Opinion ID: 3034461
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: State Courts’ Application of Pennsylvania Law

Text: Williams claims that the state courts considering his PCRA petitions misapplied Pennsylvania law in at least two instances and that those errors worked together to create “extraordinary circumstances” that prevented his filing of a timely federal habeas petition. First, he claims that the Court of Common Pleas erroneously viewed his petition for reinstatement of appellate rights nunc pro tunc, including his subsequent amendments to that petition, as a PCRA petition and thus that the court inappropriately reached the merits of his claims. Essentially, Williams argues that that error caused the state courts that considered his second PCRA petition to likewise view his first petition as a PCRA petition rather than a direct appeal. Second, Williams alleges that, in the appeal from the denial of his first PCRA petition, the Superior Court should have reinstated his direct appellate rights nunc pro tunc, in accordance with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s 15 intervening decision in Lantzy, because his petition met all of the requirements for that relief. We agree with the District Court’s conclusion that Williams’s “failure to file a timely habeas petition ... resulted from a strategic decision, not an ‘extraordinary circumstance.’” Williams, 2006 WL 3486457, at . In fact, Williams made at least two decisions to file PCRA petitions rather than pursue other courses that, under then-existing law, may have been more fruitful. First, Williams chose to file and twice amend an initial petition seeking reinstatement of his appellate rights nunc pro tunc within the framework of the PCRA. As previously noted, supra at n. 2, Pennsylvania law at the time required a petitioner who sought reinstatement of his appellate rights nunc pro tunc to file a motion with the Court of Common Pleas. A request to reinstate those rights was not cognizable under the PCRA unless the petitioner showed actual innocence or demonstrated the merits of the issues he would have raised on appeal. See Commonwealth v. Petroski, 695 A.2d 844, 844 (Pa. Super. 1997) (applying pre-Lantzy law and holding that “the Post Conviction Relief Act requires that a petitioner both plead and prove facts establishing that the violation of the constitutional right or the ineffectiveness of counsel so undermined the truth-determining process as to render a finding of guilt unreliable.”). Thus, contrary to Williams’s 16 argument, the Court of Common Pleas did not “refuse[] to apply clearly established law” when it decided his first PCRA petition on the merits.12 Second, Williams took a known risk when he filed his second PCRA petition, evidently hoping that the state courts would view his first petition as a direct appeal. Like the District Court, we have been unable to find any Pennsylvania case that stands for the proposition that a PCRA proceeding seeking reinstatement of direct appellate rights should be considered a direct appeal when that PCRA petition has been denied.13 To the contrary, as the District Court noted, Lantzy itself explains that “the Pennsylvania PCRA provides the sole means of obtaining collateral review[,] ... including requests for 12 Williams’s counsel’s theme at oral argument, namely that the state courts deprived him of the two opportunities – direct review and post-conviction review – to which state law entitles him, rings hollow because he and his counsel presented his first set of claims within the PCRA framework. Even if it were unclear whether, pre-Lantzy, a petitioner seeking to have his direct appeal rights reinstated nunc pro tunc was to file an NPT petition rather than a PCRA petition, the state courts cannot be faulted for viewing Williams’s petition as it was presented to them. 13 Williams cites Commonwealth v. Lewis, 718 A.2d 1262 (Pa. Super. 1998), Commonwealth v. Karanicolas, 836 A.2d 940 (Pa. Super. 2003), Commonwealth v. O’Bidos, 849 A.2d 243 (Pa. Super. 2004), and Commonwealth v. Fowler, 930 A.2d 586 (Pa. Super. 2007). However, Williams’s case is different. In the cited cases, the defendants’ PCRA petitions requesting reinstatement of direct appeal rights nunc pro tunc were granted. Thereafter, the defendants filed second PCRA petitions. The Pennsylvania Superior Court held in all four cases that these second PCRA petitions should be treated as if they were actually the defendants’ first PCRA petitions because the original PCRA petitions were never considered on the merits. In the present case, Williams was never granted relief nunc pro tunc and his first PCRA petition was considered on its merits by the state courts. The concern expressed in Lewis, Karanicolas, O’Bidos, and Fowler, that the defendants would not receive post-conviction review if their second petitions were to be dismissed as untimely, does not exist here. 17 reinstatement of appeal rights.” Williams, 2006 WL 3486457, at  (citing Lantzy, 736 A.2d at 569-70). In light of the case law, it was not reasonable for Williams to think that his first PCRA petition was going to be treated as a direct appeal, even though the Superior Court arguably acted erroneously in failing to follow Lantzy.14 In sum, Williams has failed to point us to an instance where the state courts neglected to follow clearly established law so as to create an extraordinary circumstance preventing him from filing a timely habeas petition after his first PCRA proceedings concluded. B. Failure to Exhaust Claims in State Court Prior to Expiration of AEDPA’s Statute of Limitations Period Williams’s second alleged extraordinary circumstance is that, after the state courts refused to reinstate his appellate rights, he had no other way of preserving his right to habeas review of the additional claims he wanted to bring other than to file a second PCRA petition. Williams claims he had three options, and none of them were good. First, he could have filed a mixed habeas petition including both his exhausted and unexhausted claims and requested a stay from the District Court. At that time, however, case law suggested that mixed habeas petitions would be dismissed. It was not until 2004 that we 14 We need not determine whether the Superior Court’s failure to apply Lantzy when deciding Williams’s first post-conviction appeal was error, though it is true that Eller would require the Superior Court to apply Lantzy if it were faced with Williams’s first PCRA petition today. 18 established, in Crews v. Horn, 360 F.3d 146 (3d Cir. 2004), that district courts could stay habeas petitions pending exhaustion of state remedies. Williams asserts that his second option would have been to file a habeas petition raising only his exhausted claims, while simultaneously trying to exhaust his other claims in state court. By the time he exhausted his second set of claims, however, the federal habeas statute of limitations would have precluded review of a second habeas petition with his new claims. According to Williams, his third option, the one he finally chose, was to file a second PCRA petition asking that the state courts correct their prior “error” in failing to reinstate his appellate rights. Although risky, this was his best option, Williams contends, because of our preCrews jurisprudence.15 Williams argues that the dilemma he faced is similar to the one faced by the petitioner in Slutzker v. Johnson, 393 F.3d 373 (3d Cir. 2004), in which we excused a 15 Williams’s respect for our precedent is admirable but seems less than genuine because, when he did eventually file his habeas petition in 2001, our law had not changed. Crews was decided three years after he filed his petition. Williams’s assertion that he filed the habeas petition in light of the Supreme Court’s plurality decision in Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 182-83 (2001) (Stevens, J., concurring), is belied by his failure to mention Duncan in the habeas petition itself. Instead, Williams cited a number of Third Circuit and District Court decisions decided before he filed his second PCRA petition. (Supp. App. at 80-82 (citing Duffey v. Lehman, No. 94-9003, 1996 WL 13154 at  (3d Cir. Jan. 16, 1996) vacated as moot, 84 F.3d 668 (3d Cir. 1996); Carpenter v. Vaughan, No. 95-9001 (3d Cir. Oct. 17, 1995); Lloyd v. Mazurkiewicz, No. 94-CV-5544, 1995 WL 422743 (E.D. Pa. July 14, 1995)).) These cases, as well as other persuasive, pre-existing precedent from other circuits, see Freeman v. Page, 208 F.3d 572, 577 (7 th Cir. 2000) and Brewer v. Johnson, 139 F.3d 491, 493 (5 th Cir. 1998), suggested that a mixed habeas petition was a viable option in certain circumstances in the Third Circuit. 19 petitioner’s procedural default. Williams, however, has put himself in an entirely different situation than that faced by the petitioner in Slutzker. In that case, petitioner Slutzker, acting pro se, filed a timely federal habeas petition. 393 F.3d at 377. It was not until two years later that Slutzker, still acting pro se, discovered police reports that the prosecution had failed to previously disclose. Id. at 377-78. In light of those new reports, he then filed an amended habeas petition that included claims under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). He did not, however, first exhaust those claims in state court, nor did he move for a stay of the federal proceeding so that he could do so. Id. at 379. Nonetheless, we held that Slutzker had established cause excusing his procedural default in failing to exhaust his Brady claims. Id. at 385. Slutzker faced a dilemma because, while “a conscientious attorney in Slutzker’s position might have considered the ‘stay-and-abey’ procedure as a possibility,” no then-existing Supreme Court or Third Circuit precedent approved of that procedure. Id. at 383. Had we ordered the district court to dismiss Slutzker’s amended habeas petition, a re-filing of his exhausted claims would have been untimely, thus preventing review of all but his Brady claims. Id. In this case, rather than file a timely habeas petition, Williams, with advice from counsel, gambled by filing a second, time-barred PCRA petition in the hope that the state courts would view his first PCRA proceedings as a direct appeal. When Williams eventually filed his protective habeas petition, it, too, was untimely. 20 Moreover, Slutzker did not know about his new claims until he discovered, after he had already exhausted his other claims and filed his habeas petition, that the government had failed to produce Brady evidence. Id. at 377-78. Williams, in contrast, does not argue that he discovered new evidence. The only undeniably “new” claim he included in his second PCRA petition that could not have been in the first was his allegation that he received ineffective assistance from his first PCRA counsel. As to the other claims in his second PCRA petition, it appears that he simply neglected to bring them earlier. The logical extension of the “extraordinary circumstances” argument Williams would have us accept would be to allow a petitioner to toll the AEDPA statute of limitations indefinitely simply by obtaining new counsel, claiming ineffective assistance of previous counsel, and alleging new claims based on a fresh review of an old record. Williams had opportunities to seek federal habeas relief. As the District Court found, he “could have abandoned his unexhausted claims and filed a habeas petition containing only those claims he had exhausted in his first PCRA petition [or] filed a habeas petition and sought protection for his unexhausted claims from the federal court.” Williams, 2006 WL 3486457, at ; see also Schlueter v. Varner, 384 F.3d 69, 76 (3d Cir. 2004) (“Generally, in a non-capital case ... attorney error is not a sufficient basis for equitable tolling of AEDPA’s one-year period of limitation.”). In short, nothing extraordinary prevented Williams from filing a habeas petition. 21