Opinion ID: 788658
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Adequacy of the Procedural Bar

Text: 27 Johnson also challenges the adequacy of the procedural bar under N.J.R. 3:22-12. 28 A state rule provides an independent and adequate basis for precluding federal review of a state prisoner's habeas claims only if: (1) the state procedural rule speaks in unmistakable terms; (2) all state appellate courts refused to review the petitioner's claims on the merits; and (3) the state courts' refusal in this instance is consistent with other decisions. 29 Doctor v. Walters, 96 F.3d 675, 683-84 (3d Cir.1996). Thus, a state rule can be rendered inadequate if the rule is not strictly or regularly followed. Hathorn v. Lovorn, 457 U.S. 255, 263, 102 S.Ct. 2421, 72 L.Ed.2d 824 (1982) (State courts may not avoid deciding federal issues by invoking procedural rules that they do not apply evenhandedly to all similar claims.). Nevertheless, neither an occasional act of grace by a state court in excusing or disregarding a state procedural rule nor a willingness in a few cases to overlook the rule and address a claim on the merits renders a state procedural rule inadequate. Banks v. Horn, 126 F.3d 206, 211 (3d Cir.1997). 30 The procedural rule, in this case N.J.R. 3:22-12, speaks in unmistakable terms requiring any challenge to a sentence to be filed within five years of the sentencing proceeding. Moreover, as we discussed above, see Part II.A, supra, the state appellate courts found that this rule procedurally barred Johnson's death-eligibility claim, and thus discussed the merits of the case only as an alternative holding. Instead, Johnson challenges the adequacy of the state court rulings by arguing that the state courts' refusal to hear his claim is not consistent with other New Jersey decisions and that N.J.R. 3:22-12 is not strictly or regularly followed. 31 As it will appear, New Jersey state law ultimately resolves the adequacy issue against Johnson, and it arguably might be enough simply to rely on the state court's holding. However, in view of the vigor with which Johnson advanced the argument that the New Jersey procedural bar constitutes inadequate state law grounds, it seems prudent to address this claim, hence we do so. 32
33 Johnson claims that he did not actually violate a state procedural rule because his case falls into a well-recognized exception to the five-year time limit. Citing a New Jersey Supreme Court decision, State v. Milne, 178 N.J. 486, 842 A.2d 140, 144 (2004), Johnson contends that when a new case is announced, which provides relief not previously available to the defendant, the New Jersey courts permit the five-year time limitation to run from the date of that new decision. Johnson points to State v. Kiett, 121 N.J. 483, 582 A.2d 630 (1990), which he says opened such a new avenue of relief by holding that a defendant who entered a guilty plea to avoid imposition of the death penalty, but who cannot be put to death as a matter of law, labors under the kind of mistake that entitles him or her to withdraw the plea. Id. at 633. 34 Johnson's arguments are unavailing on several counts. First, New Jersey precedent does not support his claim that there is an automatic new law exception to the five-year time limit. While State v. Milne reasoned that new law can, in certain compelling circumstances, reset the five-year clock, 842 A.2d at 144, Milne considered the extent and cause of the delay, the prejudice to the State, and the importance of petitioner's claim in determining whether there has been an injustice sufficient to relax the time limits before allowing any exception to the time bar. Id. at 143-44 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the new law exception is by no means automatic, but rather requires a balancing of interests. In Milne, the defendant tried to raise his claim more than five years after the new law had been handed down. Although that was the primary rationale for the New Jersey Supreme court's rejection of petitioner's claim in that case, the court also expressed strong reservations about the prospect of reviewing a sixteen-year old conviction as it would entail substantial prejudice to the State and cause difficulties and hardships to the system. Id. at 144. In Johnson's case the guilty plea and conviction are twenty-one years old, and certainly the State's ability to put on a trial at this late date would be seriously handicapped. 35 Second, it is not clear that Kiett should be considered new grounds for relief, as there were several earlier cases which are congruent with Kiett 's holding. See State v. Nichols, 71 N.J. 358, 365 A.2d 467 (1976) (permitting defendant to withdraw guilty plea where he was misinformed about whether he could receive consecutive sentences for his involvement in an armed robbery if he went to trial); State v. Kovack, 91 N.J. 476, 453 A.2d 521, 524 (1982) (finding that a plea was not entered knowingly where the defendant was not informed of his parole ineligibility). While no prior New Jersey case specifically dealt with a mistake about death eligibility, these earlier cases afforded relief to petitioners who labored under mistakes about their eligibility for less grave sentences, so it would seem logical that such relief would a fortiori have been available to petitioners who were mistaken about eligibility for the death penalty. 3 36 At all events, the argument that Kiett opened a new avenue of relief is contradicted by the history of this case, for it is clear that Johnson was put on notice of the viability of his death-eligibility claim well before Kiett. The Appellate Division decision on direct appeal, in Johnson's own case, handed down in 1984, should have put Johnson on notice that the death-eligibility claim could have provided additional grounds for appeal. The Appellate Division specifically commented that it had not been called upon to determine whether misinformation about death eligibility prejudicially impacted the defendant's decision to plead guilty, implying that this omission was a mistake by Johnson's counsel. 37 Although he did not raise it in his first PCR petition to the trial court, Johnson included the death-eligibility claim in his petition for certification to the New Jersey Supreme Court, filed in 1989-one year before Kiett. In that petition, Johnson cited Nichols, supra, 71 N.J. 358, 365 A.2d 467, to support the proposition that the misinformation about his death eligibility rendered his plea involuntary and conceded that this issue could have (and should have) been raised on direct appeal. Johnson did not file his second PCR petition, raising the instant claim, until over a year after offering this admission in his petition to the New Jersey Supreme Court. 38 The fact that he was on notice that he could raise this claim as an avenue of relief, and failed to do so, seems to exclude Johnson's petition from the set of compelling cases that Milne contemplates for leniency.
39 In the same vein, Johnson claims that the state grounds were inadequate because New Jersey courts do not strictly or regularly enforce N.J.R. 3:22-12's five-year time bar. He points to liberal language in the New Jersey Supreme Court opinions in Milne, supra, and State v. Preciose, 129 N.J. 451, 609 A.2d 1280 (1992). 4 Milne noted that the five-year time limit is not absolute and that a court may relax the time bar if the defendant alleges facts demonstrating that the delay was due to the defendant's excusable neglect or if the `interests of justice' demand it. 842 A.2d at 143. Nevertheless, Milne cautioned that [a]bsent compelling, extenuating circumstances, the burden to justify filing a petition after the five-year period will increase with the extent of the delay. Id. at 144. 40 In Preciose, the New Jersey Supreme Court engaged in an exegesis of the federal law of procedural default in its attempt to decide whether state lower courts should make express rulings on state procedural grounds in order to foreclose potential avenues of federal habeas relief. 609 A.2d at 1292. Announcing a relatively pliable view of state procedural rules, in Preciose, the court declined to read at least one procedural rule narrowly, and concluded that New Jersey's system of post-conviction relief is broader than federal habeas review. Id. at 1294. In so doing, the court noted that when meritorious issues are raised that require analysis and explanation, our traditions of comprehensive justice will best be served by decisions that reflect thoughtful and thorough consideration and disposition of substantive contentions. Id. 41 Notwithstanding these pronouncements of relative flexibility, a review of New Jersey case law, set forth infra, reveals that the New Jersey courts have generally applied the time bar set forth in N.J.R. 3:22-12 so that this rule can fairly be said to have been firmly established and regularly followed. See Banks v. Horn, 126 F.3d 206, 211 (3d Cir.1997) ([I]f a state supreme court faithfully has applied a procedural rule in `the vast majority' of cases, its willingness in a few cases to overlook the rule and address a claim on the merits does not mean that it does not apply the procedural rule regularly or consistently.). Therefore, the mere fact that Preciose and Milne expressed the potential for greater leniency than federal habeas law does not mean that the five-year time limit is not adequate grounds for procedural default. Indeed, Milne itself refused to relax the time bar where the defendant failed to file his petition within five years of a case announcing a new rule of law and had no excuse for his neglect. 842 A.2d at 144-46. The Milne court further admonished the defendant for waiting more than a year after the District Court's decision on his federal habeas claim to file his second PCR petition and noted that if he had acted more promptly, he could have remained within the five-year window of the new law. Id. 42 Somewhat analogously, in this case, Johnson's petition for certification for his first PCR petition raised the death-eligibility claim. Although this certification was denied, Johnson waited more than a year to file his second PCR petition and to again raise the death-eligibility claim. While Johnson would not have been within the five-year time bar even if he had filed his second PCR petition more expeditiously, such delay does not exhibit exceptional diligence. Therefore, Milne 's application of the procedural bar, rather than its rhetoric, seems the appropriate rule in this case. 43 The State has provided a list of the many cases in which the New Jersey courts have enforced the time bar. We too have conducted a review of New Jersey Supreme Court precedents and have found few cases that have actually relaxed N.J.R. 3:22-12's five-year time bar. To this end, the New Jersey Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the time bar should be relaxed only in exceptional, compelling, or extenuating circumstances. See, e.g., State v. Goodwin, 173 N.J. 583, 803 A.2d 102, 108 (2002) (The time bar [under 3:22-12] should be relaxed only under exceptional circumstances... We consistently have recognized the importance of adhering to this procedural bar.); State v. Marshall, 173 N.J. 343, 801 A.2d 1142, 1150 (2002) (finding no basis for excusable neglect and barring the PCR petition under Rule 3:22-12); State v. Murray, 162 N.J. 240, 744 A.2d 131 (2000) (recognizing two exceptions to the five-year limit, an illegal sentence and excusable neglect, finding defendant satisfied neither); State v. Afanador, 151 N.J. 41, 697 A.2d 529, 534 (1997) ([A] court should only relax the bar of Rule 3:22-12 under exceptional circumstances.... Absent compelling, extenuating circumstances, the burden to justify filing a petition after the five-year period will increase with the extent of the delay.). From the unambiguous language of Rule 3:22-12 and from the many prior cases that have consistently applied the time bar, it is clear that this procedural rule was an independent and adequate state ground establishing procedural default. 44 Instead of looking to the overwhelming majority of cases where the time bar has been consistently applied, Johnson points to the few exceptional cases where the New Jersey Supreme Court was willing to overlook the five-year time bar because of compelling circumstances. See, e.g., Afanador, 697 A.2d at 534 (finding that the petitioner had alleged exceptional circumstances where the defendant was caught in a Catch-22 situation because for four years and seven months he could not file a PCR petition while his direct review was pending, and where defendant did everything within his power to preserve the issue including attempting to raise it in a timely pro se petition). 45 In particular, Johnson and the District Court cite State v. McQuaid, 147 N.J. 464, 688 A.2d 584 (1997), a case decided nearly six years after Johnson filed his second PCR petition, as precedent for collateral review of an error regarding death eligibility notwithstanding several procedural defaults. McQuaid had been an accomplice in a robbery-turned-murder. McQuaid too labored under the misapprehension that he faced the death penalty, in that case, on count one of his indictment ___ murder by his own conduct ___ and so pled guilty to felony murder to avoid what he wrongly believed was a capital charge. In fact, the court subsequently decided that murder by his own conduct is not a capital offense unless the defendant was the trigger-person, which McQuaid was not. Similar to this case, McQuaid did not raise the claim of misinformation about death eligibility until his second PCR petition, which was filed more than five-years after his sentence. 46 The New Jersey Supreme Court considered a range of reasons McQuaid might face procedural bars to his PCR petition, including Rule 3:22-12; however, because the misinformation was immaterial to his plea decision, the court did not decide the procedural bar issue but rather denied the petition on the merits. Id. at 600. Like Milne and Preciose, McQuaid contains expansive language about the harshness of strictly barring claims on procedural grounds. 688 A.2d at 600 (observing that defendants should not pay the exacting price for state procedural forfeitures that result from the ignorance or inadvertence of their counsel). Still, McQuaid does not stand for the proposition that the New Jersey courts will simply forgive a procedural default; rather, it demonstrates that in accord with Preciose, they are willing to weigh procedural and substantive grounds, at times, in the alternative. Indeed, in considering the merits the court particularly stressed the significant prejudice to the State if it was to allow the defendant to withdraw his guilty plea, a factor which would also cut against a relaxation of the procedural bar under Milne 's balancing test. Id. at 601-02. 5 47 Notwithstanding McQuaid 's decision to deny the petition on the merits in an analogous case, the New Jersey courts have reviewed Johnson's claim and have not found that his case fits into the exceptional category of cases, but rather, have applied their normal rule limiting the time to challenge a sentence to five-years. In light of the foregoing discussion, this decision reflects an adequate state law ground.