Opinion ID: 184273
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evaluation of Countable Strikes

Text: Under the PLRA, prisoners obtain a strike against them for purposes of future ifp eligibility when their action or appeal in a court of the United States... was dismissed on the grounds that it is frivolous, malicious, or fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.... 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). [T]he `three strikes' provision of the ifp statute applicable to indigent prisoners[] requires so-called `frequent filer' prisoners to prepay the entire filing fee before federal courts may consider their civil actions and appeals. Kinnell v. Graves, 265 F.3d 1125, 1127 (10th Cir.2001) (quotation omitted). To meet the only exception to the prepayment requirement, a prisoner who has accrued three strikes must make specific, credible allegations of `imminent danger[.]' Id. at 1127-28 (quoting § 1915(g)). Appellant has filed numerous civil rights cases in several district courts, numerous civil appeals in several circuit courts, and nine petitions for writ of certiorari (at this counting) in civil cases in the Supreme Court. Many of these filings resulted in dismissals, and we have reviewed them for strikes under Tenth Circuit law. We conclude that appellant had three clear strikes when he filed No. 09-1365 in this court in August 2009. [3] We set out some basic rules about strikes in Jennings, 175 F.3d at 780-81. When an action or appeal is dismissed as frivolous, as malicious, or for failure to state a claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B), the dismissal counts as a strike. See Jennings, 175 F.3d at 777-78, 780-81. In addition, we stated that a § 1915(e)(2)(B) dismissal should not count against a litigant until he has exhausted or waived his appeals. Jennings, 175 F.3d at 780. We now clarify that a strike counts against a prisoner from the date of the Supreme Court's denial or dismissal of a petition for writ of certiorari, if the prisoner filed one, or from the date when the time to file a petition for writ of certiorari expired, if he did not. [4] Cf. United States v. Burch, 202 F.3d 1274, 1276-77 (10th Cir.2000) (rejecting Seventh Circuit's approach to use circuit's mandate date as date from which period of limitations for filing motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 runs to avoid possibilityeven the unlikely possibilityof ruling on a habeas petition while the underlying conviction was on direct review in the Supreme Court). And if the prisoner did not file a direct appeal in a circuit court, a district court's dismissal counts as a strike from the date when his time to file a direct appeal expired. Having thus clarified the parameters of § 1915(g), we have examined appellant's filings which have been dismissed in order to determine whether these dismissals qualify as strikes for the purposes of the PLRA. We have identified three dismissals that constitute strikes incurred before No. 09-1365 was filed: (1) the Southern District of Indiana's dismissal of appellant's complaint in Hafed v. Brooks, No. 06-cv-00005-RLY-TAB (S.D.Ind. Jan. 11, 2006); (2) the Southern District of Indiana's dismissal of appellant's complaint in Hafed v. Government of the State of Israel, No. 08-cv-00773-SEB-TAB (S.D.Ind. June 20, 2008); and (3) the Seventh Circuit's dismissal of appellant's appeal in Hafed v. Government of the State of Israel, No. 08-2744 (7th Cir. Jul. 11, 2008).
Hafed v. Brooks was a civil rights suit appellant filed against three federal prosecutors and an FBI agent in the Southern District of Indiana on January 3, 2006. See D.C. No. 06-cv-00005-RLY-TAB, Doc. 1. On January 11, the district court granted ifp and dismissed the case without prejudice under § 1915A(b) because appellant alleged facts showing that he had no claim, that is, because the complaint failed to state a claim. See Brooks, D.C. No. 06-cv-00005-RLY-TAB, Doc. 4, at 2. The court held that appellant could not use a civil rights action to challenge his criminal detention, that he failed to allege the defendants' personal participation in an alleged assault in prison, and that his claims alleging that the defendants violated his constitutional rights by causing him to be charged with a crime were premature under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), because his criminal convictions had not been nullified. Brooks, D.C. No. 06-cv-00005, Doc. 4, at 2. In Jennings, we addressed whether dismissals under § 1915(e)(2)(B) should count as strikes, but we did not decide whether a district court's dismissal subsequent to screening under § 1915A should count as a strike. See Jennings, 175 F.3d at 778-79. We now hold that a dismissal under § 1915A counts as a strike when the action was dismissed as frivolous, malicious, or for failure to state a claim, the same grounds listed in § 1915(g). The Southern District of Indiana's dismissal in Brooks satisfies the standard for a strike under § 1915A(b)(1) and § 1915(g). At the time appellant brought his civil rights action in Brooks, he was a prisoner ... detained in any facility within the meaning of § 1915(g). The PLRA defines `prisoner' as `any person incarcerated or detained in any facility who is accused of, convicted of, sentenced for, or adjudicated delinquent for, violations of criminal law or the terms and conditions of parole, probation, pretrial release, or diversionary program.' Merryfield v. Jordan, 584 F.3d 923, 927 (10th Cir.2009) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1915(h)). The docket sheet for appellant's criminal case shows that he was a detainee awaiting trial when he filed Brooks on January 3, 2006. See United States v. Shaaban , 1:05-CR-34-LJM-KPF-01 (S.D.Ind.), Doc. 1 (Nov. 16 & 18, 2005, entries showing appellant's remand to federal custody and arrest prior to trial in January 2006). As a result, the dismissal in Brooks may be counted as a strike under the plain language of § 1915(g). To the extent that the district court left it unclear that it considered all of the stated grounds for the dismissal in Brooks to be for appellant's failure to state a claim, we have previously upheld a dismissal of a prisoner's claims for damages on the basis that they were premature under Heck and failed to state a claim. See Davis v. Kan. Dep't of Corr., 507 F.3d 1246, 1248, 1249 (10th Cir.2007). Thus, in Brooks, the action was dismissed for failure to state a claim and was a strike. Because appellant did not appeal, the dismissal counts from March 13, 2006, when appellant's sixty days to appeal to the Seventh Circuit expired. See Jennings, 175 F.3d at 780; Fed. R.App. P. 4(a)(1)(B).
Hafed v. Government of the State of Israel was a civil rights action filed by appellant in the Southern District of Indiana in June 2008. See D.C. No. 1:08-cv-00773, Doc. 1. The district court screened the complaint and dismissed it, ambiguously, under § 1915A(b). Government of the State of Israel, D.C. No. 1:08-cv-00773, Doc. 5, at 3. The district court was not entirely clear as to the ground on which its dismissal was ultimately based, however. The court set out all the standards that could applyfrivolousness under § 1915A(b)(1), suing an immune defendant under § 1915A(b)(2), and failure to state a claim under § 1915A(b)(1). Government of the State of Israel, D.C. No. 1:08-cv-00773, Doc. 5, at 1. The consideration of whether a dismissal based in part on 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b)(2) because the defendant was immune from suit should count as a strike presents some complexity because that ground is not explicitly included in § 1915(g). We have previously observed, however, that a complaint could properly be dismissed by a district court sua sponte as frivolous, if it was clear from the face of the complaint that the defendant was absolutely immune from suit and no further factual development was required. Yellen v. Cooper, 828 F.2d 1471, 1476 (10th Cir. 1987). Our determination that a particular dismissal constitutes a strike is not formalistic or mechanical; rather, we must consider the nature of the dismissal and, if the district court did not make it clear, whether the dismissal fits within the language of § 1915(g). We construe the Southern District of Indiana's order to mean that the immunity ground for dismissal was subsumed in frivolousness or appellant's failure to state a claim, because appellant affirmatively asserted facts showing that he could not meet the expropriation exception to Israel's immunity, so he had no legally viable claim[.] See Government of the State of Israel, D.C. No. 1:08-cv-00773, Doc. 5, at 3. We conclude that the district court's dismissal in Government of the State of Israel is based on grounds listed in both § 1915A(b)(1) and § 1915(g), and it therefore counts as a strike. This strike counts from May 26, 2009, when the Supreme Court dismissed appellant's petition for writ of certiorari. See Hafed v. State of Israel, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 2439, 174 L.Ed.2d 226 (2009) (Mem.) (No. 08-9403).
In addition, the Seventh Circuit dismissed appellant's appeal in Hafed v. Government of the State of Israel, No. 08-2744. That court first denied appellant's motion for leave to proceed ifp under Lee v. Clinton, 209 F.3d 1025, 1026-27 (7th Cir.2000), that is, as frivolous. See Government of the State of Israel, No. 08-2744, Doc. 17. When appellant did not pay the filing fee, the Seventh Circuit dismissed the appeal for nonpayment. See id., Doc. 19. A circuit court's dismissal of an appeal on the ground of frivolousness would fall under § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i) and would count as a strike. See Jennings, 175 F.3d at 780-81. In Government of the State of Israel, however, the Seventh Circuit did not actually dismiss the appeal as frivolous, but for nonpayment of the filing fee, that is, for failing to prosecute the appeal. A dismissal for failure to prosecute would not necessarily be a strike because [e]ach of the three categories of strikes in [§ 1915(g)] involves dispositions that look to the merits of the suit[, but] a dismissal for failure to prosecute is made without regard to the merits of the claim[.] Butler v. Dep't of Justice, 492 F.3d 440, 442-44 (D.C.Cir.2007) (holding, where there was no indication in the procedural history that the court had held that the five prior appeals dismissed for failure to prosecute were frivolous, that the dismissals did not count as strikes under § 1915(g)). However, in Thompson v. Drug Enforcement Administration, 492 F.3d 428, 433 (D.C.Cir. 2007), the D.C. Circuit held that a dismissal for failure to prosecute was a strike where the circuit court had previously declared the appeal frivolous when it denied the prisoner's motion to proceed ifp. The D.C. Circuit rejected as hypertechnical the prisoner's argument that the appeal was formally dismissed ... for failure to prosecute, rather than for frivolousness[, because b]ut for the judge declaring it frivolous, [the prisoner's] appeal would have gone forward. Id. In our view, the Seventh Circuit's determination that the appeal in Government of the State of Israel was frivolous when it denied appellant's motion for ifp can properly be termed the but for cause of that court's subsequent dismissal, and we agree with the D.C. Circuit's conclusion that it would be hypertechnical to hold that the resulting dismissal for nonpayment was not a strike. See Thompson, 492 F.3d at 433; see also O'Neal v. Price, 531 F.3d 1146, 1152 (9th Cir.2008) (holding that a district court has `dismissed' the prisoner's case for purposes of § 1915(g) when the court denies the prisoner's application to file the action without prepayment of the filing fee on the ground that the complaint is frivolous, malicious or fails to state a claim, and thereupon terminates the complaint (quoting § 1915(g)). This strike also counts from May 26, 2009, when the Supreme Court dismissed appellant's petition for writ of certiorari. See Hafed v. State of Israel, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 2439, 174 L.Ed.2d 226 (2009) (Mem.) (No. 08-9403). Having concluded that appellant had three clear strikes as of May 26, 2009, before he filed No. 09-1365 on August 17, 2009, we do not address his arguments in that appeal on their merits. See Dubuc, 314 F.3d at 1208-10.