Opinion ID: 746509
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Trigger Date

Text: 14 Before addressing the adequacy of the Dixon rule, we must first determine the proper date on which the rule's adequacy is to be measured. The district court ruled that [t]he Dixon rule was firmly established both at the time petitioner filed his second habeas petition [January 14, 1994] and at the time of his direct appeal [1981]. The State argues that the correct trigger date is October 14, 1994, the date on which the California Supreme Court denied Fields' second state habeas petition where the procedural bar at issue was actually applied. Fields argues that the correct trigger date is 1981, the time of his direct appeal, when the defaulted claims should have been raised. Our discussion of the 1981 date will demonstrate the flaw in the State's reasoning. 15 The Supreme Court of the United States has made it clear that a state's procedural rule used to bar consideration of a claim must have been 'firmly established and regularly followed' by the time as of which it is to be applied. Ford v. Georgia, 498 U.S. 411, 424, 111 S.Ct. 850, 857, 112 L.Ed.2d 935 (1991) (quoting James v. Kentucky, 466 U.S. 341, 348, 104 S.Ct. 1830, 1835, 80 L.Ed.2d 346 (1984)). In NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 457, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 1169, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958), the Court refused to apply a state's procedural rule, because the defendant there could not be deemed to have been apprised of its existence. In Ford, the Supreme Court said that applying the rule to Ford would apply a rule unannounced at the time of [Ford's] trial.... Ford, 498 U.S. at 424, 111 S.Ct. at 857. 16 We have held that the proper time for determining whether a procedural rule was firmly established and regularly followed is the time of [the] purported procedural default. Calderon v. Bean, 96 F.3d 1126, 1130 (9th Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 1569, 137 L.Ed.2d 714 (1997). Therefore, we examine whether the state courts were regularly and consistently applying the relevant procedural default rule at the time the claim should have been raised. Calderon v. U.S. Dist. Ct. For E.D. of Cal., 103 F.3d 72, 75 (9th Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 2532, 138 L.Ed.2d 1031 (1997). 17 With respect to the Dixon rule, we have held that a relevant point of reference for assessing its application is the time at which the petitioner had an opportunity to raise the claims on direct appeal. Id. See also Bean, 96 F.3d at 1131 (evaluating the Dixon rule at the time Bean filed his direct appeal). Because the Dixon rule precludes collateral review of a claim that could have been brought on direct appeal, the procedural default, though announced by the California Supreme Court when the habeas petition is denied, technically occurs at the moment the direct appeal did not include those claims that should have been included for review. In this case, that moment is 1981, the year of Fields' direct appeal. 18 In addition to avoiding the unfairness of applying a new rule retroactively, the requirement that the rule be in existence at the time of the claimed default, the 1981 appeal in this case, also gives the defendant and his counsel notice that the claims must be raised at that time. A trigger date of 1994, when the default rule was actually applied by the California Supreme Court, would not insure that Fields and his counsel knew in 1981 that all claims had to be raised then or be held to be procedurally barred. The requirement of notice thus dooms the State's attempt to use 1994 as the trigger date. A consistently applied rule in 1994 could not cure a lack of notice in 1981. 19 Fields does not attempt to demonstrate the inconsistent application of the Dixon rule in 1981 by employing the traditional method of providing a representative sample of cases in which the default was either invoked or, at least, where it arguably might have been applicable but was disregarded. Fierro v. Calderon, No. CV-94-3198-LGB, at 15 (C.D. Cal. June 12, 1996) (citing Dugger v. Adams, 489 U.S. 401, 410 n. 6, 109 S.Ct. 1211, 1217 n. 6, 103 L.Ed.2d 435 (1989); Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578, 587-89, 108 S.Ct. 1981, 1987-88, 100 L.Ed.2d 575 (1988); Hathorn v. Lovorn, 457 U.S. 255, 263-64 n. 14, 102 S.Ct. 2421, 2426-27 n. 14, 72 L.Ed.2d 824 (1982)). Instead, Fields argues that the California Supreme Court's reevaluation of its procedural rules in the 1993 cases of In re Harris, 5 Cal.4th 813, 21 Cal.Rptr.2d 373, 855 P.2d 391 (1993), and In re Clark, 5 Cal.4th 750, 21 Cal.Rptr.2d 509, 855 P.2d 729 (1993), decided between Fields' direct appeal and the California Supreme Court's denial of eleven claims in his habeas petition due to procedural default, establishes that the Dixon rule was not regularly and consistently applied at the time of his direct appeal. We therefore turn to the question, not previously decided in this circuit, whether the Dixon rule and the standards governing its application were firmly established and consistently followed at the time of Fields' direct appeal in 1981. 4