Archuleta v. State

• Decision Date: 20 August 2020
• Docket Number: 20160992,Nos. 20160419,s. 20160419
• Citation: 472 P.3d 950
• Parties: Michael Anthony ARCHULETA, Appellant, v. STATE of Utah, Appellee.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

472 P.3d 950

Michael Anthony ARCHULETA, Appellant,

v.STATE of Utah, Appellee.

Nos. 20160419

20160992

Supreme Court of Utah.

Heard January 10, 2018

Supplemental Briefing Completed June 13, 2018

Filed August 20, 2020

Leticia Marquez, Charlotte G. Merrill, Jon M. Sands, Phoenix, AZ, Zachary E. Peterson, Salt Lake City, for appellant

Sean D. Reyes, Att'y Gen., Andrew F. Peterson, Aaron G. Murphy, Asst. Solics. Gen., Salt Lake City, for appellee

Justice Petersen authored the opinion of the Court in which Chief Justice Durrant, Associate Chief Justice Lee, Justice Himonas, and Justice Pearce joined.

Justice Petersen, opinion of the Court:

INTRODUCTION

¶1 In 1989, a jury convicted Michael Anthony Archuleta of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. After a direct appeal and two unsuccessful petitions for post-conviction relief in state court, Archuleta filed a habeas petition in federal court in 2012. In his federal petition, he alleged that he is intellectually disabled and therefore it is unconstitutional for the State to execute him.

See Atkins v. Virginia , 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002). Archuleta argued that he had not exhausted this claim in state court and asked for a stay of the federal proceedings. The federal court granted the stay and gave Archuleta's federal counsel leave to file his Atkins claim in state court.

¶2 In 2014, Archuleta's federal counsel filed in state court the petition that is now before us. This is Archuleta's third state petition for post-conviction relief. It includes not only an Atkins claim but also twelve additional claims unrelated to Atkins . The post-conviction court granted summary judgment against Archuleta on all of his claims, concluding they were barred under the Post-Conviction Remedies Act (PCRA). Archuleta appealed.¹

¶3 The post-conviction court's order and the parties' briefing have presumed that the PCRA governs Archuleta's Atkins claim. But upon review, we observed that no provision of the PCRA plainly applied to that specific claim. We requested supplemental briefing from the parties on this issue, and each cited to a different PCRA provision as an avenue for relief.

¶4 We conclude that no provision of the PCRA applies to Archuleta's Atkins claim. Accordingly, the PCRA does not provide a remedy for this claim. Archuleta also argues that if the PCRA bars his claim and he has no avenue of relief, then the PCRA amounts to an unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. He asserts that we should therefore provide a common-law equitable remedy that permits us to address his Atkins claim on the merits. But because we have not found that the PCRA bars his claim or that there is no means of relief available to him, we reject this argument as unripe. Finally, with respect to Archuleta's twelve additional claims, which do arise under the PCRA, we agree with the post-conviction court that each one is procedurally barred.

¶5 Accordingly, we affirm the post-conviction court's dismissal of Archuleta's Atkins claim, not because it is barred by the PCRA but because it is not cognizable under that statute. And we affirm with regard to his remaining claims.

BACKGROUND

¶6 Archuleta's case has a long history in our state courts. In December 1989, a jury in the fourth judicial district convicted Archuleta of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. On direct appeal in 1993, we affirmed his conviction and death sentence. See State v. Archuleta (Archuleta I ), 850 P.2d 1232, 1249 (Utah 1993).

¶7 Archuleta filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the fourth judicial district in 1994 (1994 Petition).² The 1994 Petition raised numerous claims, including assertions of ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel. The post-conviction court granted a motion to dismiss the petition. We reversed in part, concluding that Archuleta had a Sixth Amendment right to pursue claims of ineffective assistance of counsel against his trial and appellate lawyers. We remanded his petition for further proceedings. See Archuleta v. Galetka (Archuleta II ), 960 P.2d 399, 399 (Utah 1998).

¶8 Four years later in 2002, Archuleta filed his second petition for post-conviction relief (2002 Petition), raising forty-three separate claims, many with numerous subclaims. In claims one through thirty, Archuleta raised new claims directly challenging his conviction and sentence. He also raised several claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, alleging that his trial and appellate counsel were ineffective for not having previously raised the first thirty claims.

¶9 Six days after Archuleta filed his 2002 Petition, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Atkins v. Virginia , 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002). In it, the Supreme Court changed the landscape of death-penalty jurisprudence by holding it was cruel and unusual punishment to execute an intellectually disabled person. Id. at 321, 122 S.Ct. 2242. Archuleta did not amend his petition to include an Atkins claim.

¶10 The post-conviction court granted summary judgment against Archuleta on all but two of his claims. The court held an evidentiary hearing on the remaining claims but ultimately denied them. Archuleta appealed this ruling.

¶11 In August 2007, while his appeal was pending, Archuleta asked the federal court to appoint counsel to represent him in federal habeas proceedings in the event his state appeal failed. The federal court immediately appointed federal counsel.

¶12 In February 2008, Archuleta's state post-conviction counsel asked this court for permission to withdraw from the case. We granted the request and temporarily remanded the case to allow the post-conviction court to appoint substitute counsel. In 2009, while Archuleta's appeal to this court was still pending, Archuleta—now with new post-conviction counsel—moved the post-conviction court to set aside its summary judgment order and grant him a new trial.

¶13 Archuleta filed this motion pursuant to rules 59 and 60(b) of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure, as well as the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. He alleged his prior state post-conviction counsel had been ineffective. In this motion, Archuleta made an Atkins claim for the first time. The post-conviction court held oral arguments on the rule 59 and 60(b) portions of the motion and ultimately denied them. Archuleta appealed the court's rule 60(b) decision.

¶14 We considered the post-conviction court's grant of summary judgment and denial of Archuleta's rule 60(b) motion, and we affirmed both. Archuleta v. Galetka (Archuleta III ), 2011 UT 73, ¶¶ 1, 170, 267 P.3d 232. We held that Archuleta's prior post-conviction counsel's performance was not the kind of "egregious lawyer misconduct" that would justify setting aside the post-conviction court's order pursuant to rule 60(b). See id. ¶¶ 168–69. As a result, we declined to individually address each of Archuleta's claims of prior post-conviction counsel's ineffective assistance. Id. ¶ 169. Archuleta's Atkins claim was one of those claims. See id. ¶¶ 149, 169.

¶15 In December 2012, about one year after we decided Archuleta III , Archuleta filed a federal habeas petition. Among other claims, his petition asserted that he was intellectually disabled and therefore exempt from the death penalty under Atkins . Archuleta and the State stipulated to a scheduling order that allowed him to move to stay the federal case while he returned to state court to exhaust his Atkins claim. The federal court granted Archuleta's motion for a stay on November 12, 2014.

¶16 One month later, Archuleta filed the instant petition for relief in the fourth judicial district. In addition to an Atkins claim, Archuleta raised twelve more claims.

¶17 The State moved for summary judgment. But then in its reply memorandum, the State withdrew its motion on the merits. It requested the court to stay determination of the remainder of the motion, which argued that the PCRA's time and procedural rules barred the Atkins claim, until the merits of the Atkins claim could be fully adjudicated in an evidentiary hearing.

¶18 However, in an order disposing of all outstanding motions, the post-conviction court granted the State's motion for summary judgment. The court first determined that Archuleta had not adequately disputed the State's recitation of the material facts. The court then ruled that the PCRA barred Archuleta's Atkins claim because he did not raise it within one year of its accrual and that all of his other claims were also barred under the PCRA.

¶19 Archuleta filed a timely notice of appeal. We have jurisdiction to hear this case pursuant to Utah Code section 78A-3-102(3)(i).

STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶20 "We review an appeal from an order dismissing or denying a petition for post-conviction relief for correctness without deference to the lower court's conclusions of law." Taylor v. State , 2007 UT 12, ¶ 13, 156 P.3d 739 (citation omitted). Moreover, "[w]hen confronted with ineffective assistance of counsel claims, we review a lower court's purely factual findings for clear error, but [we] review the application of the law to the facts for correctness." Id.

ANALYSIS

¶21 We first address whether Archuleta's Atkins claim is cognizable under the PCRA and determine it is not. We then turn to Archuleta's argument that if the PCRA bars his claim and he has no available means of relief, we should recognize a common-law equitable remedy that permits us to address his Atkins claims on the merits. We reject this claim as unripe. Finally, we address each of Archuleta's remaining twelve claims and conclude they are procedurally barred under the PCRA. He has already litigated all but two of them. And with respect to the remaining two claims, we conclude he could have raised them many years ago.

I. THE ATKINS CLAIM AND THE POST-CONVICTION REMEDIES ACT

¶22 A threshold question in this case is whether Archuleta's Atkins claim is cognizable under the...