Head v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 26 June 2015
• Docket Number: No. 13–5171.,13–5171.
• Citation: 792 F.3d 102
• Parties: James M. HEAD, Appellant v. Eric D. WILSON, Warden, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

792 F.3d 102

James M. HEAD, Appellant

v.Eric D. WILSON, Warden, Appellee.

No. 13–5171.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Feb. 5, 2015.

Decided June 26, 2015.

Rosanna M. Taormina, Assistant Federal Public Defender, argued the cause for the appellant. A.J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender, was with her on brief.

Peter S. Smith, Assistant United States Attorney, argued the cause for the appellee. Ronald C. Machen, Jr., United States Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, Suzanne Grealy Curt and Thomas S. Rees, Assistant United States Attorneys, were with him on brief.

Before: HENDERSON, PILLARD and WILKINS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON.

KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge:

In 1980, a District of Columbia (D.C.) Superior Court jury convicted James M. Head of numerous violent crimes, including first-degree murder. Thirty-two years after his conviction and nearly fifteen years after expiration of the one-year statute of limitations contained in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub.L. No. 104–132, 110 Stat. 1214, Head petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that his lawyer was ineffective. Head contends that AEDPA's limitations period was tolled until 2009 because, until our decision in Williams v. Martinez, our case law barred him from bringing his ineffective assistance of appellate counsel (IAAC) claim in federal court. See 586 F.3d 995, 1000 (D.C.Cir.2009). We disagree and we therefore affirm the district court's denial of Head's petition and dismissal of the action.

I. STATUTORY BACKGROUND

This case, although straightforward on the merits, involves the interplay among D.C.'s collateral-review statute, D.C.Code § 23–110, AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations, 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1), and the case law interpreting both. For that reason, a quick overview of the legal landscape is in order.

A. D.C. CODE § 23–110

In 1970, the Congress enacted the D.C. Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970(Act), Pub.L. No. 91358, 84 Stat. 473, which “created a new local court system” and transferred responsibility for resolving D.C.—law claims from district court to superior court. Swain v. Pressley, 430 U.S. 372, 375, 97 S.Ct. 1224, 51 L.Ed.2d 411 (1977). The Act also included the predecessor to section 23–110 of the D.C.Code. See Pub.L. No. 91–358, tit. II, § 210(a), 84 Stat. at 608–09. Section 23–110 establishes the procedure by which a person sentenced by the superior court can seek collateral review of his conviction or sentence.¹ Section 23–110 also gives the superior court exclusive jurisdiction of virtually all collateral challenges:

An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section shall not be entertained ... by any Federal or State court if it appears that the applicant has failed to make a motion for relief under this section or that the Superior Court has denied him relief.

D.C.Code § 23–110(g) ; see also Swain, 430 U.S. at 377–78, 97 S.Ct. 1224 (rejecting argument that section 23–110 only mandates exhaustion of D.C. remedies and holding instead that it vests exclusive jurisdiction in D.C. Superior Court).

Although section 23–110 largely divests the federal courts of habeas jurisdiction, it contains a safety valve to blunt the risk of a Suspension Clause violation.² Specifically, section 23–110(g) provides that a prisoner sentenced in the superior court can seek a federal writ of habeas corpus if it “appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” D.C.Code § 23–110(g). Section 23–110(g), however, left open a question that then went unresolved for many years: If a prisoner is barred from pursuing a claim under section 23–110 but can nonetheless pursue the same claim in the D.C. court system through a different procedure, does section 23–110's safety valve allow him to file a federal habeas petition or does the safety valve apply only if every route to D.C. court review is foreclosed?

The answer developed—slowly—through cases addressing prisoners who sought to raise IAAC claims on collateral review. More than three decades ago, the D.C. Court of Appeals held that IAAC claims “are not within the purview of [section] 23–110.” Streater v. United States (Streater I), 429 A.2d 173, 174 (D.C.1980) (per curiam). It so held because section 23–110 “provides no basis upon which the trial court may review appellate proceedings.” Id.; see also Watson v. United States, 536 A.2d 1056, 1060 (D.C.1987) (en banc ) (noting impropriety of “lower court ... pass[ing] judgment on the efficacy of the appellate review”). Years later, the D.C. Court of Appeals clarified that the proper procedural vehicle for raising an IAAC claim is a “motion ... to recall the mandate” filed directly in the D.C. Court of Appeals. Watson, 536 A.2d at 1060 ; see also Long v. United States, 83 A.3d 369, 377–78 (D.C.2013).

It was not until 2009 that we squarely addressed whether section 23–110(g) gave the district court habeas jurisdiction to hear IAAC claims that, as explained, cannot be raised by a section 23–110 motion but can nonetheless be raised by a motion to recall the mandate. In Williams, we held that the terms of section 23–110(g) “make[ ] clear” that it “only divests federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas petitions by prisoners who could have raised viable claims pursuant to section 23–110(a).” 586 F.3d at 998 (emphasis added). In other words, even if there is another mechanism in the D.C. court system that a prisoner can use to collaterally attack his sentence or conviction, section 23–110's safety valve is triggered so long as “the Superior Court lacks authority to entertain a section 23–110 ” motion for that particular claim. Id. (emphasis added). In reaching this conclusion, we recognized that our case law from the early 1980s “anticipated precisely th[is] situation.” Id. at 999 (citing Streater v. Jackson (Streater II), 691 F.2d 1026, 1028 (D.C.Cir.1982) ). We further observed that our earlier case law “seemed to have assumed that the [federal] district court would have jurisdiction to entertain” an IAAC claim, even though it had not affirmatively settled the issue. Id. For this reason, we took the next step in Williams and expressly “recognize[d] another [exception]” to section 23–110(g)'s divestiture of federal-court jurisdiction and allowed the petitioner's IAAC claim to proceed in district court. Id. at 1000.

B. AEDPA

Although Williams clarified that section 23–110's safety-valve provision authorizes federal habeas jurisdiction of an IAAC claim brought by a prisoner sentenced in superior court, a would-be federal habeas petitioner must still comply with the strictures of AEDPA—the federal court's “labyrinth” collateral review procedure, Maynard v. Boone, 468 F.3d 665, 669 (10th Cir.2006). For example, AEDPA contains a one-year statute of limitations that typically runs from the date a prisoner's state-court judgment becomes final,³ either by conclusion of direct review (i.e., denial of certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court) or by expiration of the time for seeking direct review. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(A). Prisoners like Head, whose convictions became final before AEDPA's effective date (April 24, 1996), were granted “a one-year grace period from that date in which to file a [federal habeas] motion—yielding a filing deadline of April 24, 1997.” United States v. Saro, 252 F.3d 449, 451 (D.C.Cir.2001).

Because obstacles may prevent a prisoner from filing a timely habeas petition, AEDPA expressly contemplates that the limitations period may be tolled. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(B)-(D). One provision tolls AEDPA's limitations period until “the date on which [an] impediment to filing an application created by State action in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States is removed, if the applicant was prevented from filing by such State action.”Id. § 2244(d)(1)(B). Neither this Court nor our sister circuits have precisely defined “impediment” under section 2244(d)(1)(B) ; “[t]he limited case law applying [it] has dealt almost entirely with the conduct of state prison officials who interfere with inmates' ability to prepare and to file habeas petitions by denying access to legal materials.” Shannon v. Newland, 410 F.3d 1083, 1087 (9th Cir.2005) ; see, e.g., Critchley v. Thaler, 586 F.3d 318, 320 (5th Cir.2009) (state court failure to process timely mailed petition “constitutes a state-created impediment”); Egerton v. Cockrell, 334 F.3d 433, 438–39 (5th Cir.2003) (prison law library's failure to provide copy of AEDPA “constitutes an impediment”) (quotation marks omitted). Writing for a plurality in Lackawanna County District Attorney v. Coss, Justice O'Connor suggested that section 2244(d)(1)(B) may apply if a state court “without justification, refuse[s] to rule on a constitutional claim that has been properly presented to it.” 532 U.S. 394, 405, 121 S.Ct. 1567, 149 L.Ed.2d 608 (2001).

In addition to statutory tolling provisions, AEDPA's statute of limitations, which is not a jurisdictional bar, can be equitably tolled. See Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 645, 130 S.Ct. 2549, 177 L.Ed.2d 130 (2010). That said, equitable tolling is appropriate only if a petitioner shows “(1) that he has been pursuing his rights diligently, and (2) that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his way and prevented timely filing.” United States v. Baxter, 761 F.3d 17, 30–31 (D.C.Cir.2014) (quoting McQuiggin v. Perkins, ––– U.S. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 1924, 1931, 185 L.Ed.2d 1019 (2013) ). “To count as sufficiently ‘extraordinary,’ ” we have held that “the circumstances that caused a litigant's delay must have been beyond [his] control”; in other words, the delay “cannot be a product of that litigant's own misunderstanding of the law or tactical mistakes in litigation.” Menominee...