Earlier today, the Supreme Court granted cert. in the habeas case entitled, Gonzalez v. Thaler. I never got around to putting up a post focusing on the relist cases from last week's conference. But in that post, the writer at SCOTUSblog predicted that this case was headed for a grant. He was right on with the prediction.
According to the order list, here are the two issues:
1. Was there jurisdiction to issue a certificate of appealability under 28 U.S.C. §2253(c) and to
adjudicate petitioner’s appeal?
2. Was the application for a writ of habeas corpus out of time under 28 U.S.C. §2244(d)(1) due to “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review”?
Honestly, I am not sure what those mean.
So I looked at SCOTUSblog's statement of the issues. They are a little more detailed:
1) Whether the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) - which establishes a one-year statute of limitations for a state prisoner to file a federal habeas petition, running from "the date on which the judgment [of conviction] became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review" - dictates a single federally prescribed point in time when all state direct-review processes are deemed to have concluded;
2) whether AEDPA's "conclusion of direct review" occurs upon issuance of an intermediate appellate court's mandate, expiration of the time for seeking discretionary review in the state's highest court, or issuance of the intermediate appellate court's decision; and
3) whether “expiration of the time for seeking [direct] review” under AEDPA includes the ninety-day period for filing a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court even when the petitioner forewent discretionary review in the state's highest court.
Slightly more insight, but I was still not sure what's going on here.
So I looked at the lower court's decision, and it really is all about question 2 in SCOTUSblog's statement of issue. If the finality date is the issuance of the mandate, the petition is timely. If the finality date is the date upon which time to seek discretionary review ended, it is untimely. There is a split in the circuits on that issue.
At the same time, I didn't see anything of note in the lower court's decision about the COA issue on which cert. was granted. Here's what the lower court said as to the COA:
[W]e granted a certificate of appealability (COA) on the question of "whether [one of the court's prior decisions] has been overruled by Lawrence [v. Florida, 549 U.S. 327, 331-35 (2007)] and, if so, whether [Gonzalez’s] habeas application was timely filed.
Not sure why they can't issue a COA on that ground. Under Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000), a COA can be granted on a procedural question under the following test:
When the district court denies a habeas petition on procedural grounds without reaching the prisoner's underlying constitutional claim, a COA should issue when the prisoner shows, at least, that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the petition states a valid claim of the denial of a constitutional right and that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the district court was correct in its procedural ruling.
So I don't know what question (1) is all about. Is the Court going to overrule its prior precedent in Slack? I would typically say no, but last term shows that the Court is shifting the playing field to the right in habeas cases. If the State is going to be seeking that Slack be overruled, then this case will be elevated to a critically important habeas case next term.
We shall know more from the briefs . . .
Comments