Page v. King
| Decision Date | 02 August 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 17-16364,17-16364 |
| Citation | 932 F.3d 898 |
| Parties | Sammy L. PAGE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Audrey KING, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Andrea Renee St. Julian (argued), San Diego, California, for Petitioner-Appellant.
Max Feinstat (argued), Deputy Attorney General; Tami M. Krenzin, Supervising Deputy Attorney General; Michael P. Farrell, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Xavier Becerra, Attorney General; Office of the Attorney General, Sacramento, California; for Respondent-Appellee.
Before: Richard A. Paez and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges, and Gary Feinerman,* District Judge
Sammy Page, who has been detained for the last thirteen years awaiting trial for recommitment under the California Sexually Violent Predator Act ("SVPA"), Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code § 6600 et seq. , filed a petition for habeas corpus, alleging that the state is violating his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by continuing to detain him pretrial based on an outdated and scientifically invalid probable cause finding. The district court dismissed the petition under Younger v. Harris , 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971). We vacate and remand for further proceedings.
From 1971 to 1987, Page committed three brutal rapes during home invasion robberies. See People v. Page , 2005 WL 1492388, at *3–5 (Cal. Ct. App. June 24, 2005). In 2004, he was adjudicated a Sexually Violent Predator ("SVP") under the SVPA and civilly committed for two years. Id. at *1–3.
In February 2006, the state filed a petition to recommit Page as an SVP. The state supported its petition with two psychiatric evaluations diagnosing Page with Paraphilia
Not Otherwise Specified ("NOS") based on his affinity for nonconsensual sex and concluding that he qualified as an SVP. In May 2006, the state court found probable cause to detain Page pretrial. Page has been detained awaiting trial ever since. The state court minute orders and the July 21, 2015 declaration of David C. Cook, an SVPA prosecutor, set forth the relevant timeline.
On March 16, 2006, a public defender was appointed to represent Page. The case was continued until December 15, 2006 to permit the parties to prepare for trial. On December 15, the state filed a motion based on a recent amendment to the SVPA. The court granted the motion and continued the case to March 2, 2007.
The case was repeatedly delayed over the next two years. Defense counsel requested one continuance, but no explanation for the other continuances appears in the record. The case then was continued throughout 2009 to permit the parties to litigate defense motions, including Page's motion for substitute counsel. On March 12, 2010, Cook "informed the court and Page's counsel that [the state] was ready for the case to be set for trial." The case nonetheless was continued to May 2012 so that two additional defense motions could be briefed and decided.
One of the defense motions sought a new probable cause hearing, new mental health evaluations, and new mental health evaluators. In a supporting declaration, Dr. Allen Francis opined that "Paraphilia
NOS, nonconsent" is an "incompetent" and "psychiatrically unjustified" diagnosis upon which the psychiatric community had recently cast doubt, most notably by rejecting proposals to include it in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, or "DSM-V." The court granted the motion for new evaluations and a new probable cause hearing, and continued the case to November 2012 to allow the new evaluations to take place.
The case was continued from November 2012 to May 2013 so that defense motions related to the new evaluations could be filed, briefed, and decided. On July 26, 2013, the state requested a continuance to file a motion based on Reilly v. Superior Court , 57 Cal.4th 641, 160 Cal.Rptr.3d 410, 304 P.3d 1071 (2013), which called into question Page's entitlement to a new probable cause hearing. Defense counsel then sought several continuances to respond to the state's Reilly motion. The court granted the Reilly motion on April 18, 2014 and rescinded its prior order calling for a new probable cause determination.
The case was repeatedly continued until June 2, 2017 to allow defense counsel to litigate additional motions. The minute orders from July 28, 2017 through November 3, 2017 reference a "motion" but provide no further detail. The case was continued on January 5, 2018 "[b]y agreement of counsel" and again on May 4, 2018 for unknown reasons.
Cook averred in his declaration that he "remain[s] ready to set this matter for trial" and that, to his knowledge, "neither Page nor his trial counsel has ever requested that Page's case be set for trial." Cook further averred that he requested only one continuance after calling ready for trial on March 12, 2010.
Page filed the present federal habeas petition in the Northern District of California on July 16, 2012. He alleged that his due process rights were violated by the state court when it based its pretrial detention probable cause finding on pseudoscience; by the prosecution when it introduced pseudoscientific evidence at the probable cause hearing; and by the state when it continued to detain him based on the 2006 probable cause finding even though the 2012 evaluations suggested that the 2006 evaluations had become outdated. The district court abstained under Younger v. Harris , 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971). See Page v. King , 2015 WL 5569434 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 21, 2015). We vacated and remanded, instructing the district court to consider whether it had jurisdiction to decide the petition.
On remand, the district court transferred the case to the Eastern District of California, which again abstained under Younger , dismissed Page's petition, and declined to issue a certificate of appealability. See Page v. King , 2017 WL 11373232 (E.D. Cal. Feb. 24, 2017). Page appealed. We granted a certificate of appealability on the issue whether the district court properly abstained under Younger .
Absent extraordinary circumstances, "interests of comity and federalism instruct [federal courts] to abstain from exercising our jurisdiction in certain circumstances when ... asked to enjoin ongoing state enforcement proceedings." Nationwide Biweekly Admin., Inc. v. Owen , 873 F.3d 716, 727 (9th Cir. 2017). " Younger abstention is appropriate when: (1) there is an ongoing state judicial proceeding; (2) the proceeding implicates important state interests; (3) there is an adequate opportunity in the state proceedings to raise constitutional challenges; and (4) the requested relief seeks to enjoin or has the practical effect of enjoining the ongoing state judicial proceeding." Arevalo v. Hennessy , 882 F.3d 763, 765 (9th Cir. 2018) (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). But "even if Younger abstention is appropriate, federal courts do not invoke it if there is a ‘showing of bad faith, harassment, or some other extraordinary circumstance that would make abstention inappropriate.’ " Id . at 765–66 (quoting Middlesex Cnty. Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar Ass'n , 457 U.S. 423, 435, 102 S.Ct. 2515, 73 L.Ed.2d 116 (1982) ).
Page does not dispute that Younger abstention can apply to ongoing SVPA proceedings, but he offers two grounds for why the district court nevertheless erred in abstaining under Younger given the facts and circumstances of this case. We consider those grounds in turn.
Page first contends that his SVPA case has been stalled for so long that it is no longer "ongoing" for purposes of Younger . This contention cannot be reconciled with our precedents, which establish that "[t]here is no principled distinction between finality of judgments for purposes of appellate review and finality of state-initiated proceedings for purposes of Younger abstention." San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee v. City of San Jose , 546 F.3d 1087, 1093 (9th Cir. 2008). Where, as here, "no final judgment has been entered" in state court, the state court proceeding is "plainly ongoing" for purposes of Younger . Id . While recognizing the possibility that a state court could intentionally delay proceedings to stave off federal habeas review or for other improper purposes, we have determined that Younger 's exceptions for bad faith, harassment, or other extraordinary circumstances provide sufficient protection from such state court abuse. Id . We therefore turn to the question whether Page can establish one of those exceptions.
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