Rainey v. Secretary for Dept. of Corrections, No. 04-13282.

• Decision Date: 29 March 2006
• Docket Number: No. 04-13282.
• Parties: John O'Neal RAINEY, Petitioner-Appellant, v. SECRETARY FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Attorney General of Florida, Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1323

443 F.3d 1323

John O'Neal RAINEY, Petitioner-Appellant, v. SECRETARY FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Attorney General of Florida, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 04-13282.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

March 29, 2006.

Mark Andrew Goettel (Court-Appointed), New Prt Rchy, FL, for Rainey.

Mary Griffo Jolley, Atty. Gen., Daytona Beach, FL, for Respondents-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before EDMONDSON, Chief Judge, and BLACK and FAY, Circuit Judges.

BLACK, Circuit Judge:

Appellant John O'Neal Rainey, Jr. appeals the district court's dismissal of his application for a writ of habeas corpus, brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, as time-barred under the one-year statute of limitations contained in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). We granted a certificate of appealability as to the following two issues:

(1) Whether the district court properly found that a habeas corpus petitioner who was resentenced and who only challenged the original trial proceedings without raising any challenge based on resentencing procedures is not entitled to the benefit of a new statute of limitations period commencing from the date the resentencing judgment became final.

(2) If appellant is not entitled to the benefit of a new statute of limitations period commencing from the date his resentencing judgment became final, whether equitable tolling should have been applied when the statute of limitations expired while his post-conviction motion, filed pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, was pending and it was dismissed without prejudice approximately seven months after filing for failure to comply with Florida's oath requirement.

We hold the Appellant's habeas petition was untimely and, for the reasons set forth more fully below, affirm the district court's order.

I.

On April 10, 1996, Appellant was indicted for first degree murder and attempted robbery with a firearm. A jury found him guilty of both counts on July 14, 1998, and he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder conviction with a concurrent term of 217 months' imprisonment for the attempted robbery conviction. Appellant's convictions and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal on September 28, 1999.

Appellant filed a motion for post-conviction relief pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 on June 19, 2000. This motion, however, was unsigned and thus not properly sworn as required by the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure. See Fla. R.Crim. P. 3.850(c). The state court dismissed Appellant's post-conviction motion without prejudice because the unsigned motion was not under oath.

On February 13, 2001, Appellant filed a signed motion for post-conviction relief, in which he asserted ten claims regarding ineffective assistance of trial counsel and one claim arguing he was entitled to resentencing. The state court denied Appellant's ineffective assistance claims, but agreed, under Heggs v. State, 759 So.2d 620 (Fla.2000), Appellant was entitled to resentencing for his attempted robbery conviction. On February 6, 2002, Appellant was resentenced, and his concurrent sentence for attempted robbery was reduced from 217 to 142 months' imprisonment. Appellant then appealed the state court's denial of his ineffective assistance claims. By opinion dated November 26, 2002, the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal affirmed, and the mandate issued on December 13, 2002.

On March 27, 2003, Appellant petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. In his petition,¹ Appellant challenged only the original judgment of conviction; he did not raise any challenge to the resentencing judgment. Appellant argued, under Walker v. Crosby, 341 F.3d 1240 (11th Cir.2003), his application was timely because the one-year limitations period under the AEDPA did not begin until December 13, 2002.² The district court disagreed, reasoning the petitioner in Walker was entitled to the benefit of a limitations period beginning after resentencing because his petition contained a claim challenging his resentencing judgment. As Appellant's application challenged only his original judgment of conviction, the limitations period on his petition began when that judgment—not the resentencing judgment—became final. Measuring the one-year statute of limitations from December 27, 1999, the district court found Appellant's petition of March 27, 2003, untimely.³ The district court also noted neither of Appellant's motions for post-conviction relief tolled the one-year limitations period. This appeal followed.

II.

The first issue upon which we granted a certificate of appealability is whether a habeas corpus petitioner who was resentenced, but whose application only challenges the original trial proceedings without raising any challenge based on the resentencing judgment, is entitled to the benefit of a new statute of limitations period commencing from the date the resentencing judgment became final. Our case law and the plain language of the statute support the conclusion that when a petitioner who has been resentenced brings an application challenging only his original judgment of conviction, the one-year statute of limitations under the AEDPA runs from the date the original judgment of conviction became final and not the date the resentencing judgment became final.

We review de novo the district court's determination that a petition for federal habeas corpus relief was time-barred under the AEDPA. Moore v. Crosby, 321 F.3d 1377, 1379 (11th Cir. 2003).

The AEDPA imposes a one-year statute of limitations for writs of habeas corpus. Section 2244(d) provides:

(1) A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court. The limitation period shall run from the latest of—

(A) the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review;

(B) the date on which the 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;

(C) the date on which the constitutional right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if the right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review; or

(D) the date on which the factual predicate of the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.

(2) The time during which a properly filed application for State post-conviction or other collateral review with respect to the pertinent judgment or claim is pending shall not be counted toward any period of limitation under this subsection.

28 U.S.C. § 2244(d).

In a series of three decisions, Hepburn v. Moore, 215 F.3d 1208 (11th Cir.2000), Maharaj v. Sec'y for the Dep't of Corrs., 304 F.3d 1345 (11th Cir.2002), and Walker v. Crosby, we applied § 2244 and held, under the circumstances, the one-year limitations period began after each petitioner's resentencing judgment became final. Appellant argues his case is analogous to those decisions and, therefore, his application was timely because the limitations period on his petition began on December 13, 2002, the date he asserts his resentencing judgment became final.

We find Appellant's case distinguishable from Hepburn, Maharaj, and Walker because, unlike in those cases, Appellant's petition contested only his original judgment of conviction and in no way challenged his resentencing judgment.⁴ A challenge to resentencing is essential to a petitioner's obtaining the benefit of a later limitations period under the AEDPA. A petitioner is permitted to challenge multiple judgments in a single petition under Rule 2(d) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts.⁵ Thus, a petitioner may bring a single application challenging his conviction and resentencing, as long as those judgments issued from the same state court. While a petitioner may challenge several judgments in a single petition, the AEDPA, as we noted in Walker, provides a single limitations period for the application as a whole, not for each individual claim. See Walker, 341 F.3d at 1245 (opining "[t]he statute of limitations in § 2244(d)(1) applies to the application as a whole; individual claims within an application cannot be reviewed separately for timeliness"). Section 2244(d)(1) thus establishes one limitations period for the petition as a whole running from the latest of several possible triggering dates, including "the date on which the judgment became final." 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(A). The latest triggering date in petitions challenging both an original judgment of conviction and a resentencing judgment is the date the resentencing judgment became final, as that is the latest date a judgment challenged in the petition became final. See Walker, 341 F.3d at 1246. Thus, when a petitioner brings a single petition challenging his original judgment of conviction and his resentencing judgment, the statute of limitations under § 2244(d)(1)(A) runs from the date the resentencing judgment became final.⁶

As each of the petitioners in Hepburn, Maharaj, and Walker challenged their resentencing judgments, we measured the limitations period for those applications from the latest date a judgment challenged in the petition—the resentencing judgment—became final. In those cases, the one-year statute of limitations commenced after the resentencing judgment became final precisely because the petitions in those cases included a claim disputing the resentencing judgment. The resentencing judgment was the last challenged judgment to become final and, therefore, the limitations period...