Court Opinion

ID: 9483132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:12:24.710341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:27.045949
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I agree with the decision reached by the majority, I write separately to further amplify why Crank’s present effort fails despite his attorney’s admitted ineffectiveness in failing to perfect a direct appeal of the 1974 conviction. I do so in part because the district court apparently believed its hands to be tied in light of Crank v. Duckworth, 905 F.2d 1090 (7th Cir.1990) (Crank I).
Crank I held that because Crank was sentenced under a recidivist statute to an additional 30 years, “time the state could not have imposed but for the 1974 conviction,” he is in custody on a sentence that may have been enhanced in violation of United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 92 S.Ct. 589, 30 L.Ed.2d 592 (1972) (misinformation of constitutional magnitude — i.e., reliance on an invalid prior conviction— authorizes relief from current sentence). Therefore, according to Crank I, the district court must determine “whether the 1974 conviction is constitutionally valid.” 905 F.2d at 1092. On remand, the district court stated (with obvious reluctance) that it must grant the writ, “bound as it is by an explicit decision of the Court of Appeals and unable to find a principled basis for procedural default, and faced with an admitted ineffective assistance of counsel in *367the 1974 burglary conviction.” Mem. and Order at 4 (May 29, 1991). Despite its possible implications to the contrary, however, Crank I did not mandate the district court to grant the writ.
As the majority recognizes, the Indiana state court had based its procedural default determination on Crank’s own delay, not on his attorney’s failure to file a motion to correct errors within the prescribed time period. That is, the procedural default relevant to the present post-conviction proceeding occurred through Crank’s own failure to comply with state procedural rules regarding post-conviction proceedings. Although Crank’s attorney failed to perfect Crank’s direct appeal — inaction which, the state concedes, constituted ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland— Crank nevertheless could have overcome this by complying with Indiana Post-Conviction Rule 2, which allows a defendant to file a belated motion to correct errors provided that “the defendant has been diligent in requesting permission” to file the belated motion. See Ind.Code, tit. 35, Post-Conviction Rule 2(c). The true default, in other words, was Crank’s laxity in pursuing his post-conviction remedy (the Rule 2 belated motion to correct errors) rather than the default on direct appeal which resulted from his attorney’s failure to file the motion.
Coleman v. Thompson, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991), explicitly acknowledged a distinction between default on direct appeal and default in a post-conviction proceeding. The Supreme Court, in declining to hold that the defendant had cause for procedural default because of his counsel’s failure to file timely notice of appeal in a state court habeas proceeding, explicitly distinguished the two scenarios:
Where a petitioner defaults a claim as a result of the denial of the right to effective assistance of counsel, the State, which is responsible for the denial as a constitutional matter, must bear the cost of any resulting default and the harm to state interests that federal habeas review entails. A different allocation of costs is appropriate in those circumstances where the State has no responsibility to ensure that the petitioner was represented by competent counsel. As between the State and the petitioner, it is the petitioner who must bear the burden of a failure to follow state procedural rules.
Id. 111 S.Ct. at 2567; see also Morrison v. Duckworth, 898 F.2d 1298, 1301 (7th Cir.1990). Here, the state court determined that Crank’s state habeas appeal was untimely pursuant to Indiana Post-Conviction Rule 2. As Coleman put it:
In all cases in which a state prisoner has defaulted his federal claims in state court pursuant to an independent and adequate state procedural rule, federal habeas review of the claims is barred unless the prisoner can demonstrate cause for the default and actual prejudice as a result of the alleged violation of federal law, or demonstrate that failure to consider the claims will result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.
Coleman, 111 S.Ct. at 2565. Here, Crank defaulted his claim pursuant to Rule 2, an independent and adequate state procedural rule. Because the default resulted from his own lack of diligence, he cannot demonstrate cause and therefore is barred from pursuing his habeas claim in federal court.
This seems, in light of Crank I, to lead to a somewhat incongruous result (which, perhaps, the district court implicitly recognized in granting the writ). As noted, Crank I, in line with Lowery v. Young, 887 F.2d 1309 (7th Cir.1989), held that a prisoner, whose present custody has been augmented by a previous sentence may contend that the current custody violates the Constitution on the ground that the previous sentence was invalid — and, thus, may challenge the constitutionality of the previous sentence. Yet here, we hold that a prisoner who attempts to make that challenge may be precluded by laches — i.e., procedural default — based on a lack of diligence in failing to do so earlier. When, then, would the prisoner whose current sentence is enhanced partly as a result of a prior conviction, and who now challenges that prior conviction, not be barred by lach-*368es? Crank I, it would appear, merely opens one door to lead to another, closed one.
But perhaps we need not (at least for purposes of the present case) interpret the laches bar quite so broadly. Crank claims that the fact that he served only a year and a day on his 1974 conviction lessened the importance of an earlier inquiry into the status of his appeal. While, as the majority appropriately notes, we can perhaps understand his lack of diligence prior to the present conviction, it does not excuse his five-year delay in inquiring about the failure to appeal subsequent to his second conviction. Crank was convicted in 1981 of the felony underlying his current confinement, yet he waited until 1986 to challenge the 1974 conviction which led to his current sentence enhancement. According to Crank, he was unaware until that time that the public defender would check into prior convictions and appeals. This scenario, however, mirrors Henderson v. Cohn, 919 F.2d 1270, 1272 (7th Cir.1990), in which we stated that a defendant “has an obligation to take a minimal interest in his own defense.” Crank’s failure to inquire about his 1974 conviction until 1986 — five years after his current conviction and twelve after his prior one — is not the result of an external impediment such as the ineffective counsel on direct appeal, but rather his own remiss.
Because Crank’s inaction is insufficient to establish cause, I agree with the majority that Crank has therefore waived his constitutional claim.