Harris v. Champion
| Decision Date | 26 January 1994 |
| Docket Number | 93-5209,Nos. 93-5123,s. 93-5123 |
| Citation | 15 F.3d 1538 |
| Parties | Anthony Jerome HARRIS, Gary Middaugh, Theodore Ford, Doyle King, Randy Meyer, Terry Crisp, Michael Farmer, John Honeycutt, Coy Hill, Troy Brown, Deems Rowell, Gordon Bunton, Adam Wright, Robert Manous, Kimball Foreman, Joe Headrick, Terry Steward, Arthur Blackmon, James Smith, Stephen Ross, Johnny Smith, Larry Brown, Walter Robinson, Roger Williams, Kenneth Owens, Marshall Gee, Kelly Craig, Gilbert Payne, Danny Green, Calvin Eslick, Paul Rogers, Michael Smith, Nathaniel Jackson, Johnny Romo, Jeffery Lea, Johnny Davis, Chester Watkins, Ricky Wyatt, Aron Cox, Nero Tecumseh, Joseph Osborne, Joseph Dicesare, William Knittel, James McClain, Eddie Coats, Walter Bowers, Huey Hall, Ronnie Moore, Shane Boggs, Willie Taylor, Clarence Bramlett, Bruce Hill, Larry Ives, Donald Myles, Kevin Cole, Larry Crawley, Edward Teichman, Keith Larkins, Leonard Goudeau, Joel Vanscoy, Robert Richards, Michael Broadnax, Rufus McGee, Kyle Cheadle, Steve Seitz, Timothy Whipkey, Adrian Collins, William Severe, Robert Brixey, Kevin Parker, Lloyd Harjo, Kenneth Burrell, Louis Washington, David Copple, Fred Cook, Robert Schneider, Joel Allen, Boyce Vandenburg, Jerry Stiles, Tony Abney, Jackie L. Adair, Robert Anderson, Ascension Armendariz, Larry Bailey, Charles Barnett, Rogelio Bege, J.C. Berry, Lavern Berryhill, Perry Biffle, Jackie Blanton, Douglas Breeden, Gregory Brians, Arthur Brown, Bobby Bruce, Derek Burger, Larry Butcher, John Byrd, James Cagle, Clifford Campbell, Douglas Capps, Gerald Carroll, Toriano Chandler, Joe Chase, Clyde Chuculate, Joseph Cloud, Johnny Cole, Pam Colley, Ronald D. Copper, Dennis Cornell, Cyndi Cornell, Germaine Crawford, Rickie Crisp, James Crow, Gerald Daniels, Brian Daniels, Richard Demes, Ronnie Dial, Alfonso Duran, Larry Edwards, Andrew Ephriam, James L. Evans, J.W. Fatherree, Lance Foster, Donnie Joe Frye, Dennis Gaines, Louis Gibson, Ronnie Gilmore, James Godbey, Forest Golbek, Jerry Graham, Lantze Green, Bryan Griffin, James Hamilton, David P. Hammer, Lauren |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
David Booth of R. Thomas Seymour, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Petitioners-Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Diane L. Slayton, Assistant Attorney General (Susan B. Loving, Attorney General of Oklahoma, with her on the brief), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Warden Respondents-Defendants-Appellees.
J. Warren Jackman (William A. Caldwell, with him on the brief), of Pray, Walker, Jackman, Williamson & Marlar, Tulsa, Oklahoma (and Gary Peterson, with him on the brief, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), for Oklahoma Indigent Defense System Respondents-Defendants-Appellees.
John M. Imel (John E. Rooney, Jr., with him on the brief), of Moyers, Martin, Santee, Imel & Tetrick, Tulsa, Oklahoma (and Gail L. Wettstein, with him on the brief, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), for Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals Respondents-Defendants-Appellees.
Before LOGAN, BRORBY, and EBEL, Circuit Judges.
These consolidated habeas appeals, which come to us after our remand in Harris v. Champion, 938 F.2d 1062 (10th Cir.1991) (Harris I ), require us to revisit the problem of appellate delay in the Oklahoma criminal justice system. In Harris I, we ruled that the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma should have excused an Oklahoma prisoner's failure to exhaust his state remedies before seeking federal habeas relief in light of extensive delay by the state public defender in filing an opening brief in the prisoner's direct criminal appeal. 938 F.2d at 1065-66, 1071. We remanded the action to the district court and directed it to investigate the possibility of systematic delay in the filing of briefs by the Oklahoma Appellate Public Defender System (Public Defender). 1 Id. at 1071. In a subsequent opinion, we expanded the scope of inquiry on remand to include a consideration of the entire criminal appellate process in Oklahoma insofar as it contributes to delay in deciding direct criminal appeals of indigent defendants. Hill v. Reynolds, 942 F.2d 1494, 1496-97 (10th Cir.1991). We now consider the results of the district court's rulings on remand.
In this opinion we are called upon to address several issues arising out of the delay in processing petitioners' direct criminal appeals, including whether petitioners must exhaust their state remedies before seeking habeas relief in federal court and whether the delays in the state appellate process have violated petitioners' rights to due process, equal protection, or effective assistance of counsel. The record before us shows that many of these petitioners, all of whom are indigent and were represented by the Public Defender in their direct criminal appeals, had to wait three or more years before a brief was filed on their behalf in their respective direct criminal appeals. Some petitioners also experienced delays elsewhere in the appellate process.
The following is a brief synopsis of our opinion, which begins with the issue of exhaustion. We conclude that there is a rebuttable presumption that the State's process is not effective and, therefore, need not be exhausted, if a direct criminal appeal has been pending for more than two years without final action by the State. This two-year presumptive period is not inflexible: the particular circumstances of a case may warrant excusing exhaustion after a delay of less than two years as, for example, when the length of the sentence is considered or when there is an obvious and massive breakdown in the procedural development of the appeal; alternatively, circumstances may warrant refusing to excuse exhaustion even after a delay of more than two years.
Next, we consider whether appellate delays also gave rise to independent due process violations. We apply the four-part balancing test of Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 530, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 2191, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972), and examine the length of the delay, the reason for the delay, whether the petitioner asserted his or her right to a timely appeal, and whether the petitioner experienced any prejudice as a result of excessive delay.
First, we agree with the district court's conclusion that delay in finally adjudicating a direct criminal appeal beyond two years is presumptively excessive. Again, this two-year presumptive period is not inflexible; delay of less than two years may be excessive in some cases and delay of more than two years may not be excessive in other cases. Generally, however, the longer delay in the appellate process extends beyond two years, the...
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