Corjasso v. Ayers

• Decision Date: 17 January 2002
• Docket Number: No. 00-16591.,00-16591.
• Citation: 278 F.3d 874
• Parties: Michael N. CORJASSO, III, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Robert L. AYERS, Warden; Attorney General of the State of California, Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 874

278 F.3d 874

Michael N. CORJASSO, III, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Robert L. AYERS, Warden; Attorney General of the State of California, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 00-16591.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted September 14, 2001.

Filed January 17, 2002.

As Amended on Denial of Rehearing February 8, 2002.

Quin Denver and Daniel J. Broderick, Office of the Federal Defender, Sacramento, California, for petitioner-appellant Michael M. Corjasso.

Bill Lockyer, David P. Druliner, Robert R. Anderson, Stan Cross, Patrick J. Whalen, Office of the Attorney General of the State of California, Sacramento, California, for respondent-appellee Robert L. Ayers, Warden.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California; Garland E. Burrell, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-97-00018-GEB.

Before: POLITZ,^* W. FLETCHER, and FISHER, Circuit Judges.

WILLIAM A. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge:

Michael M. Corjasso, III is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in California state prison. Proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis, he filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal district court on December 13, 1996. His petition was eventually dismissed as untimely pursuant to the one-year statute of limitations contained in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"). See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d). We agree with Corjasso that he is entitled to equitable tolling of the statute of limitations. We therefore reverse the dismissal of his petition as untimely and remand for further proceedings.

I

Corjasso's conviction became final on July 17, 1996. Sometime before December 1996, he filed his first federal petition for habeas corpus in the Northern District of California. Because Corjasso was incarcerated in the Eastern District of California, the Northern District correctly dismissed his petition for lack of jurisdiction. On December 13, 1996, Corjasso attempted to refile the same petition in the Eastern District court. He did not have a pre-printed cover sheet from the Eastern District, so he used a cover sheet from the Northern District. Except for the difference in the words "Eastern" and "Northern," the cover sheets are identical. Corjasso simply "whited-out" the word "Northern" and wrote in "Eastern."

The Eastern District court clerk's office refused to accept Corjasso's petition for filing. It sent him an Eastern District cover sheet and instructed him to resubmit his petition, but it did not return the body of his petition to him. On January 6, 1997, Corjasso submitted the new cover page and referenced the petition he had filed less than a month earlier, but the clerk's office never joined the new cover page to the body of the petition. The district court deemed Corjasso's January filing incomplete and dismissed it with leave to amend on February 25. On March 24, Corjasso filed a letter explaining that he could not amend his petition because he had not retained copies of the attachments when he submitted his original petition on December 13, 1996. The district court appears to have lost the body of the original petition by the time Corjasso's letter was received.

Corjasso did not hear from the district court again until June 19, 1997, when a magistrate judge appointed counsel to represent Corjasso. The magistrate judge scheduled a first status conference for August 28, 1997. Absent tolling, Corjasso's one-year filing period under AEDPA would have expired on July 17, 1997 — 42 days before the status conference. At some point prior to the status conference, Corjasso's appointed counsel managed to retrieve the petition Corjasso had filed in the Northern District. (The Eastern District filing was never found.) On September 10, 1997, shortly after the status conference, the court granted Corjasso's counsel's request to file an amended petition within 120 days.

On January 7, 1998, Corjasso, through his appointed counsel, filed a first amended petition. Because the petition contained new, unexhausted claims, Corjasso also filed a new petition with the California Supreme Court on January 16, 1998 in order to exhaust those claims. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 2254(b), (c); Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 510, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982). The parties jointly lodged a stipulated dismissal without prejudice of Corjasso's federal petition on January 23, 1998. The district court dismissed the petition in accordance with the stipulation on January 31, 1998.

On December 22, 1998, the California Supreme Court denied Corjasso's state petition. Having thus exhausted his state remedies, Corjasso returned to federal court. On January 27, 1999, Corjasso filed a second amended federal petition containing the exhausted claims. On March 29, the state moved to dismiss Corjasso's petition as untimely under AEDPA. Nine months later, on December 28, 1999, the magistrate judge recommended that Corjasso's petition be dismissed as untimely. Corjasso objected, but the district court agreed with the magistrate judge and dismissed his petition on April 25, 2000. The district court declined to issue a Certificate of Appealability ("COA") as to any issue. See 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c).

Corjasso timely appealed. We granted a COA on his claim that the statute of limitations should have been equitably tolled because of the mishandling of his petition by the district court. We review de novo the dismissal of a petition for writ of habeas corpus on statute of limitations grounds. Miles v. Prunty, 187 F.3d 1104, 1105 (9th Cir.1999). "Where, as here, the facts are undisputed as to the question of equitable tolling, we review de novo" whether the statute of limitations should be equitably tolled. Id. See also Santa Maria v. Pacific Bell, 202 F.3d 1170, 1175-76 (9th Cir.2000).

II

Corjasso's one-year statute of limitations began to run on July 18, 1996, the day after his conviction became final. See Patterson v. Stewart, 251 F.3d 1243, 1245-46 (9th Cir.2001) (explaining that time limits under AEDPA are calculated in accordance with the provisions of Fed.R.Civ.P. 6(a): "In computing any period of time prescribed or allowed by these rules ... or by any applicable statute, the day of the act, event, or default from which the designated period of time begins to run shall not be included."). Because Corjasso filed his second amended habeas petition more than 18 months after AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations expired, it is timely only if Corjasso is entitled to equitable tolling.

AEDPA's statute of limitations provision is subject to equitable tolling. See Calderon v. United States Dist. Court (Beeler), 128 F.3d 1283, 1288 (9th Cir. 1997), overruled in part on other grounds by Calderon v. United States Dist. Court, (Kelly), 163 F.3d 530 (9th Cir.1998). Equitable tolling is "unavailable in most cases," Miles, 187 F.3d at 1107, and is appropriate only "if extraordinary circumstances beyond a prisoner's control make it impossible to file a petition on time." Beeler, 128 F.3d at 1288. See also Allen v. Lewis, 255 F.3d 798, 800 (9th Cir.2001).

In spite of the "high hurdle" to the application of equitable tolling, Beeler, 128 F.3d at 1289, we have found equitable tolling of AEDPA's statute of limitations appropriate in a number of circumstances. In Miles, the petitioner, an incarcerated pro se litigant, timely requested that prison officials draw on his trust account and prepare a check for his filing fee. We equitably tolled the statute because prison officials delayed the request, causing the petitioner to miss the filing deadline. See Miles, 187 F.3d at 1107. In Beeler, we equitably tolled the statute where the capital defendant's lead counsel withdrew after accepting employment in another state. See Beeler, 128 F.3d at 1289. In Kelly, we applied equitable tolling because the petitioner's alleged mental incompetency, "a condition that is, obviously, an extraordinary circumstance beyond the prisoner's control," rendered him "unable to assist his attorney in the preparation of a habeas petition." Kelly, 163 F.3d at 541.

Here, Corjasso, proceeding pro se, filed his first federal habeas petition in the proper district court on December 13, 1996, 149 days after his conviction became final. Corjasso's petition was defective (if it was defective at all; see E.D. Cal. Local R. 3-200) only in that he used white-out and a pen on his cover sheet to write the correct name of the court in which he filed. Because Corjasso was a pro se petitioner, the district court erred in rejecting his petition on the ground that he had used a whited-out cover sheet from the wrong district. Pro se habeas petitioners may not be held to the same technical standards as litigants represented by counsel. See, e.g., Holiday v. Johnston, 313 U.S. 342, 350, 61 S.Ct. 1015, 85 L.Ed. 1392 (1941) (pro se petition for habeas corpus "ought not to be scrutinized with technical nicety"); Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep't., 901 F.2d 696, 699 (9th Cir.1990) ("This court recognizes that it has a duty to ensure that pro se litigants do not lose their right to a hearing on the merits of their claim due to ignorance of technical procedural requirements.").

At the time he attempted to file his first petition in the Eastern District court, Corjasso had complied with all substantive requirements for filing a federal habeas petition. For the next eight months, until the district court held the status conference on August 28, 1997, the treatment (and therefore, the timeliness) of Corjasso's habeas petition was essentially beyond his control. AEDPA allows a petitioner just 365 days to complete the entire process of filing a fully-exhausted federal habeas petition. The district court's error and its consequences consumed 258 days of that 365-day period.

The district court's incorrect dismissal, combined with its loss of the body of Corjasso's petition, constitutes an "extraordinary circumstance" as contemplated by our...