Court Opinion

ID: 9488150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:37:33.155712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:43.321891
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur. My analysis differs in two respects, on abstention and on our purporting to make a holding in a case not before us.
The majority concludes that Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), “is inapplicable,” and analyzes the case in terms of “prudential concerns.” In my view, Younger applies, but contains an equitable exception for eases like this one.
The majority analyzes much of the case in terms of Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982). This case is not a Rose problem. Rose holds that federal courts should dismiss mixed petitions. This is not a mixed petition. The state does not argue that Phillips has included any claims not exhausted in state court in his petition.
In Younger, the Supreme Court held that federal courts generally may not enjoin ongoing state criminal proceedings, but leaves room for possible exceptions to the general rule for “bad faith, harassment, or other unusual circumstance that would call for equitable relief.” Id. at 54, 91 S.Ct. at 842. Younger abstention applies to collateral attacks on convictions as well as petitions for injunctions. See Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, 410 U.S. 484, 489, 93 S.Ct. 1123, 1126, 35 L.Ed.2d 443 (1973). The doctrine generally bars habeas corpus petitions in federal court even where the conviction has been affirmed through all available levels of direct review in the state courts, so long as finality has not yet been achieved regarding the sentence. Cf. Berman v. U.S., 302 U.S. 211, 212, 58 S.Ct. 164, 166, 82 L.Ed. 204 (1937) (“Final judgment in a criminal case means sentence. The sentence is the judgment.”); Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U.S. 592, 608, 95 S.Ct. 1200, 1210, 43 L.Ed.2d 482 (1975) (“Virtually all of the evils at which Younger is directed would inhere in federal intervention prior to the completion of state appellate proceedings, just as surely as they would if such intervention occurred at or before trial.”); 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (“in custody pursuant to a judgment of the State court”).
We have held that “[wjhen, as in the present case, an appeal of a state criminal conviction is pending, a would-be habeas corpus petitioner must await the outcome of his appeal before his state remedies are exhausted, even where the issue to be challenged in the writ of habeas corpus has been finally settled in the state courts.” Sherwood v. Tomkins, 716 F.2d 632, 634 (9th Cir.1983). See also Drury v. Cox, 457 F.2d 764, 764-65 (9th Cir.1972) (“Our reading of Younger v. Harris convinces us that only in the most unusual circumstances is a defendant entitled to have federal interposition by way of injunction or habeas corpus until after the jury comes in, judgment has been appealed from and the case concluded in state courts. Apparent finality of one issue is not enough.” (citation omitted)); Hillery v. Pulley, 733 F.2d 644 (9th Cir.1984) (affirming Hillery v. Sumner, 496 F.Supp. 632, 637 (E.D.Cal.1980)).
Younger abstention is an equitable doctrine, and leaves room for an exception for “unusual circumstance that would call for equitable relief.” Younger, 401 U.S. at 54, 91 S.Ct. at 755. In the case at bar, Phillips’ *1039confinement apparently began in 1978 when he was arrested, yet by 1992, fourteen years later, when he filed his petition for habeas corpus, the state had not yet issued a final judgment in his case. This delay, combined with California’s bifurcation of the guilt phase and the penalty phase of the proceeding, and the finality of the state adjudication of guilt which is the only subject of the petition, allow for application of “unusual circumstances” exception in Younger. The “policy against federal interference with state criminal prosecutions,” Younger, 401 U.S. at 46, 91 S.Ct. at 751, is not implicated, because federal habeas corpus review of the guilt phase will not interfere at all with anything remaining for adjudication in the state courts.
So long a delay between the beginning of confinement and finality is, in Younger terminology, “unusual.” I agree with the majority that the unusual circumstances in this case allow for the equitable relief of permitting Phillips to petition for a writ of habeas corpus now, instead of waiting for the state to achieve finality on his sentence. Likewise, the habeas statute includes an exception at 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b) for “absence of available State corrective process or the existence of circumstances rendering such process ineffective.” The circumstances allow application of this exception. See Coe v. Thurman, 922 F.2d 528 (9th Cir.1990).
I do not think we have the power to hold, as the majority opinion purports to do at footnote 2, that if Phillips files a subsequent petition attacking his sentence, he will have demonstrated “good cause” for filing more than one petition. See McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 111 S.Ct. 1454, 113 L.Ed.2d 517 (1991). My disagreement on this point has to do with what the terms “holding” and “dictum” mean, not with whether Phillips will have had “good cause.” I am inclined to agree with the majority that if Phillips subsequently files a petition challenging his sentence, when it becomes final, he will have “good cause” for not having joined that claim with his attack on his conviction. My objection to calling this appraisal, upon which all three of us agree, a holding, is that it disposes of no issue before us, so is dictum no matter what we call it. A court can only decide the ease before it. Claiming that a proposition is holding does not make it so.
An abuse of the writ case does not arise until the subsequent petition is filed. See e.g., Burris v. Farley, 51 F.3d 655, 659 (7th Cir.1995) (petitioner “must meet that defense if and when the state interposes it.”). An appellate court cannot command itself to render particular decisions in subsequent cases. Stare decisis requires that like cases be decided alike. It does not enable a court to exercise power over its own judges in future eases by talking about something not disposi-tive of the case before it. We lack authority to decide the abuse of the writ case which may arise in the future, even though we all agree on how it should probably be decided.
I am puzzled about why the sides are reversed in this case. Usually the man sentenced to death prefers delay, the state, expedition. In this case, the man sentenced to death seeks to accelerate the final disposition in federal court of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. I am unable to see the harm to the interests of the State of California in granting him this relief.
The writ of habeas corpus is the great writ for testing the constitutionality of confinement. The writ is severely impaired, if confinement may last fourteen years, yet not be ripe for a habeas petition. I agree that this petition should now be entertained.