Williams v. Lockhart, 88-1096

• Decision Date: 21 July 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-1096,88-1096
• Citation: 873 F.2d 1129
• Parties: Rodney WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. A.L. LOCKHART, Director, Arkansas Department of Correction, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 1129

873 F.2d 1129

Rodney WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. A.L. LOCKHART, Director, Arkansas Department of Correction, Appellee.

No. 88-1096.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted Dec. 13, 1988.

Decided May 2, 1989.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied July 21, 1989.

J. Scott Schallhorn, Little Rock, Ark. (Court-appointed), for appellant.

Lynley Arnett, Asst. Atty. Gen., Little Rock, Ark., for appellee.

Before ARNOLD and JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judges, and ROSENBAUM, District Judge. ^*

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

This is a petition for habeas corpus brought by Rodney D. Williams, a prisoner in state custody, under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254. The District Court ¹ dismissed the petition on the ground that it was barred by a procedural default committed by Williams during post-conviction proceedings in the state courts. We affirm.

Williams has been convicted of burglary and theft by receiving. Initially, sentences were suspended, but in 1983 the suspended sentences were revoked, and Williams was committed to prison. No direct appeal was filed, either at the time of the initial convictions, or later, when the suspended sentences were revoked. More than three years after the date of commitment, Williams filed a petition under Ark.R.Crim.P. 37 seeking postconviction relief. The trial court dismissed this petition, and the Supreme Court of Arkansas affirmed. It held that the petition was untimely, because it was filed more than three years after the date of commitment. Williams v. State, 293 Ark. 73, 732 S.W.2d 456 (1987) (per curiam). Accordingly, the state courts have never reached the merits of petitioner's attack on his convictions.

This procedural default--the failure to file a timely Rule 37 petition--was the basis for the District Court's decision dismissing Williams's habeas case. The District Court held that Williams had not shown "cause" for this procedural default in the state courts, as required by the doctrine of Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977).

We start by reaffirming certain general principles made clear by prior cases. In the first place, the rule that certain state-court procedural defaults will bar a petition for federal habeas corpus extends to procedural defaults occurring in the course of state post-conviction proceedings, as well as to procedural defaults occurring at trial or on direct appeal in the state courts. E.g., Smittie v. Lockhart, 843 F.2d 295, 298 (8th Cir.1988). One example of such a default is the very point involved in this case--the failure to file a timely Rule 37 petition in the Arkansas state courts. Walker v. Lockhart, 852 F.2d 379, 381 (8th Cir.1988), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 1551, 103 L.Ed.2d 854 (1989). The fact that Williams was without counsel in his state post-conviction proceeding does not change these rules. Pro se litigants are subject to the Wainwright v. Sykes doctrine. Vasquez v. Lockhart, 867 F.2d 1056 (8th Cir.1988).

On appeal, Williams contests the holding of the District Court on two grounds. In order to understand the context of his arguments, it will be necessary to refer briefly to the nature of his claims on the merits. He claims that, at the time of his guilty plea, the burglary and theft-by-receiving charges had been dismissed by a nolle prosequi filed by the prosecuting attorney, that under state law claims that had thus been nol prossed are forever barred unless refiled within one year, that the charges were not refiled within this one-year period, and that his counsel in the state criminal proceedings was constitutionally ineffective for not raising this point in a motion to dismiss, a motion that Williams claims would surely have succeeded. As "cause" for not asserting this theory in a timely Rule 37 petition, Williams argues, in his brief in this Court, that he did not discover this violation of his constitutional rights until the three-year time period had run. But this argument, which necessarily raises issues of fact about what Williams knew and when he knew it, was not raised in the District Court. We therefore do not reach it on this appeal. We observe, in addition, that the ignorance that Williams is now pleading is apparently ignorance of the law, rather than of facts. He must have known that his own charges had been nol prossed, and that a year had passed since that event. It must be only the legal consequence of these facts that he now claims he did not know about. This kind of ignorance, we think, would not in any event suffice as cause for failing to observe a reasonable statute of limitations on post-conviction relief. The very purpose of such a provision is to preclude stale claims, and a rule of law that would allow it to be avoided whenever a prisoner asserts imperfect knowledge of the law would bid fair to destroy altogether any scheme of limitations. Therefore, we reject this first argument that cause for Wainwright purposes was established.

Next, Williams claims that his Rule 37 petition was not subject to the three-year limit, but instead could be filed at any time. In order to understand this claim, a look at the full text of Ark.R.Crim.P. 37.1 and 37.2, as they existed in 1987, at the time of the Supreme Court's decision in Williams's case, is necessary. At that time the provisions in question read as follows:

Rule 37.1. Scope of Remedy.

A prisoner, in custody under sentence of a circuit court and whose case was not appealed to the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals, claiming a right to be released, or to have a new trial, or to have the original sentence modified on the ground:

(a) that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States or this state; or (b) that the court imposing the sentence was without jurisdiction to do so; or

(c) that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law; or

(d) that the sentence is otherwise subject to collateral attack; may file a verified motion at any time in the court which imposed the sentence, praying that the sentence be vacated or corrected.

Rule 37.2. Commencement of Proceedings; Pleadings; Permission of Supreme Court Following Appeal.

(a) If the conviction in the original case was appealed to the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals, then no proceedings under this rule shall be entertained by the circuit court without prior permission of the Supreme Court.

(b) All grounds for relief available to a petitioner under this rule must be raised in his original petition unless the petition was denied without prejudice. Any ground not so raised or any ground finally adjudicated or intelligently and understandingly waived in the proceedings which resulted in the conviction or sentence, or in any other proceedings that the prisoner may have taken to secure relief from his conviction or sentence, may not be the basis for a subsequent petition.

(c) A petition claiming relief under this rule must be filed in circuit court or, if prior permission to proceed is necessary as indicated in paragraph (a), in the Supreme Court within three (3) years of the date of commitment, unless the ground for relief would render the judgment of conviction absolutely void.

(d) The decision of the court in any proceeding under this rule shall be final when the judgment is rendered. No motion for rehearing shall be considered.

(e) Before the court acts upon a petition filed under this rule, the petition may be amended with leave of the court.

Ark.R.Crim.P. 37.1 and 37.2, Ark.Stat.Ann.Tit. 43 app. (Supp.1985). ²

Petitioner understandably stresses the phrase "at any time" appearing in Rule 37.1(d). He points out that his burglary and theft-by-receiving cases were not appealed. He contends, accordingly, that his post-conviction petition was not governed by the three-year limitations period appearing in Rule 37.2(c). This period, the argument runs, applies only to the class of cases described in Rule 37.2(a), that is, cases in which there was a direct appeal from the conviction.

If all we had before us was the text of the rule, as quoted above, petitioner would have a substantial argument. The Supreme Court of Arkansas, in Williams's very case, has held that the three-year limitations period governs, and this interpretation of Rule 37, taken purely as a matter of state law, is final and binding on us. The Supreme Court of Arkansas is the highest and final authority on the law of its own state, and that law is whatever the Supreme Court says it is. The question before us now, however, is not simply to determine state law, but to decide whether that law, whatever it may be, is a bar to federal habeas corpus...