferred-Adjudication Orders Under Caldwell v. Dretke

Text: Under Texas law, a judge may defer the adjudication of guilt of particular defendants and place them on community supervision if they plead guilty or nolo contendere. [9] If such a defendant wishes to raise issues related to his guilty plea or deferred adjudication, he must do so on direct appeal from the deferred-adjudication order immediately after it is imposed; he may not wait until after he violates the terms of his probation and is held guilty. [10] If the defendant does not appeal at the time of deferred adjudication and thereafter violates a condition of his community supervision, however, the court holds a hearing to determine whether it should then proceed to impose a judgment of guilt. If the trial court holds such a hearing and convicts the defendant, it also sentences him. [11] Under these circumstances, all proceedings, including assessment of punishment, pronouncement of sentence, granting of community supervision, and defendant's appeal continue as if the adjudication of guilt had not been deferred. [12] In Caldwell, we held that the AEDPA's statute of limitations starts to run for deferred-adjudication habeas claims when the deferred-adjudication order becomes final. [13] The AEDPA's statute of limitations, 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1), provides that [a] 1-year period of limitation shall apply to an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court [14] and that it runs from the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review. [15] We concluded that [t]he plain language of AEDPA, as well as its underlying purpose require that we treat a deferred-adjudication order as a judgment under this provision as well as under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a), which confers habeas jurisdiction on federal courts for state prisoners only if they are in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court. [16] In the end, we held that, for a Texas prisoner who is subject to a deferred-adjudication order, the statute of limitations for a federal habeas application raising claims that address his deferred adjudication begins to run when his deferred-adjudication order becomes final, whether or not he is later convicted and sentenced. [17] The Supreme Court denied certiorari, with Justice Stevens respecting the denial because the Court of Appeals expressly limited its holding to instances where a petitioner brings an untimely challenge to substantive issues relating to an original order of deferred adjudication probation. [18]