Spotville v. Cain, 97-30661

• Citation: 149 F.3d 374
• Decision Date: 31 July 1998
• Docket Number: No. 97-30661,97-30661
• Parties: Jewel SPOTVILLE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Burl CAIN, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, LA; Richard P. Ieyoub, Attorney General, State of Louisiana, Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

Page 374

149 F.3d 374

Jewel SPOTVILLE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Burl CAIN, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, LA;

Richard P. Ieyoub, Attorney General, State of

Louisiana, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 97-30661.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

July 31, 1998.

Jewel Spotville, Angola, LA, pro se.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Before POLITZ, Chief Judge, and REYNALDO G. GARZA and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Appellant Jewel Spotville appeals the dismissal of his pro se habeas corpus petition for failure to comply with the procedures provided for in 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A), as amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"). Although Spotville tendered to prison authorities for mailing his petition and application for in forma pauperis ("IFP") status prior to the effective date of the AEDPA, he did not pay a filing fee that was subsequently required upon denial of his IFP status until after the AEDPA took effect. The sole issue presented by this appeal is when a habeas corpus petition should be considered filed for purposes of determining the applicability of the AEDPA. This question is one of first impression in this circuit. We hold that the habeas corpus petition of a pro se prisoner litigant is filed for purposes of determining the applicability of the AEDPA at the time the petitioner tenders the petition to prison officials for mailing. Accordingly, we reverse the dismissal of Spotville's petition and remand for further proceedings.

Facts

In 1973, Jewel Spotville was convicted of aggravated rape, at that time a capital offense. Spotville was sentenced to life imprisonment without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence. In July 1995, Spotville, acting pro se, submitted a habeas corpus petition, his fifth, along with an application to proceed IFP, to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. ¹ In his petition, Spotville argues primarily that he was improperly convicted of a capital crime by a 10-2 jury verdict rather than by a unanimous jury verdict.

Spotville's application to proceed IFP was denied on August 16, 1995 by a magistrate judge who found Spotville could pay the $5.00 filing fee. Spotville paid this fee on April 23, 1997. Two days later, the magistrate judge recommended that Spotville's habeas petition be dismissed without prejudice for his failure to move in the Court of Appeals for authorization to file a successive habeas application, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A), as amended by the AEDPA. On May 21, 1997, the district court adopted the magistrate judge's recommendation and dismissed Spotville's petition without prejudice.

Spotville timely filed a notice of appeal and moved for a certificate of appealability ("COA"). The district court granted Spotville a COA, finding

that petitioner has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right related to the following issue[ ]: Petitioner's application had to be denied on the procedural basis that this is a successive writ.... [T]hat he was convicted by a 10-2 verdict when a unanimous verdict was required raises a serious issue of ineffective assistance of counsel. I would very much like to hear the matter on the substantive merits.

Analysis

Section 2244(b)(3)(A) of Title 28 provides:

Before a second or successive application permitted by this section is filed in the district court, the applicant shall move in the appropriate court of appeals for an order authorizing the district court to consider the application.

28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A) (West 1998).

Section 2244(b)(3)(A) became effective when the AEDPA was signed into law on April 24, 1996. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 2067, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997). Habeas petitioners "presenting a second or successive § 2254 habeas petition are not subject to the new successive habeas provisions unless their successive petitions were filed in the district court after the AEDPA's effective date[.]" Moran v. Stalder, 121 F.3d 210, 211 (5th Cir.1997).

Spotville's fifth habeas petition, at issue in the present case, was tendered to prison officials for mailing to the district court in July 1995, approximately nine months before the effective date of the AEDPA. The subsequently required filing fee was not paid until one year after the effective date of the AEDPA, however. Therefore, the question of whether Spotville's habeas petition was properly dismissed pursuant to the AEDPA centers on resolving when his petition was "filed."

This court has held that "the relevant date for determining the applicability of the AEDPA to habeas corpus petitions is the date that the actual habeas corpus petition is filed." Williams v. Cain, 125 F.3d 269, 274 (5th Cir.1997) (emphasis added). Although the use of the word "actual" suggests that tendering the petition to prison officials for mailing is the crucial act of initiating the habeas proceeding, the meaning of the word "filed" requires further examination. The question of when a petition is filed for the purposes of determining the applicability of the AEDPA to a habeas action has not been addressed by this circuit, though the question of when certain pleadings have been filed has been addressed in other contexts.

Our prior decisions, and decisions of our sister circuits, indicate that a habeas corpus petition should be deemed filed when the petition is handed over to prison authorities for mailing. In Hernandez v. Aldridge, 902 F.2d 386 (5th Cir.1990), we considered at what point a pro se prisoner's notice of appeal is filed for purposes of determining if it had been filed within requisite time limitations. In that case, the plaintiff had tendered his complaint to the court clerk before the limitations time-bar, but the clerk did not docket it as "filed" until 19 days later, after the limitation period had expired. We held "that when a notice of appeal is in the custody of the clerk within the time required by statute, the notice has been 'filed' within the requisite time." Id. at 388 (citation omitted) (emphasis added). We determined that the clerk's physical custody of the notice of appeal, upon its being tendered by the plaintiff, was the point at which the notice of appeal was "in the custody of the clerk," not when the it was technically entered as "filed." Id.

Similarly, in Cooper v. Brookshire, 70 F.3d 377, 379 (5th Cir.1995), we held that a pro se prisoner litigant's Section 1983 complaint is filed as soon as the pleadings have been deposited into the prison mail system. We relied on the Supreme Court's ruling in Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 108 S.Ct. 2379, 101 L.Ed.2d 245 (1988), which established a similar "mailbox rule" for determining when a pro se notice of appeal from dismissal of a habeas action would be considered filed. In Houston, the Court recognized that, "[u]nskilled in law, unaided by counsel, and unable to leave the prison, a pro se prisoner's control over the processing of his notice necessarily ceases as soon as he hands it over[.]" Id. at 266. The Houston rationale was adopted by this court in Cooper and is helpful in analyzing the present case. Because we have recognized that a pro se litigant has initiated, or "filed," his petition properly when he has completed everything within his control to deliver the actual petition to the court, we should not create a separate and somewhat contrary rule in a case in which a pro se litigant's IFP status is denied subsequent to initiating the petition. Cf. Cooper, 70 F.3d at 381 (holding that a time-bar should have the same effect on all pro se litigants, because they are "needful of a level playing field").

Recently, the Third Circuit applied Houston to the filings of a pro se prisoner's habeas petition for the purpose of applying the AEDPA's one-year time limit. In Burns v. Morton, 134 F.3d 109 (3d Cir.1998), the pro se litigant presented his habeas petition to prison officials for mailing on April 22, 1997, one day before the one-year limitations period provided for in 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1) expired. The petition was not received by the district court until April 28, 1997, however, and was not docketed as filed until May 5, 1997. The district court concluded that the petition was filed after the one-year limitations period that began running on April 24, 1996 had expired, and dismissed it as untimely. The Third Circuit found that "the same concerns expressed by the Court in Houston pertain to filing a pro se prisoner's habeas petition." Id. at 112. Accordingly, the court reversed the dismissal of the petition and held that "a pro se prisoner's habeas petition is deemed filed at the moment he delivers it to prison officials for mailing to the district court." Id. at 113; see also Peterson v. Demskie, 107 F.3d 92, 93 (2d Cir.1997) (applying Houston to its consideration of when a Section 2254 petition is filed for purposes of determining whether it was filed within a reasonable time of the effective date of the AEDPA).

The Sixth Circuit has applied Houston to a petitioner's motion to file second or successive Section 2255 motions. That court held that "[t]he § 2244(b)(3) motion to file the second or successive petition or § 2255 motion will be deemed filed, for purposes of the one-year limitation periods established by § 2244(d) and § 2255, on the date that the § 2244(b)(3) motion is given to prison authorities for mailing[.]" In re Sims, 111 F.3d 45, 47 (6th Cir.1997) (citing Houston, 487 U.S. at 270).

In these cases, the courts expressed concern over the pro se prisoner's lack of control over the filing...