Rashad v. Lafler

• Decision Date: 05 April 2012
• Docket Number: No. 09–2371.,09–2371.
• Citation: 675 F.3d 564
• Parties: Dwight RASHAD, Petitioner–Appellant, v. Blaine LAFLER, Respondent–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

675 F.3d 564

Dwight RASHAD, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.Blaine LAFLER, Respondent–Appellee.

No. 09–2371.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: March 8, 2012.Decided and Filed: April 5, 2012.

ARGUED: Katie N. Steffes, Smietanka, Buckleitner, Steffes & Gezon, Grandville, Michigan, for Appellant. Andrea M. Christensen, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Katie N. Steffes, Smietanka, Buckleitner, Steffes & Gezon, Grandville, Michigan, for Appellant. Andrea M. Christensen, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee.Before: MOORE, SUTTON and DONALD, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

Dwight Rashad, a Michigan prisoner serving a life sentence for possessing more than 650 grams of cocaine, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court denied the petition. We affirm.

I.

At 9:30 p.m. on September 7, 1988, Dwight Rashad pulled up to his girlfriend's house in suburban Detroit and proceeded inside carrying a black briefcase. As luck would have it, the police were conducting surveillance of the house and had a warrant to search it for evidence of drug trafficking. Officers executed the warrant thirty minutes later. A drug-sniffing dog reacted positively to a locked closet in the basement, and when officers pried off the lock they found several kilograms of cocaine inside. Continuing their search of the house, officers opened Rashad's black briefcase and found a key inside that opened the cocaine-filled closet in the basement. Officers arrested Rashad and impounded his car. A few weeks later, based on a separate warrant, they searched the car, where they found several kilograms of cocaine hidden behind a quarter panel.

The State charged Rashad with possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine with intent to deliver it. In April 1989, a jury convicted him of the lesser-included offense—possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine. At the time, this offense required a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. See Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957, 961 n. 1, 111 S.Ct. 2680, 115 L.Ed.2d 836 (1991). Yet the trial court held that the sentence violated the state constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment and sentenced Rashad to 40 to 100 years in prison instead.

Rashad appealed the conviction, and the State cross-appealed the trial court's ruling that the mandatory life sentence was unconstitutional. In June 1992, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Rashad's conviction but reversed his sentence, holding that a mandatory life sentence did not violate the state constitution. The Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal in May 1993.

Rashad waited more than a decade for the trial court to resentence him. Prompted by a motion for resentencing filed by Rashad in March 2004, the court held a new sentencing hearing in May 2004. Two significant changes in Michigan's sentencing laws had taken place over the prior twelve years. First, in June 1992, the Michigan Supreme Court held that the without-parole component of this kind of life sentence violated the state constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment and mandated that parole be made available to defendants convicted under the statute. People v. Bullock, 440 Mich. 15, 485 N.W.2d 866, 877–78 (1992). Second, in March 2003, the Michigan legislature amended the State's drug laws to eliminate the mandatory-life component of such sentences. Under the new statute, a defendant convicted of possessing 450 to 1000 grams of a controlled substance is not subject to a mandatory minimum and is subject to a statutory maximum of 30 years in prison. Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.7403(2)(a)(ii). Applying the (constitutional) statutory penalties in effect when Rashad committed his crime, the trial court resentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Rashad appealed his new sentence, arguing that the trial court should have sentenced him under the no-mandatory-minimum version of Michigan's drug laws. Reviewing this argument for plain error because Rashad had not raised it in the trial court, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Rashad's sentence on the ground that the new sentencing provisions do not apply retroactively to defendants who committed their crimes and were convicted before the amendments went into effect. The Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal.

In December 2008, Rashad filed a federal habeas petition raising six errors: two concerning the jury instructions given at his original trial; two challenging his sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole; one challenging the admission of evidence seized during the search of the house; and one alleging ineffective assistance of appellate counsel. The district court denied Rashad's petition, and we granted a certificate of appealability.

II.

At the outset, the State urges us not to reach the merits of three of Rashad's claims—two jury instructions, one evidentiary ruling—on the ground that AEDPA's statute of limitations bars consideration of them. AEDPA requires a state prisoner to file a habeas petition within one year of “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review.” 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(A). Rashad's judgment, as the State sees it, became final in 1993 after the state appellate courts affirmed his conviction, giving him until April 24, 1997—one year after AEDPA's effective date—to file his petition. See Searcy v. Carter, 246 F.3d 515, 517 (6th Cir.2001). If the State is correct, Rashad missed the deadline by more than a decade. One premise of the State's argument is straightforward: A judgment in a criminal case typically becomes final after direct review by the state courts and the United States Supreme Court or at the end of the time for seeking such review. See Jimenez v. Quarterman, 555 U.S. 113, 119–20, 129 S.Ct. 681, 172 L.Ed.2d 475 (2009).

Another premise is not. Although the Michigan appellate courts affirmed Rashad's conviction in 1993, they threw out his sentence and remanded the case for resentencing. When does a petitioner's “judgment bec[o]me final,” § 2244(d)(1)(A), in this setting? After direct review of the conviction? Or after direct review of the new sentence imposed at resentencing?

Burton v. Stewart, 549 U.S. 147, 127 S.Ct. 793, 166 L.Ed.2d 628 (2007) (per curiam), it seems to us, shows that the judgment becomes final after direct review of the new sentence. A jury convicted Burton of rape, robbery and burglary in 1994. The state appellate courts affirmed his conviction but vacated his sentence, and the trial court resentenced him in March 1998. Burton filed an unsuccessful habeas petition in December 1998 challenging his conviction, and he filed another petition in 2002 challenging the constitutionality of his new sentence. Id. at 149–52, 127 S.Ct. 793. The Court held that Burton's 2002 petition was “second or successive” because it, like his previous petition, challenged his 1998 judgment. Id. at 153, 127 S.Ct. 793. Rejecting Burton's submission that he had to file the first petition challenging his conviction in 1998 or the claims would have been time-barred, the Court said that for purposes of AEDPA's statute of limitations, “[f]inal judgment in a criminal case means sentence. The sentence is the judgment.” Id. at 156, 127 S.Ct. 793. The clock thus “did not begin until both his conviction and sentence became final by the conclusion of direct review ... [,] which occurred well after Burton filed his 1998 petition.” Id. at 156–57, 127 S.Ct. 793.

Burton's situation parallels Rashad's in all material ways. Burton's 1998 petition raised claims challenging his conviction from several years before, but the statute of limitations had not yet started to run because direct review of the new sentence he received on resentencing was not yet complete. So too here. Rashad filed his petition within the limitations period after direct review of his new sentence ended. Rashad timely filed all of his claims, including those challenging the underlying conviction.

A contrary approach would require Rashad to bifurcate the claims arising from his criminal case into distinct judgments—one related to the conviction, one related to the sentence. Yet the AEDPA statute of limitations speaks of one “judgment,” § 2244(d)(1)(A), not many. And Burton tells us the “judgment in a criminal case means sentence.” 549 U.S. at 156, 127 S.Ct. 793. Besides splitting each criminal judgment into two, the State's approach would require petitioners to comply with different limitations clocks for each judgment and, it is worth adding, would require the State to defend two cases rather than one. That approach would not advance “AEDPA's goal of streamlining federal habeas proceedings,” Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 277, 125 S.Ct. 1528, 161 L.Ed.2d 440 (2005), as it would force prisoners who have their convictions affirmed but their sentences vacated—a “not uncommon situation,” Burton, 549 U.S. at 154, 127 S.Ct. 793—to file dual petitions. A fair reading of the language of AEDPA together with Burton does not support this approach, and neither do the decisions of any other circuits. To our knowledge, all of the circuits to address this question after Burton agree that the limitations clock in this setting begins after the new sentence. See Scott v. Hubert, 635 F.3d 659, 666 (5th Cir.2011); Villaneda v. Tilton, 432 Fed.Appx. 695, 695 (9th Cir.2011) (government conceded judgment did not become final until after resentencing); Ferreira v. Sec'y, Dep't of Corr., 494 F.3d 1286, 1292–93 (11th Cir.2007); cf. United States v. Carbajal–Moreno, 332 Fed.Appx. 472, 474–76 (10th Cir.2009) (reaching same result based on similar language in 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)(1)).

Contrary to the State's argument, Bachman v. Bagley, 487 F.3d 979 (6th Cir.2007),...