Opinion ID: 617874
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Timeliness of Purvis's Career-Offender Claim

Text: The Government argues that Purvis sat idle for twelve years, taking no steps from March 20, 1995the date of his state sentenceto August 20, 2007, when Purvis filed his pro se motion to vacate and withdraw his plea. The relevant time period under a Johnson diligence inquiry, however, does not begin with date of the state sentence; rather, it begins with the date of the federal judgment. Id. at 309, 125 S.Ct. 1571 (After the entry of [federal] judgment, the subject of the § 2255 claim has come into being [and] the significance of inaction is clear. . . .). Purvis attacked his state-court conviction 15 months after he was sentenced as a career offender. During those intervening months, he appealed his federal conviction, sought rehearing when that appeal was unsuccessful, then sought certiorari in the Supreme Court. He prioritized his claims and moved quickly in seeking to vacate his predicate state-court conviction after losing his federal merits appeal. Under these circumstances, we conclude Purvis acted diligently. The Government argues that Purvis's career-offender claim is not timely because he filed his § 2255 motion before vacating his state conviction. In other words, Purvis had no career-offender claim prior to vacatur of his state conviction. The Government's position finds support in Johnson, Custis v. United States , and Daniels v. United States, which together establish that only after an underlying conviction is vacated may a defendant seek relief in federal courts. Id. at 303-04, 125 S.Ct. 1571; 511 U.S. 485, 497, 114 S.Ct. 1732, 128 L.Ed.2d 517 (1994); 532 U.S. 374, 382, 121 S.Ct. 1578, 149 L.Ed.2d 590 (2001). Thus, according to the Government, because Purvis first filed a § 2255 motion raising ineffective assistance claims before his career-offender claim was ripe, he can only raise the now ripe career-offender claim in a second or successive § 2255 motion. But, as the Government realizes, Purvis cannot meet the gatekeeping provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2), which only allow a petitioner to file a second or successive § 2255 habeas petition in limited circumstances. See § 2244(b)(2)(A)-(B). As a result of the combined effect of AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations and the gatekeeping provisions of § 2244(b)(2), Purvis, and similarly-situated petitioners, are faced with a catch-22. If he waits to file his § 2255 motion until his career-offender claim is ripei.e., after vacatur of his state convictionhe risks that any other claims that he could have brought, such as an ineffective assistance, will be time-barred because AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations will have run. Alternatively, a petitioner who decides to first file an ineffective assistance claim within AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations period forgoes any unripe career-offender claims because § 2244(b)(2) bars him from later bringing a ripe claim in a second or successive § 2255 motion. The Eleventh Circuit recently addressed this difficulty in Stewart v. United States, 646 F.3d 856 (11th Cir.2011). It concluded that the petitioner's Johnson claim was not second or successive within the meaning of the gatekeeping provisions of § 2244(b)(2). See id. at 863-64. In Stewart, the petitioner was sentenced as a career offender. He then filed a § 2255 motion requesting additional time to file a § 2255 motion and expressed his intention to raise an ineffective assistance claim. Id. The state court then vacated his predicate state conviction, and he promptly filed a second § 2255 motion, asserting a Johnson claim. Id. at 858. The Eleventh Circuit, applying the Supreme Court's reasoning in Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 127 S.Ct. 2842, 168 L.Ed.2d 662 (2007), declined to literally interpret AEDPA's second or successive language and concluded that the petitioner properly raised his Johnson claim in his second § 2255 motion when it first became ripe. Id. at 864. In Panetti, the petitioner filed a federal habeas petition that challenged his conviction but did not assert a Ford claim. 551 U.S. at 937, 127 S.Ct. 2842. The district court denied his petition on the merits. Id. The petitioner then filed a second habeas petition alleging, for the first time, that he was incompetent to be executed. Id. at 938, 127 S.Ct. 2842. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether that petition constituted an improper second or successive habeas application under § 2244(b). Id. The Court held that the petition was not second or successive within the meaning of § 2244(b) because Congress did not intend the provisions of AEDPA addressing `second or successive' petitions to govern a filing in the unusual posture presented here: a § 2254 application raising a Ford -based incompetency claim filed as soon as that claim is ripe. Id. at 945, 127 S.Ct. 2842. The Court further reasoned that [a]n empty formality requiring prisoners to file unripe Ford claims neither respects the limited legal resources available to the States nor encourages the exhaustion of state remedies. Id. at 946, 127 S.Ct. 2842. Accordingly, the Court declined to construe AEDPA, which Congress implemented to further the principles of comity, finality, and federalism, in a manner that would require unripe (and, often, factually unsupported) claims to be raised as a mere formality, to the benefit of no party. Id. at 947, 127 S.Ct. 2842. Besides Panetti, the Supreme Court's earlier decision in Rhines v. Weber also addressed the present difficulty faced by Purvis. 544 U.S. 269, 125 S.Ct. 1528, 161 L.Ed.2d 440 (2005). In Rhines, the Court examined the combined effect of AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations period and Lundy 's dismissal requirement for habeas petitions mixed with unexhausted and exhausted claims. See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 518-19, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982). The Court observed: . . . [P]etitioners who come to federal court with mixed petitions run the risk of forever losing their opportunity for any federal review of their unexhausted claims. If a petitioner files a timely but mixed petition in federal district court, and the district court dismisses it under Lundy after the limitations period has expired, this will likely mean the termination of any federal review. Rhines, 544 U.S. at 275, 125 S.Ct. 1528. Specifically, the Court considered whether a federal district court has discretion to stay [a] mixed petition to allow the petitioner to present his unexhausted claims to the state court in the first instance, and then to return to federal court for review of his perfected petition. 544 U.S. at 271-72, 125 S.Ct. 1528. It concluded that the district courts indeed possess such discretion. In appropriate but limited circumstances, therefore, the Court concluded that the stay and abeyance procedure used by the district court in the case before it was proper. It cautioned, however, that overuse of that procedure might undermine the twin purposes of AEDPA: to encourage finality by requiring prompt resolution of federal habeas corpus petitions and to streamline the process by requiring total exhaustion of state court remedies prior to the federal action. Id. at 277, 125 S.Ct. 1528. The district court must decide whether the petitioner had good cause for his failure to exhaust all claims and whether the unexhausted claims have some possible merit. Id. at 277-78, 125 S.Ct. 1528. While both the Panetti and Rhines approaches have support in Supreme Court precedent, we conclude that the stay and abeyance procedure in Rhines should have been implemented to protect Purvis's unripe career-offender claim. The district court denied Purvis's stay request, concluding that his proposed career-offender claim would not relate back to his claims in his original § 2255 motion. We determined that that decision was erroneous in our order dismissing Purvis's application to file a successive attack under § 2255. Furthermore, in vacating the district court's decision to deny Purvis's § 2255 motion, we directed the district court to address whether under Johnson . . . a change in Purvis's state conviction is a new fact that would start a renewed one-year limitations period and thus make this claim timely. The district court did not engage in that analysis; rather, it determined that Purvis's Johnson claim must be brought in a second or successive § 2255 motion. What the district court failed to take into account is that if Purvis had acted with diligence under Johnson, his one-year statute of limitations would start anew, making his career-offender claim timely. And if his career-offender claim were timely, Purvis would have been able to amend his habeas petition to include that claim. See 28 U.S.C. § 2242 (habeas petitions may be amended . . . as provided in the rules of procedure applicable to civil actions.); Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a) (leave to amend a pleading shall be freely given when justice so requires.). We see no reason why Purvis's unripe career-offender claim should be treated as fundamentally different than an unexhausted habeas claim when considering whether a stay is proper. We are reluctant to find that a ripe Johnson claim brought for the first time in a second § 2255 motion is not second or successive. Although that approach is logical and consistent with Supreme Court precedent, there is greater textual support in the statute for the procedure outlined in Rhines. That district courts may receive meritless and unripe Johnson claims does not outweigh a petitioner's interest in obtaining federal review. And in any event, that effect could be alleviated, and the purposes of AEDPA protected, by applying the limitations in Rhines. We caution that the stay and abeyance of unripe Johnson claims should be limited to narrow circumstances where there is good cause for the petitioner's stay request, the claim is potentially meritorious, and there is no indication that the petitioner is engaging in dilatory tactics. See Rhines, 544 U.S. at 278, 125 S.Ct. 1528. In his stay request, Purvis indicated that a state court decision to vacate his predicate conviction was eminent and that his attorney and the prosecutor had agreed to vacate his conviction and plead down his initial charge. Moreover, there is no evidence that Purvis was engaging in dilatory tactics. The district court, therefore, erred to the extent it concluded that a stay was improper because Purvis's career-offender claim was unripe.