Opinion ID: 2716024
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Whether Martinez Is Itself an Extraordinary

Text: Circumstance Because it was a focal point of the District Court’s reasoning, we begin with a discussion of the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Adams v. Thaler. In Adams, as in this case, the district court dismissed a habeas petitioner’s ineffective assistance of counsel claims as procedurally defaulted under state law, finding that errors by state post-conviction counsel could not excuse the default. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Martinez, the petitioner, who had been sentenced to death in Texas state court, filed a Rule 60(b)(6) motion seeking relief from the order dismissing his habeas petition. The petitioner pointed to several factors that, in combination, established “extraordinary circumstances” and entitled him to 60(b)(6) relief: (1) the “‘jurisprudential sea change’ in federal habeas corpus law” occasioned by Martinez; (2) the fact that his case had resulted in a death sentence; and (3) “the equitable imperative that the true merit” of his claims be heard. Adams, 679 F.3d at 319. He also filed a motion for a stay of execution pending the district court’s resolution of his 60(b)(6) motion. The district court granted the stay of execution. The Fifth Circuit vacated that order as an abuse of the district court’s discretion, given that the petitioner had not shown a likelihood of success on his Rule 60(b)(6) motion. The court determined that the 60(b)(6) motion would not succeed because, under Fifth Circuit precedent, “[a] change in decisional law after entry of judgment does not constitute exceptional circumstances and is not alone grounds for relief from a final judgment.” Id. (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). That proposition flowed from prior Fifth Circuit cases, which stated that “changes in decisional law . . . do not constitute the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ required for granting Rule 60(b)(6) relief.” Hess v. Cockrell, 281 F.3d 212, 216 (5th Cir. 2002); accord Hernandez v. Thaler, 630 F.3d 420, 430 (5th Cir. 2011) (per curiam). 12 Concluding that Martinez was “simply a change in decisional law” and its development of procedural default principles was “hardly extraordinary,” the Adams court denied 60(b)(6) relief without examining any of the petitioner’s individual circumstances. Adams, 679 F.3d at 320 (internal quotation marks omitted). Adams does not square with our approach to Rule 60(b)(6). As an initial matter, we have not embraced any categorical rule that a change in decisional law is never an adequate basis for Rule 60(b)(6) relief. Rather, we have consistently articulated a more qualified position: that intervening changes in the law rarely justify relief from final judgments under 60(b)(6). See, e.g., Reform Party of Allegheny Cnty. v. Allegheny Cnty. Dep’t of Elections, 174 F.3d 305, 311 (3d Cir. 1999) (en banc) (“‘[I]ntervening developments in the law by themselves rarely constitute the extraordinary circumstances required for relief under Rule 60(b)(6).’” (quoting Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 239 (1997)) (emphasis added)); Morris, 187 F.3d at 341 (same). Stated somewhat differently, we have not foreclosed the possibility that a change in controlling precedent, even standing alone, might give reason for 60(b)(6) relief. See Wilson v. Fenton, 684 F.2d 249, 251 (3d Cir. 1982) (per curiam) (“A decision of the Supreme Court of the United States or a Court of Appeals may provide the extraordinary circumstances for granting a Rule 60(b)(6) motion . . . .”). Even if there is not much daylight between the “never” position of the Fifth Circuit and the “rarely” position that we have staked out, Adams differs from our precedent in yet another significant respect: its failure to consider the full set of facts and circumstances attendant to the Rule 60(b)(6) motion under review. The Fifth Circuit in Adams ended its analysis after determining that Martinez’s change in the law was an insufficient basis for 60(b)(6) relief and did not consider whether the capital nature of the petitioner’s case or any other factor might counsel that Martinez be accorded heightened significance in his case or provide a reason or reasons for granting 60(b)(6) relief. Indeed, the court did not 13 address in any meaningful way the petitioner’s claim that he was not offering Martinez “alone” as a basis for relief. In Diaz v. Stephens, 731 F.3d 370, 376 (5th Cir. 2013), the Fifth Circuit later acknowledged that Adams and its other precedent had not cited additional equitable factors “as bearing on the analysis of extraordinary circumstances under Rule 60(b)(6).”5 See also id. at 376 n.1. The fact that the petitioner’s 60(b)(6) motion was predicated chiefly on a postjudgment change in the law was the singular, dispositive issue for the Adams court. We have not taken that route. Instead, we have long employed a flexible, multifactor approach to Rule 60(b)(6) motions, including those built upon a post-judgment change in the law, that takes into account all the particulars of a movant’s case. See Coltec Indus., Inc. v. Hobgood, 280 F.3d 262, 274 (3d Cir. 2002) (noting, in the context of a 60(b)(6) analysis, the propriety of “explicit[ly]” considering “equitable factors” in addition to a change in law); Lasky v. Cont’l Prods. Corp., 804 F.2d 250, 256 (3d Cir. 1986) (citing multiple factors a district court may consider in assessing a motion under 60(b)(6)).6 The fundamental point of 60(b) is that it provides “a grand reservoir of equitable power to do justice in a particular case.” Hall v. Cmty. Mental Health Ctr., 772 F.2d 42, 46 (3d Cir. 1985) (internal quotation marks omitted). A movant, of course, bears the burden of establishing entitlement to such equitable relief, which, again, will be granted only under extraordinary circumstances. Mayberry v. Maroney, 558 F.2d 1159, 1163 (3d Cir. 1977). But a district court must consider the full measure of any properly presented facts and circumstances attendant to the movant’s request. 5 The court in Diaz assumed, for the sake of argument, that a district court may consider several equitable factors in the Rule 60(b)(6) context, but found that consideration of those factors in Diaz’s case did not entitle him to 60(b)(6) relief. 731 F.3d at 377-78. 6 Notably, the factors outlined in Lasky parallel the equitable factors cited by the Fifth Circuit in Diaz as being of questionable relevance to Rule 60(b)(6) motions. 14 The Commonwealth appellees contend that Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524 (2005), effectively displaced our flexible approach in the habeas context and precludes Rule 60(b)(6) relief based on a change in law, including Martinez. In Gonzalez, the district court dismissed a petitioner’s habeas petition as barred by the statute of limitations of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”), 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d). It found that the limitations period was not tolled while his second state post-conviction motion was pending because the motion was untimely and successive and, therefore, had not been “properly filed.” Id. at 527. The Eleventh Circuit denied a certificate of appealability and the petitioner did not seek subsequent review of that decision. Several months later, the Supreme Court rejected the district court’s reasoning in Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U.S. 4 (2000), and held that an application for state post-conviction relief can be “properly filed” even if it was dismissed by the state as procedurally barred. The petitioner then filed a 60(b)(6) motion citing Artuz as an extraordinary circumstance. The Supreme Court rejected his argument. Noting that the circumstances warranting 60(b) relief would “rarely occur in the habeas context,” Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 535, the Court opined that “not every interpretation of the federal statutes setting forth the requirements for habeas provides cause for reopening cases long since final,” id. at 536. It was “hardly extraordinary” that the district court’s interpretation of AEDPA, which was correct under the Eleventh Circuit’s then-governing precedent, was subsequently rejected in a different case. Id. at 536. The Eleventh Circuit, describing Gonzalez, has observed that, in that opinion, “the U.S. Supreme Court . . . told us that a change in decisional law is insufficient to create the ‘extraordinary circumstance’ necessary to invoke Rule 60(b)(6).” Arthur v. Thomas, 739 F.3d 611, 631 (11th Cir. 2014) (citing Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 535-38). Relying on Gonzalez, the Eleventh Circuit in Arthur, just as the Fifth Circuit in Adams, went on to hold that “the change in the decisional law affected by the Martinez rule is not an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ sufficient to invoke Rule 60(b)(6).” Id. The Commonwealth appellees cite the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in an effort to persuade us that, in 15 light of Gonzalez, we should abandon our case-by-case approach to 60(b)(6) motions. We are not persuaded. We believe that the Eleventh Circuit extracts too broad a principle from Gonzalez, which does not answer the question before us. Gonzalez did not say that a new interpretation of the federal habeas statutes—much less, the equitable principles invoked to aid their enforcement—is always insufficient to sustain a Rule 60(b)(6) motion. Gonzalez merely highlights, in action, the position of both the Supreme Court and this Court that “[i]ntervening developments in the law by themselves rarely constitute the extraordinary circumstances required for relief under Rule 60(b)(6).” Agostini, 521 U.S. at 239 (emphasis added); Morris, 187 F.3d at 341. And, to be clear, the Gonzalez Court examined the individual circumstances of the petitioner’s case to see whether relief was appropriate, concluding that relief was not warranted given the petitioner’s “lack of diligence in pursuing review [in his own case] of the statute-of-limitations issue” eventually addressed in Artuz. Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 537. For that matter, even after categorically pronouncing that Martinez’s change in the law could not sustain a 60(b)(6) motion, the Eleventh Circuit in Arthur briefly considered (and rejected) “other factors” cited by the movant, including the capital nature of his case, as justification for 60(b)(6) relief in the wake of Martinez.7 7 At least three other courts of appeals have similarly assessed a variety of factors on a case-by-case basis when deciding whether to grant a habeas petitioner’s Rule 60(b)(6) motion based on Martinez and Trevino. See Nash v. Hepp, 740 F.3d 1075, 1078-79 (7th Cir. 2014) (noting that, per Gonzalez and prior Seventh Circuit precedent, Martinez’s change in law could not justify 60(b)(6) relief, but analyzing the specific circumstances of the petitioner’s case, including his lack of diligence and his prior opportunity to raise the defaulted claims); McGuire v. Warden, Chillicothe Corr. Inst., 738 F.3d 741, 750-52 (6th Cir. 2013) (denying 60(b)(6) motion after concluding that Trevino did not impart new constitutional rights, Trevino’s change of the law was the sole basis for the motion, and its rule arguably did not apply to the petitioner’s claims); Lopez, 678 F.3d at 1135-37 (applying a 16 Arthur, 739 F.3d at 633. We, therefore, believe that our case-dependent analysis, fully in line with Rule 60(b)(6)’s equitable moorings, retains vitality post-Gonzalez, and we do not adopt a per se rule that a change in decisional law, even in the habeas context, is inadequate, either standing alone or in tandem with other factors, to invoke relief from a final judgment under 60(b)(6). The District Court abused its discretion when it based its decision solely on the reasoning of Adams and failed to consider how, if at all, the capital aspect of this case or any other factor highlighted by the parties would figure into its 60(b)(6) analysis. We will remand to give it the opportunity to conduct that equitable evaluation now.