Opinion ID: 221835
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Determining the Timeliness of Harper's Filing

Text: If, as the district court assumed, equitable tolling suspends AEDPA's statute of limitations for the period of Harper's hospitalization, his August 7, 2008 filing was within one year of the total untolled time after his conviction became final. The district court concluded that the filing was nevertheless untimely because Harper failed to demonstrate reasonable diligence in pursuing his petition in the sixty-five days after his hospital discharge. The conclusion rests on a mistake of law, i.e., an assumption that diligence must be shown through filing even after equitable tolling has ended on a date certain and where the total untolled time has not exceeded the limitations period. [6] This court has repeatedly stated that a party seeking equitable tolling must show diligent pursuit of his claim  throughout the period he seeks to toll . Belot v. Burge, 490 F.3d at 205 (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added); see Zerilli-Edelglass v. N.Y.C. Transit Auth., 333 F.3d 74, 80 (2d Cir.2003) (holding that person seeking equitable tolling must show that she acted with reasonable diligence during the time period she seeks to have tolled (internal quotation marks omitted)); Johnson v. Nyack Hosp., 86 F.3d 8, 12 (2d Cir.1996) (Equitable tolling requires a party to pass with reasonable diligence through the period it seeks to have tolled.). If such a showing is not made, equitable tolling should be denied or at least circumscribed to the period for which diligence and causation are established. But if such a showing is made along with the other requirements for equitable tolling, a court may suspend the statute of limitations for the period of extraordinary circumstances and determine timeliness by reference to the total untolled period without requiring a further showing of diligence through filing. Such an approach to determining the timeliness of a § 2254 filing is consistent with the general rule of equitable tolling articulated by the Supreme Court: Principles of equitable tolling usually dictate that when a time bar has been suspended and then begins to run again upon a later event, the time remaining on the clock is calculated by subtracting from the full limitations period whatever time ran before the clock was stopped. United States v. Ibarra, 502 U.S. 1, 4 n. 2, 112 S.Ct. 4, 116 L.Ed.2d 1 (1991); see Haekal v. Refco, Inc., 198 F.3d 37, 43 (2d Cir.1999) (observing in context of Commodity Exchange Act filing that [w]hen equitable tolling is applied, the limitations period is deemed interrupted; when the tolling condition or event has ended, the claimant is allowed the remainder of the limitations period in which to file his action); see also Gonzalez v. Hasty, ___ F.3d ____, ___, n. 4 (2d Cir.2011) (effectively applying same approach to equitable tolling under Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)). It further comports with our admonition that [s]tate prisoners should have the full year allowed them by Congress to consider and prepare their federal habeas petitions. Zarvela v. Artuz, 254 F.3d 374, 382 (2d Cir.2001). As the Supreme Court has observed, AEDPA's limitations period is not particularly long. Holland v. Florida, 130 S.Ct. at 2561. Meanwhile, a petitioner must navigate not-insignificant procedural complexities. See Zarvela v. Artuz, 254 F.3d at 378-79. Mistakes can be costly, given the severe limitations that AEDPA imposes on the filing of second or successive petitions. Id. at 378; see 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2). Thus, while equity will only rarely intervene to toll AEDPA's limitations period, when it does so, a petition should be deemed timely if it is filed within one year of the total untolled time. In concluding otherwise, the district court appears to have understood our precedent to allow it to extend AEDPA's deadline after tolling only for such time as a reasonably diligent person would have required to prepare a petition without regard to the untolled time remaining. We acknowledge the possibility for confusion. In Valverde v. Stinson , cited by the magistrate judge, we held that the party there seeking equitable tolling must have acted with reasonable diligence through filing. See 224 F.3d at 134 & n. 5. Then, in an unpublished summary order, we declined an invitation to overrule Valverde and its progeny with respect to reasonable diligence and adopt a `stop clock' approach meaning that once extraordinary circumstances are proven, AEDPA's statute of limitations stops running for the duration of such circumstances. Adkins v. Warden, 354 Fed.Appx. 564, 566 (2d Cir.2009). We are, of course, bound by precedential decisions of prior panels until such time as they are overruled either by an en banc panel of our Court or by the Supreme Court. United States v. Wilkerson, 361 F.3d 717, 732 (2d Cir.2004). We do not, however, read Valverde to preclude providing a petitioner with a full year of untolled time in cases such as this one. [7] To explain, it is necessary to understand that Valverde demanded diligence through filing in the context of extraordinary circumstances that had no discernable end date. In Valverde, a § 2254 petitioner sought equitable tolling of the one-year grace period for filing challenges to pre-AEDPA convictions, see Ross v. Artuz, 150 F.3d 97 (2d Cir.1998), based on prison officials' alleged confiscation of his petition and legal papers. Although we held that such a confiscation constituted extraordinary circumstances as a matter of law, see Valverde v. Stinson, 224 F.3d at 133, we emphasized that, on remand, petitioner would be required to establish causation, i.e., that the confiscation, not his own lack of diligence, prevented his timely filing, see id. at 134. Moreover, if Valverde were found eligible for equitable tolling, we stated that the tolling period must be sufficient to permit the filing of a petition on or before the earliest date after the act of confiscation by which that petitioner, acting with reasonable diligence, should have filed his or her petition. Id. The nature of the extraordinary circumstances in Valverde compelled this approach. While the impairment imposed by the act of confiscation began on a date certain, it did not abate on a date certain. Thus, the question presented in every case meriting equitable tollinghow long should the limitations period be tolled? could not be answered in Valverde by resort to a stop-clock metaphor, which depends on identification of both start and end dates of the extraordinary circumstances causing delay to cabin the tolling period. Id. Valverde does not address cases such as this one where extraordinary circumstances begin and end on discernable dates. In such cases, if a petitioner demonstrates causation and diligence throughout the defined period, a district court can determine the timeliness of a filing by comparing the total untolled time to the limitations period. Such an approach does not set the statute of limitations anew at the end of the tolled period. See Tristar Corp. v. Freitas, 84 F.3d 550, 553 (2d Cir.1996) (Equitable tolling of a statute means only that the running of the statute is suspended, not that the limitations period begins over again. (internal quotation marks omitted)). It simply restarts the limitations clock where it was stopped by equity, thereby assuring habeas petitioners the full year allowed them by Congress. Zarvela v. Artuz, 254 F.3d at 382. Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408, 125 S.Ct. 1807, is not to the contrary. There, the Supreme Court determined that a habeas petitioner was not entitled to equitable tolling of a thirty-two-month period while he exhausted state remedies because he had failed to demonstrate diligence in this pursuit. See id. at 419, 125 S.Ct. 1807 ([P]etitioner waited years, without any valid justification, to assert [his state claims]. Had petitioner advanced his claims within a reasonable time of their availability, he would not now be facing any time problem, state or federal.). This confirmed our own precedent, indicating that a court may deny equitable tolling when the petitioner did not seek collateral review diligently. See Smith v. McGinnis, 208 F.3d at 17-18. To the extent the Supreme Court further observed that not only did petitioner sit on his rights for years before he filed his [state] petition, but also sat on them for five more months after his [state] proceedings became final before deciding to seek relief in federal court, Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. at 419, 125 S.Ct. 1807 (emphasis in original), we understand the latter observation only to reinforce the adverse diligence determination for the period for which tolling was sought, not to establish a distinct diligence requirement that would have rendered the petition untimely even if state remedies had been promptly pursued, see id. (observing that petitioner would not be facing any time problem if he had pursued state claims within reasonable time). Nor does Rashid v. Mukasey, 533 F.3d 127 (2d Cir.2008), signal otherwise. There, an alien sought equitable tolling of the filing deadline to reopen removal proceedings. We adhered to the familiar rule that the alien must have exercised diligence during the entire period he or she seeks to toll. Id. at 132. What we clarified was that in such reopening cases, the entire period to be tolled includes both the period of time before the ineffective assistance of counsel was or should have been discovered and the period from that point until the motion to reopen is filed. Id. By contrast, Harper only needs to secure tolling for his period of hospitalization to bring his filing within the one-year limitations period and, thus, need only demonstrate diligence throughout that tolling period. In concluding that Harper's filing was timely, we in no way reduce the requirements for securing equitable tolling. Indeed, to the extent some courts have questioned suspending statutes of limitations for the full time of extraordinary circumstances, see, e.g., Cada v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 920 F.2d 446, 452 (7th Cir.1990) (questioning whether equitable tolling should bring about an automatic extension of the statute of limitations by the length of the tolling period if party does not need it); Mangum v. Action Collection Serv., Inc., 575 F.3d 935, 946-48 (9th Cir. 2009) (O'Scannlain, J., specially concurring) (collecting cases), we think the concerns expressed are appropriately addressed through our causation precedents, which ensure that equitable tolling is granted only when the extraordinary circumstances are responsible for a filing delay. In Adkins v. Warden, 354 Fed.Appx. at 566, referenced supra at [140] for its refusal to reverse Valverde, we summarily affirmed a district court's denial of equitable tolling in the first six months of a limitations period because the demonstrated extraordinary circumstances did not cause the ultimate late filing. It was thus unnecessary to address, let alone determine, the manner in which a tolling period would be calculated in Adkins if equitable tolling had applied. How Valverde provided for such calculation in the case of ongoing extraordinary circumstances was simply not relevant to the Adkins decision. In sum, we conclude that, in this case, where the existence of extraordinary circumstances causing Harper to miss the AEDPA filing deadline is undisputed for the period from February 27, 2008, when Harper was hospitalized, to June 3, 2008, when he was discharged, and where there is no question as to Harper's diligence in pursuing his claim throughout that period, equity tolled the one-year limitations period to stop on the first date and to resume on the latter date. The timeliness of Harper's § 2254 filing thus depended on it being within one year of the total untolled time after his conviction became final. Because seventy-eight days remained on the statute of limitations at the start of the tolling period, Harper's filing of his § 2254 petition on August 17, 2008, sixty-five days after tolling ended, should have been deemed timely without requiring a further showing of diligence in that untolled period. Accordingly, we vacate the judgment dismissing Harper's petition as untimely.