Morales-Rivera v. U.S.A., MORALES-RIVER

• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)
• Citation: 184 F.3d 109
• Docket Number: No. 98-2073,P,MORALES-RIVER,98-2073
• Parties: (1st Cir. 1999) AGUSTINlaintiff, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Defendant, Appellee.
• Decision Date: 25 August 1999

Page 109

184 F.3d 109 (1st Cir. 1999) AGUSTIN MORALES-RIVERA, Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
UNITED STATES, Defendant, Appellee. No. 98-2073. United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Submitted April 12, 1999.
Decided Aug. 25, 1999

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

Agustin Morales-Rivera on brief pro se.

Guillermo Gil, United States Attorney, Miguel A. Fernandez, Assistant U.S. Attorney, and Lisa E. Bhatia Gautier, Assistant U.S. Attorney, on brief for appellee.

Before Boudin, Circuit Judge, Campbell, Senior Circuit Judge, and Stahl, Circuit Judge.

Per Curiam.

We are presented with the issue of whether the prisoner mailbox rule applies to the filing of motions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and § 2254. We hold that a pro se prisoner's motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 or § 2254 is filed on the date that it is deposited in the prison's internal mail-system for forwarding to the district court, provided that the prisoner utilizes, if available, the prison's system for recording legal mail.¹

In 1992, the appellant pled guilty to drug charges and was sentenced to 151 months in prison. On August 5, 1997, the district court received his motion to vacate sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 alleging, inter alia, ineffective assistance of appellate counsel and sentencing errors. Without deciding the merits, the district court dismissed the motion as untimely because it was not filed within one-year of the effective date of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"), April 24, 1996.

The appellant moved for reconsideration. He asserted that although his motion was received by the district court

Page 110

three-months after the deadline, the motion was timely filed under the prisoner mailbox rule because he placed it "first-class postage prepaid in the institution's internal mail system before the last day of filing."

The district court denied the motion. It acknowledged that in certain cases pro se prisoners' pleadings are deemed filed when submitted to prison authorities for mailing to the district court. Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 108 S. Ct. 2379 (1988); Reid v. State of New Hampshire, 56 F.3d 334, 340 n. 16 (1st Cir. 1995). Nonetheless, it concluded that as a matter of law the prisoner mailbox rule governs only pleadings with filing periods which are shorter than AEDPA's one-year period. We granted a certificate of appealability on the issue of the timeliness of the appellant's § 2255 motion.²

In Houston, the Supreme Court held that a pro se prisoner's notice of appeal is filed on the date that it is submitted to prison officials for forwarding to the district court, rather than on the date that it is received by the clerk. The Court reasoned that the moment of filing was not specified in the procedural rules governing notices of appeal. The prisoner mailbox rule fosters parity between pro se prisoners and other litigants and furthers the policies which generally inform the concept of filing. Pro se prisoners have no choice but to rely for filing on prison authorities and the postal service. They cannot monitor delivery processes or take independent, remedial measures to ensure timeliness when the mail goes awry. Their isolation impairs their ability to prove, where applicable,...