Court Opinion

ID: 9476757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:04:33.596888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:29.465915
License: Public Domain

*1522HILL, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the judgment announced by our majority’s opinion and most of what is said. This petitioner was not guilty of the deliberate delay which would support dismissal under Rule 9(a) of the rules governing section 2254 cases, and exhaustion of state remedies was achieved before final action by the district court.
Petitioner has acted most diligently compared with others we have seen. I should not count against him the time during which he withdrew from the litigation arena and sought executive clemency. I should not fault petitioner for refraining from prejudicing his petition for clemency by, pending its resolution, suing the state pursuant to section 2254. We criticize counsel for strategic blunders; this would have been one.
I find, though, that my reasoning ability is inadequate to the majority’s resolution of the prejudice issue presented by the scheduling of the execution. At the time the governor issued the warrant, the conviction and sentence were final. Appeal had been exhausted. No collateral attack was pending. I cannot grasp the notion that, as the majority asserts, "... the state, by its own execution scheduling, prejudiced its ability to respond to the merits of the habeas petition.” When the execution of this sentence was scheduled, there was no habeas petition in existence, so the state was not prejudicing its ability to respond to anything.
Had it appeared that petitioner, with collateral attack prepared at leisure, deliberately kept it concealed, to be “sprung” upon the court whenever a warrant issued and only moments, hours, or perhaps days before execution, a 9(a) prejudicial delay might well have been found. As I read the majority opinion, under such circumstances, the state would have authored its own prejudice, and this, I confess, I cannot comprehend, in the context of this case.
Clever and deliberate delay for the purpose of attempting to “overwhelm” a conscientious judge may well be deliberate, prejudicial delay justifying dismissal;1 should a state’s warrant authority (Chief Executive or Trial Judge) deliberately step up execution schedules to the point that habeas court judges might be in danger of overlooking valid grounds, such a practice may well justify stays of execution in cases ultimately found to have no merit. Neither the petitioner nor the state is shown to have dealt improperly with reaction to, or scheduling of, the execution in this case.
We need not resolve, in this case, more than that nothing before the district judge supported a holding that petitioner was guilty of deliberate delay. Dismissal was error.
I concur in the reversal.

. Such calculated, deliberate delay could, I submit, invoke Rule 9(a) even though it should occur within the period of time allowed by Fla.R.Crim.P. 3.850 for bringing collateral attack. The second paragraph of Part B of the majority opinion appears to say that unless a petitioner delays filing beyond the maximum time Florida allows, we will not question his diligence. By distortion, we convert the maximum into a minimum.