Opinion ID: 3013505
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Procedural Barriers to Slutzker’s Claim

Text: Before reaching the merits of the alleged Brady violation, we consider the Commonwealth’s contention that it is procedurally defaulted. This contention depends on Pennsylvania’s PCRA time bar. Slutzker claims to have received the twenty-one previously undisclosed police reports on September 11, 2001. Under the Pennsylvania PCRA, a prisoner may file a challenge to his conviction for up to one year after the judgment becomes final, unless the facts upon which the challenge is predicated were unknown at that time. 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9545(b)(1). If the predicate facts are discovered after this one-year period, the prisoner must file his petition within sixty days of discovery. Id. § 9545(b)(2). Slutzker’s conviction became final on May 17, 1994, when the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied his motion for reconsideration of its denial of direct review. See 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9545(b)(3) (judgment becomes final on conclusion of direct review). He filed a PCRA petition in January 1996, which perforce did not mention the then-undiscovered Brady documents. He was denied PCRA relief in September 1997, and fully exhausted his PCRA appeals, which concluded in November 1999. He filed a pro se petition for habeas corpus in federal court in December 1999. When Slutzker discovered the police reports, his pro se habeas petition was pending in the federal courts. He did not move to stay or dismiss this petition so as to file a second PCRA petition based on the newly discovered facts. The Commonwealth asserts that Slutzker’s failure to file a second PCRA petition led to a procedural default on the Brady issue. Because the Pennsylvania 3 The record does not disclose how tall Mrs. Mudd is, nor did the parties have any comment on the issue at oral argument. 4 The Magistrate Judge summarized the most important of these reports in her Report and Recommendation. 8 courts never had the opportunity to address this claim, the Commonwealth argues that it is now foreclosed.
The starting point for our analysis is the habeas statute, which requires that prisoners exhaust their claims in state court before seeking relief from the federal courts. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A); see also Landano v. Rafferty, 897 F.2d 661, 668 (3d Cir. 1990). There is no dispute that Slutzker has not exhausted his Brady claim. He discovered it in September of 2001, well after his PCRA appeals had terminated, and while his original pro se habeas petition was pending. He never returned to state court with a second PCRA petition, and thus denied the Pennsylvania courts the opportunity to rule on this claim. Under the doctrine of Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391 (1963), and Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 522 (1982), federal courts must dismiss without prejudice habeas petitions that contain any unexhausted claims.5 The exhaustion requirement does not apply, however, in cases where the state courts would not consider the unexhausted claims because they are procedurally barred. Doctor v. Walters, 96 F.3d 675, 681 (3d Cir. 1996); cf. Toulson v. Beyer, 987 F.2d 984, 987 (3d Cir. 1993) (“A petition containing unexhausted but procedurally barred claims in addition to exhausted claims, is not a mixed petition requiring dismissal under Rose.”). This conclusion stems from the doctrine that exhaustion is not required where pursuit of state remedies would be futile. Doctor, 96 F.3d at 681; Szuchon v. Lehman, 273 F.3d 299, 323-24 n.14 (3d Cir. 2001); cf. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(B) (excusing exhaustion where “there is an absence of available State corrective process”). Where exhaustion is excused because of this form of futility, the habeas doctrine of procedural default may apply to bar relief. See infra Part II.B.2. 5 In Crews v. Horn, 360 F.3d 146, 151 (3d Cir. 2004), this Court, citing Zarvela v. Artuz, 254 F.3d 374, 379-80 (2d Cir. 2001), found that the one-year time limit on habeas petitions introduced by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act had altered the rule of Rose v. Lundy to allow a district court to stay, rather than dismiss, a mixed habeas petition. We shall have more to say about this “stay and abey” rule in Part II.B.3.b, infra. 9 The mere existence of a state procedural rule that would appear to bar relief is not, however, sufficient to avoid the exhaustion requirement. The policy behind the exhaustion requirement is to give state courts a full opportunity to address the petitioner’s claims. Doctor, 96 F.3d at 681. Given this, if there is any likelihood that the state courts would consider the merits of a petitioner’s unexhausted claim, the federal courts should dismiss his petition and allow him to seek relief in state courts. Id. at 686 (Scirica, J., concurring). We reach the merits only if state law “clearly foreclose[s] state court review of the unexhausted claims.” Toulson, 987 F.2d at 987 (emphasis added). Here, however, it seems certain that the Pennsylvania courts would not entertain Slutzker’s Brady claim after the 60-day PCRA limit. The time limits under 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9545(b) are mandatory and jurisdictional in nature, Commonwealth v. Murray, 753 A.2d 201, 203 (Pa. 2000), and “the PCRA confers no authority upon [any Pennsylvania] Court to fashion ad hoc equitable exceptions to the PCRA time-bar in addition to those exceptions expressly delineated in the Act,” Commonwealth v. Robinson, 837 A.2d 1157, 1161 (Pa. 2003); see also Commonwealth v. Eller, 807 A.2d 838, 845 (Pa. 2002). No argument that Slutzker had good reason for failing to file within the 60-day period is relevant, because the period for filing a PCRA petition is not subject to the doctrine of equitable tolling; instead, the time for filing a a PCRA petition can be extended only to the extent that the PCRA permits it to be extended, i.e., by operation of one of the statutorily enumerated exceptions to the PCRA time-bar. Commonwealth v. Cruz, 852 A.2d 287, 292 (Pa. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Commonwealth v. Fahy, 737 A.2d 214, 222 (Pa. 1999). The statutory exceptions are contained in § 9545(b)(1), and a petition invoking such an exception must be filed within 60 days of the time that the claim could have been presented, § 9545(b)(2). Here, it was not. Since Slutzker gets no help from the statutory exceptions, and since the Pennsylvania courts will not consider late-filed petitions, there is no doubt that Slutzker cannot now bring his Brady claim in the Pennsylvania courts. Thus his failure to exhaust that claim is excused under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(B). 10
This excuse from the exhaustion requirement does Slutzker no good, however, unless he can avoid the concomitant doctrine of procedural default. See Doctor, 96 F.3d at 683. This doctrine “applies to bar federal habeas when a state court declined to address a prisoner’s federal claims because the prisoner had failed to meet a state procedural requirement.” Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 729-30 (1991). 6 The raison d’être for the doctrine lies in the fact that a state judgment based on procedural default rests on independent and adequate state grounds. Id. at 730; see also Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 81-82 (1977). In this case, there is no doubt that Slutzker has defaulted on his Brady claims under Pennsylvania law. See supra Part II.B.1. Therefore, this Court may reach the merits of Slutzker’s Brady claims only “if the petitioner makes the standard showing of ‘cause and prejudice’ or establishes a fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Lines v. Larkins, 208 F.3d 153, 166 (3d Cir. 2000); see also Coleman, 501 U.S. at 749-50.7 Slutzker argues that he has established cause and prejudice for his default.
6 While Coleman concerned a case where the state court actually had declined to hear the petitioner’s claims, a case in which the state court certainly would have declined to hear those claims raises identical procedural default issues. See Szuchon, 273 F.3d at 323-24 n.14. 7 Slutzker does not argue that there was a “fundamental miscarriage of justice,” which in the ordinary case requires a petitioner to establish “actual innocence” by proving “that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in the light of the new evidence.” Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 327 (1995). Given the quantity of evidence that the Commonwealth has produced to incriminate Slutzker, we have significant doubts that he could meet this stringent standard. At all events, we are required to address other possible grounds for excusing procedural default before examining “actual innocence.” See Dretke v. Haley, — U.S. —, 124 S. Ct. 1847, 1852 (2004). 11 The first step in establishing cause and prejudice is to establish cause, i.e., “some objective factor external to the defense [that] impeded counsel’s efforts to comply with the State’s procedural rule.” Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478, 488 (1986). We find that the unusual procedural posture of Slutzker’s petition constitutes such an objective, external factor.
When he received the previously undisclosed police reports, Slutzker had exhausted his PCRA appeals and had a pro se habeas corpus petition pending before the District Court. If he had amended his habeas petition to include the Brady claim, and simultaneously brought a second PCRA petition on this issue, his entire habeas petition would have been dismissed for failure to exhaust. Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. at 522. While this dismissal would have been without prejudice, and would have allowed refiling, Slutzker’s eventual re-filing would have been time-barred by the provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). AEDPA provides a one-year limitations period for habeas corpus review of state convictions. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). This period runs from the date that the conviction becomes final, § 2244(d)(1)(A), or the date on which the factual predicate of the claim could have been discovered, § 2244(d)(1)(D), and is tolled during the pendency of a properly filed application for state collateral review, § 2244(d)(2). 8 The statute of limitations on Slutzker’s Brady claim began 8 Section 2244(d)(1) also identifies two other possible start dates for the statute of limitations—the date on which any state-created impediment to habeas filing ends, § 2244(d)(1)(B), or the date on which a retroactively applicable constitutional right is first recognized by the Supreme Court, § 2244(d)(1)(C)—which are not relevant here. Because Slutzker’s conviction became final in 1994, prior to the April 24, 1996, effective date of AEDPA, he had until April 23, 1997 to file a habeas petition. Burns v. Morton, 134 F.3d 109, 111 (3d Cir. 1998). This period was tolled by his first PCRA petition from January 1996 through November 1999, and Slutzker filed his federal petition in December 1999. Thus, when he filed his habeas petition, Slutzker had essentially a full year of the statute of limitations remaining. 12 running on September 11, 2001, when he received the police reports.9 The statute on Slutzker’s other claims, however, began running on the April 24, 1996, effective date of AEDPA, though it was tolled by his first PCRA petition from January 1996 through November 1999. See supra note 8; see also Fielder v. Varner, 379 F.3d 113, 118 (3d Cir. 2004) (finding that the AEDPA statute of limitations should be applied on a claim-by-claim basis). The statute was not, however, tolled during the pendency of Slutzker’s habeas petition from December 1999 through his discovery of the Brady documents in September 2001. This is the teaching of Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 172-73 (2001), which held that a previous habeas corpus petition that has been dismissed without prejudice for failure to exhaust does not toll the AEDPA statute of limitations for a later habeas petition. At the time he discovered the Brady documents, Slutzker’s habeas petition had been pending for nearly two years; had it been dismissed, even without prejudice, his claims would have been forever barred by § 2244(d).
The Commonwealth argues, citing Merritt v. Blaine, 326 F.3d 157 (3d Cir. 2003), that Slutzker could have amended his federal petition to assert the Brady claim, and then “requested that the current Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus be stayed until the completion of state review of his claim.” We do not find this argument compelling. Slutzker certainly could have requested such a stay, but in the fall of 2001 there was significant doubt that he would have received one, or that if he did it would be upheld on appeal. Merritt itself was decided some nineteen months after 9 Of course, the statute of limitations starts running from “the date on which the factual predicate of the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence,” § 2244(d)(1)(D) (emphasis added), not the date on which the factual predicate actually was discovered. See Schlueter v. Varner, 384 F.3d 69, 74 (3d Cir. 2004). On the record before us, we cannot be sure whether Slutzker “could have” discovered the Brady materials prior to September 11, 2001. But we note that, in general, Slutzker has been a paragon of due diligence, and the Commonwealth has not disputed that the Brady claim is timely. 13 Slutzker received the police reports, and did not squarely hold that such a “stay and abey” procedure was appropriate. Instead, it merely noted in a footnote that when petitioners have filed habeas actions in federal courts before they have fully exhausted their state remedies, many federal courts have suggested that the federal actions should be stayed to give the petitioners an opportunity to file their state action because an outright dismissal, even without prejudice, could jeopardize the timeliness of a collateral attack. 326 F.3d at 170 n.10. Not until Crews v. Horn, 360 F.3d 146, 15152 (3d Cir. 2004), did we specifically hold that “[s]taying a habeas petition pending exhaustion of state remedies is a permissible and effective way to avoid barring from federal court a petitioner who timely files a mixed petition.” In Crews, we relied on Justice Stevens’s concurrence in Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. at 182-83, which stated that “in our post-AEDPA world there is no reason why a district court should not retain jurisdiction over a meritorious claim and stay further proceedings pending the complete exhaustion of state remedies.” Walker was decided in June 2001; four Justices agreed that mixed habeas petitions should be stayed rather than dismissed, while the other five did not discuss the issue. Most of the Courts of Appeals have held, before and after Duncan, that District Courts could stay mixed petitions when dismissal might render them untimely. See, e.g., Neverson v. Bissonnette, 261 F.3d 120, 126 n.3 (1st Cir. 2001); Zarvela v. Artuz, 254 F.3d 374, 380-82 (2d Cir. 2001); Mackall v. Angelone, 131 F.3d 442, 445 (4th Cir. 1997); Brewer v. Johnson, 139 F.3d 491, 493 (5th Cir. 1998); Palmer v. Carlton, 276 F.3d 777, 781 (6th Cir. 2002); Freeman v. Page, 208 F.3d 572, 577 (7th Cir. 2000); Calderon v. United States Dist. Court for the N. Dist. of Calif., 134 F.3d 981 (9th Cir. 1998). Many of these cases from other Circuits were decided before Slutzker received his Brady materials, so a conscientious attorney in Slutzker’s position might have considered the “stay-and-abey” procedure as a possibility. (Slutzker was, of course, proceeding pro se at the time.) But before Crews, or at least Merritt, there was no Supreme Court or Third Circuit precedent approving this 14 procedure.10 Moreover, one Court of Appeals, the Eighth Circuit, had held that a District Court lacked the power to stay habeas cases pending state-court resolution of unexhausted claims. Carmichael v. White, 163 F.3d 1044 (8th Cir. 1998).11 Even a prompt request for a stay would thus have carried the risk that the stay might be overturned on appeal, if we had chosen to follow the reasoning of Carmichael. If a stay were granted and then overturned, Slutzker’s claims would be dismissed under Rose v. Lundy as not fully exhausted, his limitations period would run, and all of his nonBrady habeas claims would become untimely.
As just explained, Slutzker would have been at grave risk if he had amended his habeas petition to include the Brady claim, and either dismissed or had that petition stayed to exhaust the claim in 10 Nor had any District Court in this Circuit allowed the procedure. In Beasley v. Fulcomer, Civ. A. No. 90-4711, 1991 WL 64586 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 22, 1991), a somewhat analogous pre-AEDPA case, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held a mixed habeas petition in abeyance, rather than dismissing it, because the petitioner was under a death sentence and this procedure would allow the District Court to continue its stay of execution until the state claims were resolved. But Beasley was not controlling precedent, and would not apply to Slutzker in any case because he did not face the death penalty. Furthermore, this Court’s decision in Christy v. Horn, 115 F.3d 201, 206-07 (3d Cir. 1997), cast some doubt on the vitality of Beasley, dismissing rather than staying a mixed petition because we found that there was no danger that the petitioner would be executed during the pendency of his state court proceedings. We have not discovered any other pre-Merritt District Court decisions in this Circuit approving anything resembling the “stay and abey” procedure. 11 The Eighth Circuit’s refusal to stay mixed habeas petitions—and, thus, the validity of the other Circuits’ willingness to do so—is currently under review by the Supreme Court. See Rhines v. Weber, 346 F.3d 799 (8th Cir. 2003), cert. granted, — U.S. —, 124 S. Ct. 2905 (2004); cf. Pliler v. Ford, — U.S. —, 124 S. Ct. 2441, 2446 (2004) (declining to “address[] the propriety of [the] stay-and-abeyance procedure”). 15 state courts. A third, and just as unappealing, option might have been for Slutzker to proceed separately with his unamended habeas petition, while separately bringing a second PCRA petition on the habeas claims. We have allowed state prisoners to seek federal habeas corpus relief while they also pursue state remedies on claims that are unrelated to their habeas claims. See Pringle v. Court of Common Pleas, 744 F.2d 297, 300 (3d Cir. 1984) (reversing dismissal of a habeas petition where petitioner was pursuing a parallel state appeal of a state-law sentencing issue); cf. Tillett v. Freeman, 868 F.2d 106 (3d Cir. 1989) (reversing dismissal of a habeas petition that included an unexhausted claim cognizable only under state law). But these cases involved petitioners with fully exhausted federal claims, who brought their habeas petitions in parallel with state proceedings based solely on state law. Thus, we found that “none of the purposes attributed by the Rose v. Lundy opinion as support for its exhaustion rule have any application,” Tillett, 868 F.2d at 108, and held only that the exhaustion requirement of Fay and Rose “is not controlling when the unexhausted claim in question is one of state law,” Pringle, 744 F.2d at 300. As the unexhausted claim here is one of federal law, Pringle and Tillett provide only attenuated support for the view that Slutzker could have pursued parallel federal habeas corpus and state PCRA petitions. Even if this option was available, however, it would have presented dangers similar to those involved in staying or dismissing his entire petition. If Slutzker had been able to exhaust his Brady claim in state court while still litigating his remaining habeas claims in federal court, and if he had been denied PCRA relief on the Brady claim, any attempt to seek federal habeas review of that claim would be a “second or successive habeas corpus application” under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b). See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. at 520-21. For Slutzker to bring such a second habeas petition, he would have to petition this Court for leave to file the second petition, § 2244(b)(3), and demonstrate that “the facts underlying the claim, if proven, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found [him] guilty of the underlying offense,” § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii). We doubt that Slutzker could have met such a stringent standard. See supra note 7. Thus, even if Slutzker had been able to pursue his exhausted 16 habeas claims in federal court while simultaneously exhausting his Brady claim in state court, doing so would nonetheless have essentially denied him the chance to receive any federal review of that claim, because it would be subject to the heightened barrier of § 2244(b).
When Slutzker received the Brady materials, then, he had four choices, none of them attractive. He could file a second PCRA petition on the Brady issue, see his pending habeas petition dismissed under Rose v. Lundy, and give up on all of his other habeas claims, which would immediately become time-barred. He could request a stay in his habeas proceeding, despite the lack of any Third Circuit precedent allowing such a stay, and risk untimeliness on all of his claims if such a stay was not granted and upheld on appeal. He could possibly attempt to proceed in parallel, in federal court on his exhausted habeas claims and in state court on his new Brady claim—an untried course that would eliminate any real possibility of federal review of the Brady issue. Or he could continue in federal court and procedurally default under the PCRA’s time limits. Slutzker chose the final option. We find that this difficult choice among four options, each of which would endanger Slutzker’s ability to obtain habeas review of all of his claims, constituted ample external cause for Slutzker’s default. While the Supreme Court has never “attempt[ed] an exhaustive catalog of such objective impediments to compliance,” Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. at 488, it has suggested that there are at least two common categories: “a showing that the factual or legal basis for a claim was not reasonably available to counsel, or that some interference by officials made compliance impractical,” id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The situation facing Slutzker fits within both of these categories. On the one hand, it is the Commonwealth’s own failure to disclose the Brady material that led to Slutzker’s dilemma. By waiting to disclose this material until after Slutzker had filed his federal habeas petition and until that proceeding had been pending for two years, the Commonwealth put him in a position where he could not comply with the applicable state limitation and federal exhaustion law without losing, or at least seriously jeopardizing, 17 his right to federal review of all of his constitutional claims. On the other hand, Slutzker’s difficulties were also due directly to the unsettled state of our case law: thus, the legal basis for his claim was in a very real sense unavailable. Of course, there is no argument that Slutzker’s Brady claim was not legally available in September of 2001: Brady itself had been the law of the land for nearly forty years, and the newly discovered police reports were factually sufficient to make out a Brady claim. But the legal posture of Slutzker’s petition might well have rendered relief unavailable to him, and the fact that he could make out a Brady claim would have done him little good if he had no way of actually obtaining review of that claim. Thus, because of the Commonwealth’s failure to disclose the police reports in a timely fashion, and because of the legal difficulties inherent in raising the Brady claim in September of 2001, we find that Slutzker has demonstrated cause for his procedural default. As the law of this Circuit did not yet allow Slutzker to stay his pending habeas corpus petition, and as dismissing that petition would render a re-filing untimely, Slutzker faced an “objective impediment” to filing a second PCRA petition in state court. 12 There remains the question of prejudice stemming from Slutzker’s default. The analysis of prejudice for the procedural default of a Brady claim is identical to the analysis of materiality under Brady itself. Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 282 (1999); see also Banks v. Dretke, 540 U.S. 668, —, 124 S. Ct. 1256, 1276 12 This conclusion does not depend upon Slutzker’s pro se status, as even an experienced attorney would have found no appealing alternative to procedural default here. Thus this case is readily distinguishable from Caswell v. Ryan, 953 F.2d 853, 862 (3d Cir. 1992). In Caswell, we noted that the Murray v. Carrier definition of cause, requiring an “objective factor external to the defense,” applied to pro se as well as represented petitioners, and held that a pro se petitioner’s failure to file a timely petition for allocatur in the Pennsylvania courts was a procedural default unexcused by cause and prejudice. But Caswell missed a PCRA deadline due to mere inadvertence or negligence, whereas Slutzker defaulted because he had a pending federal habeas petition, which could have been jeopardized by bringing a new state petition. 18 (2004). If the withheld evidence was material to Slutzker’s trial, then barring his petition on procedural grounds would create prejudice. We therefore turn to the merits of the Brady claim; we discuss materiality under Brady, and thus prejudice for the procedural default, in Part II.C.2, infra. As will appear, we find that there was in fact prejudice, and we conclude that Sluztker has demonstrated cause and prejudice sufficient to excuse his procedural default.