Abdur'Rahman v. Bell

• Decision Date: 10 December 2002
• Docket Number: No. 01-9094.,01-9094.
• Citation: 537 U.S. 88
• Parties: ABDUR'RAHMAN v. BELL, WARDEN.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

537 U.S. 88

ABDUR'RAHMAN v. BELL, WARDEN.

No. 01-9094.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued November 6, 2002.

Decided December 10, 2002.

Certiorari dismissed.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT.

James S. Liebman argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Thomas C. Goldstein, by appointment of the Court, 537 U. S. 809, Amy Howe, William P. Redick, Jr., and Bradley MacLean.

Paul G. Summers, Attorney General of Tennessee, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General, Joseph F. Whalen, Assistant Attorney General, and Gordon W. Smith, Associate Solicitor General.

Paul J. Zidlicky argued the cause for the State of Alabama et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance. With him on the brief were Bill Pryor, Attorney General of Alabama, and Nathan A. Forrester, Solicitor General, John M. Bailey, Chief State's Attorney of Connecticut, Carter G. Phillips, Gene C. Schaerr, and the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Mark Lunsford Pryor of Arkansas, Bill Lockyer of California, Ken Salazar of Colorado, M. Jane Brady of Delaware, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Thurbert E. Baker of Georgia, Alan G. Lance of Idaho, James E. Ryan of Illinois, Steve Carter of Indiana, Carla J. Stovall of Kansas, Richard P. Ieyoub of Louisiana, Thomas F. Reilly of Massachusetts, Mike McGrath of Montana, Don Stenberg of Nebraska, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, David Samson of New Jersey, Wayne Stenehjem of North Dakota, Betty D. Montgomery of Ohio, W. A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, D. Michael Fisher of Pennsylvania, Charles M. Condon of South Carolina, Mark Barnett of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas, Mark L Shurtleff of Utah, Jerry W. Kilgore of Virginia, Christine O. Gregoire of Washington, and Darrell V. McGraw, Jr., of West Virginia.^*

PER CURIAM.

The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted.

JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.

The Court's decision to dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted presumably is motivated, at least in part, by the view that the jurisdictional issues presented by this case do not admit of an easy resolution.¹ I do not share that view. Moreover, I believe we have an obligation to provide needed clarification concerning an important issue that has generated confusion among the federal courts, namely, the availability of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) motions to challenge the integrity of final orders entered in habeas corpus proceedings. I therefore respectfully dissent from the Court's disposition of the case.

I

In 1988 the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed petitioner's conviction and his death sentence. His attempts to obtain postconviction relief in the state court system were unsuccessful. In 1996 he filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus in the Federal District Court advancing several constitutional claims, two of which raised difficult questions. The first challenged the competency of his trial counsel and the second made serious allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. After hearing extensive evidence on both claims, on April 8, 1998, the District Court entered an order granting relief on the first claim, but holding that the second was procedurally barred because it had not been fully exhausted in the state courts. Abdur'Rahman v. Bell, 999 F. Supp. 1073 (MD Tenn. 1998). The procedural bar resulted from petitioner's failure to ask the Supreme Court of Tennessee to review the lower state courts' refusal to grant relief on the prosecutorial misconduct claim. Id., at 1080-1083.

The District Court's ruling that the claim had not been fully exhausted appeared to be correct under Sixth Circuit precedent² and it was consistent with this Court's later holding in O'Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U. S. 838 (1999). In response to our decision in O'Sullivan, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court on June 28, 2001, adopted a new rule that changed the legal landscape. See In re: Order Establishing Rule 39, Rules of the Supreme Court of Tennessee: Exhaustion of Remedies. App. 278. That new rule made it perfectly clear that the District Court's procedural bar holding was, in fact, erroneous.³

The warden appealed from the District Court's order granting the writ, but petitioner did not appeal the ruling that his prosecutorial misconduct claim was procedurally barred. The Court of Appeals set aside the District Court's grant of relief to petitioner, 226 F. 3d 696 (CA6 2000), and we denied his petition for certiorari on October 9, 2001, 534 U. S. 970. The proceedings that were thereafter initiated raised the questions the Court now refuses to decide.

On November 2, 2001, petitioner filed a motion, pursuant to Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,⁴ seeking relief from the District Court judgment entered on April 8, 1998. The motion did not assert any new constitutional claims and did not rely on any newly discovered evidence. It merely asked the District Court to set aside its 1998 order terminating the habeas corpus proceeding and to decide the merits of the prosecutorial misconduct claim that had been held to be procedurally barred. The motion relied on the ground that the Tennessee Supreme Court's new Rule 39 demonstrated that the District Court's procedural bar ruling had been based on a mistaken premise.

Relying on Sixth Circuit precedent,⁵ on November 27, 2001, the District Court entered an order that: (1) characterized the motion as a "second or successive habeas corpus application" governed by 28 U. S. C. § 2244; (2) held that the District Court was therefore without jurisdiction to decide the motion;⁶ and (3) transferred the case to the Court of Appeals pursuant to § 1631.⁷

Petitioner sought review of that order in both the District Court and the Court of Appeals. In the District Court, petitioner filed a notice of appeal and requested a certificate of appealability. See Civil Docket for Case No. 96-CV-380 (MD Tenn., Apr. 23, 1996), App. 11. In the Court of Appeals, petitioner filed the notice of appeal, again sought a certificate of appealability, and moved the court to consolidate the appeal of the District Court's Rule 60(b) ruling with his pre-existing appeal of his original federal habeas petition. Id., at 28. On January 18, 2002, the Court of Appeals entered an order that endorsed the District Court's disposition of the Rule 60(b) motion, specifically including its characterization of the motion as a successive habeas petition. Nos. 98-6568/6569, 01-6504 (CA6), p. 2, App. 35, 36. In that order the Court of Appeals stated that the "district court properly found that a Rule 60(b) motion is the equivalent of a successive habeas corpus petition," and then held that Abdur' Rahman's petition did not satisfy the gateway criteria set forth in § 2244(b)(2) for the filing of such a petition. Ibid. It concluded that "all relief requested to this panel is denied." Id., at 37. In a second order, entered on February 11, 2002, Nos. 98-6568/6569, 01-6504 (CA6), id., at 38, the Court of Appeals referred to additional filings by petitioner and denied them all.⁸

Thereafter we stayed petitioner's execution and granted his petition for certiorari to review the Court of Appeals' disposition of his Rule 60(b) motion.⁹ 535 U. S. 1016 (2002).

II

The answer to the jurisdictional questions that we asked the parties to address depends on whether the motion that petitioner filed on November 2, 2001, was properly styled as a Rule 60(b) motion, or was actually an application to file a second or successive habeas corpus petition, as the Court of Appeals held. If it was the latter, petitioner clearly failed to follow the procedure specified in 28 U.S.C. §2244(b)(3)(A).¹⁰ On the other hand, it is clear that if the motion was a valid Rule 60(b) filing, the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to review the District Court's denial of relief—either because that denial was a final order from which petitioner filed a timely appeal, or because the District Court had transferred the matter to the Court of Appeals pursuant to § 1631.¹¹ In either event the issue was properly before the Court of Appeals, and—since the jurisdictional bar in § 2244(b)(3)(E) does not apply to Rule 60(b) motions—we certainly have jurisdiction to review the orders that the Court of Appeals entered on January 18 and February 11, 2002. Thus, in order to resolve both the jurisdictional issues and the questions presented in the certiorari petition, it is necessary to identify the difference, if any, between a Rule 60(b) motion and a second or successive habeas corpus application.

As Judge Tjoflat explained in a recent opinion addressing that precise issue, the difference is defined by the relief that the applicant seeks. Is he seeking relief from a federal court's final order entered in a habeas proceeding on one or more of the grounds set forth in Rule 60(b), or is he seeking relief from a state court's judgment of conviction on the basis of a new constitutional claim? Referring to the difference between a Rule 60(b) motion and a "second or successive" habeas corpus petition, Judge Tjoflat wrote:

"The distinction lies in the harm each is designed to cure. A `second or successive' habeas corpus petition, as discussed above, is meant to address two specific types of constitutional claims by prisoners: (1) claims that `rel[y] on a new rule of constitutional law,' and (2) claims that rely on a rule of constitutional law and are based on evidence that `could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence' and would establish the petitioner's factual innocence. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A). Neither of these types of claims challenges the district court's previous denial of relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Instead, each alleges that the contextual circumstances of the proceeding have changed so much that the petitioner's conviction or sentence...