Evans, Mike (acting warden) v. Chavis, Reginald (01/10/2006)

Question presented: Did the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals contravene the Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Carey v. Saffold when it held that a prisoner who delayed more than three years before filing a habeas petition with the California Supreme Court did not "unreasonably" delay in filing the petition, and therefore was entitled to tolling during that entire period, because the California Supreme Court summarily denied the petition without comment or citation, which the 9th Circuit construed as a denial on the merits?

BY MATT BRACKEN, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Whichever way he turned, Reginald Chavis found himself staring at a dead end.

Convicted on July 29, 1991, of attempted murder and mayhem in Sacramento County, California, and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, Chavis's first attempt at petition review was denied by the California Supreme Court in October 1992.

Chavis followed with a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Sacramento County Superior Court. That was also rebuffed.

Next came several complications that delayed Chavis's habeas petition to the California Court of Appeal.

First it was the prison duties that kept him occupied five days a week, seven and a half hours per day.

These duties coincided with the exact days and times in which his prison's law library was open to inmates, Chavis says.

Despite not being able to decipher the numerous legal technicalities involved in petitioning for habeas relief, Chavis, through much "guess work," filed the petition in August of 1994. It was rejected the following month.

After deciding to not attempt another guesswork petition, Chavis went through meticulous efforts to receive special access to the prison's library.

Among his failed efforts at library access, Chavis asked his supervisor for time off work, he asked the law librarian for privileged library use and he asked for a job switch (which was approved, yet never provided).

When one of Chavis's fellow inmates told him that preventing access to prison libraries is illegal, Chavis filed a grievance.

Later that day, Chavis's grievance was rejected.

Two appeals later and Chavis finally found some promise. He was switched to an evening position so he could have access time to the library during the day.

Thanks to numerous lockdowns in his prison, where prisoners were not allowed to leave their cells, Chavis's quest for library time was delayed once again.

In November of 1997, three years after his initial attempts at library access, Chavis was able to file a habeas petition with the California Supreme Court. Chavis explained his delay in filing, including evidence of his library access struggle, but the petition was denied without explanation in April of 1998.

On April 24, 1996, meanwhile, the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act went into effect.

The AEDPA provided a one-year statute of limitations for the filing of habeas petitions.

So in August of 2000, when Chavis filed yet another habeas corpus petition – this time in federal district court – at issue was the AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations.

Chavis's case was dismissed in September 2001. Less than two weeks later, Chavis appealed.

In August 2004, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that Chavis's federal petition was not untimely. The court, in a unanimous opinion, wrote that Chavis was allowed tolling, essentially a freeze on a period of time, during his first and second round of habeas petitions.

Using the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Carey v. Saffold as its guide, the 9th Circuit said it interpreted the California Supreme Court's denial of Chavis's habeas petition without comment as a denial on the merits.

Had the California Supreme Court stated that Chavis's petition was untimely in its summary order, then Chavis would not have been granted tolling. Because of the 9th Circuit interpreted the California court's response as being on the merits, the appeals court ruled that Chavis should be allowed tolling for that period of time.

Furthermore, the 9th Circuit ruled that Chavis was entitled to tolling during his entire first round of state habeas petitions, which started in 1993, because AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations was not enacted until 1996.

After detailing its reasons, the 9th Circuit calculated that only 363 days were tolled during his federal habeas petition, making Chavis's petition timely by just two days.

The 9th Circuit remanded the case to the district court for its consideration. Mike Evans, warden of the Salinas Valley State Prison, the facility where Chavis is housed, sought review from the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the state of California.

On May 2, 2005, the Court accepted review in the case and allowed Chavis to have his case heard without cost.

"Our concern is the 9th Circuit's decision and its effect on thousands of cases," said Catherine Chatman, California's Deputy Attorney General, who will serve as the state's counsel. "For all of those thousands of cases, the statute of limitations would be rendered useless."

One of the major issues Chatman has with Chavis's case is the three-year period of time when he allegedly had no access to the prison library.

Chatman believes tolling should have occurred for most of those three years between petitions to the California Court of Appeal and the state supreme court.

"[Chavis] states in documents about a three-month period of time in which he says he was working during all the prison library time," Chatman said. "That doesn't explain the three-year delay. He made the same claims to state court and appellate court. So he didn't need years and years of access."

Chatman said that many state courts are allowed to dole out dismissals without summary orders. Requiring California to make those summary orders on every case would be "impossibly time consuming."

Peter K. Stris, the Los Angeles-based counsel for Chavis, said he thinks it's wrong for the federal courts to determine what the state court deems timely.

"I think our team of lawyers feels fairly strongly that the right result is to require the state courts to give some indication that a state petition is untimely before a federal court refuses to apply the tolling provision," said Stris. "There are many reasons why a prisoner might delay in bringing a state habeas petition… Mr. Chavis's case is probably representative of thousands of cases."

On Jan. 10, 2006, as confirmation hearings were being held for Samuel Alito, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed, holding that the 9th Circuit departed from Saffold's interpretation of the AEDPA as applied to California's system.

Writing for the Court, Justice Stephen Breyer concluded that Chavis did not file his petition in the California Supreme Court within a reasonable time. In so concluding, the Court rejected his argument that he could not use the prison library to work on his petition during this period.

Breyer noted that it may not be easy for the 9th Circuit to decide in each of the several hundred federal habeas petitions from California prisoners it hears annually whether a prisoner's state-court review petition was timely. The Court advised that in the future, California courts might alleviate the problem by clarifying the scope of "reasonable time" or by indicating, when denying a petition, whether the filing was timely. The Court also suggested that the 9th Circuit seek guidance by certifying a question to the State Supreme Court when appropriate. It even suggested to the California legislature that it might impose more determinate time limits, conforming California law with that of most other states.

Justice John Paul Stevens added a concurring opinion in the case.