CAREY, WARDEN v. SAFFOLD
No. 01-301
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 27, 2002—Decided June 17, 2002
536 U.S. 214
Stanley A. Cross, Supervising Deputy Attorney General of California, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, and Jo Graves and Arnold O. Overoye, Senior Assistant Attorneys General.
David W. Ogden argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Mary Katherine McComb, by appointment of the Court, 534 U. S. 1053, and Seth P. Waxman.*
JUSTICE BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.
The federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) requires a state prisoner seeking a federal habeas corpus remedy to file his federal petition within one year after his state conviction has become “final.”
This case raises three questions related to the statutory word “pending“:
- Does that word cover the time between a lower state court‘s decision and the filing of a notice of appeal to a higher state court?
- If so, does it apply similarly to California‘s unique state collateral review system—a system that does not involve a notice of appeal, but rather the filing (within a reasonable time) of a further original state habeas petition in a higher court?
- If so, was the petition at issue here (filed in the California Supreme Court 4 1/2 months after the lower state court reached its decision) pending during that period, or was it no longer pending because it failed to comply with state timeliness rules?
We answer the first two questions affirmatively, while remanding the case to the Court of Appeals for its further consideration of the third.
I
In 1990 Tony Saffold, the respondent, was convicted and sentenced in California state court for murder, assault with a firearm, and robbery. His conviction became final on direct review in April 1992. Because Saffold‘s conviction became final before AEDPA took effect, the federal limitations period began running on AEDPA‘s effective date, April 24, 1996, giving Saffold one year from that date (in the absence of tolling) to file a federal habeas petition.
A week before the federal deadline, Saffold filed a state habeas petition in the state trial court. The state trial court denied the petition. Five days later Saffold filed a further petition in the State Court of Appeal. That court denied his petition. And 4 1/2 months later Saffold filed a further petition in the California Supreme Court. That court also denied Saffold‘s petition, stating in a single sentence that it did
Approximately one week later, in early June 1998, Saffold filed a petition for habeas corpus in the Federal District Court. The District Court noted that AEDPA required Saffold to have filed his petition by April 24, 1997. It recognized that the statute gave Saffold extra time by tolling its limitations period while Saffold‘s application for state collateral review was “pending” in the state courts. But the District Court decided that Saffold‘s petition was “pending” only while the state courts were actively considering it, and that period did not include the intervals between the time a lower state court had denied Saffold‘s petition and the time he had filed a further petition in a higher state court. In Saffold‘s case those intervals amounted to five days (between the trial court and intermediate court) plus 4 1/2 months (between the intermediate court and Supreme Court), and those intervals made a critical difference. Without counting the intervals as part of the time Saffold‘s application for state collateral review was “pending,” the tolling period was not long enough to make Saffold‘s federal habeas petition timely. Hence the District Court dismissed the petition.
The Ninth Circuit reversed. It included in the “pending” period, and hence in the tolling period, the intervals between what was, in effect, consideration of a petition by a lower state court and further consideration by a higher state court—at least assuming a petitioner‘s request for that further higher court consideration was timely. Saffold v. Newland, 250 F. 3d 1262, 1266 (2001). It added that Saffold‘s petition to the California Supreme Court was timely despite the 4 1/2 months that had elapsed since the California Court of Appeal decision. That is because the California Supreme Court had denied Saffold‘s petition, not only because of “lack of diligence” but also “on the merits,” a circumstance that showed the California Supreme Court had “applied its untimeliness bar only after considering to some degree the
We granted certiorari. We now vacate the judgment and remand the case.
II
In most States, relevant state law sets forth some version of the following collateral review procedures. First, the prisoner files a petition in a state court of first instance, typically a trial court. Second, a petitioner seeking to appeal from the trial court‘s judgment must file a notice of appeal within, say, 30 or 45 days after entry of the trial court‘s judgment. See, e. g.,
California‘s reading of the word “pending,” however, is not consistent with that word‘s ordinary meaning. The dictionary defines “pending” (when used as an adjective) as “in continuance” or “not yet decided.” Webster‘s Third New International Dictionary 1669 (1993). It similarly defines the term (when used as a preposition) as “through the period of continuance . . . of,” “until the . . . completion of.” Ibid. That definition, applied in the present context, means that an application is pending as long as the ordinary state collateral
California‘s reading would also produce a serious statutory anomaly. A federal habeas petitioner must exhaust state remedies before he can obtain federal habeas relief. The statute makes clear that a federal petitioner has not exhausted those remedies as long as he maintains “the right under the law of the State to raise” in that State, “by any available procedure, the question presented.”
It is therefore not surprising that no circuit court has interpreted the word “pending” in the manner proposed by
III
Having answered the necessarily predicate question of how the tolling provision ordinarily treats applications for state collateral review in typical “appeal” States, we turn to the question whether this rule applies in California. California‘s collateral review system differs from that of other States in that it does not require, technically speaking, appellate review of a lower court determination. Instead it contemplates that a prisoner will file a new “original” habeas petition. And it determines the timeliness of each filing according to a “reasonableness” standard. These differences, it is argued, require treating California differently from “appeal” States, in particular by not counting a petition as “pending” during the interval between a lower court‘s determination and filing of another petition in a higher court. See, e. g., Brief for Criminal Justice Legal Foundation as Amicus Curiae 5-18.
California‘s “original writ” system, however, is not as special in practice as its terminology might suggest. As interpreted by the courts, California‘s habeas rules lead a prisoner ordinarily to file a petition in a lower court first. In re Ramirez, 89 Cal. App. 4th 1312, 1316, 108 Cal. Rptr. 2d 229, 232 (2001) (appellate court “has discretion to refuse to issue the writ . . . on the ground that application has not [first] been made . . . in a lower court“); Harris v. Superior Court of Cal., 500 F. 2d 1124, 1126 (CA9 1974)
The upshot is that California‘s collateral review process functions very much like that of other States, but for the fact that its timeliness rule is indeterminate. Other States (with the exception of North Carolina, see Allen v. Mitchell, 276 F. 3d 183, 186 (CA4 2001)), specify precise time limits, such as 30 or 45 days, within which an appeal must be taken, while California applies a general “reasonableness” standard. Still, we do not see how that feature of California law could make a critical difference. As mentioned, AEDPA‘s tolling rule is designed to protect the principles of “comity, finality, and federalism,” by promoting “the exhaustion of state remedies while respecting the interest in the finality of state court judgments.” Duncan, supra, at 178 (internal quotation marks omitted). It modifies the 1-year filing rule (a rule that prevents prisoners from delaying their federal filing) in order to give States the opportunity to complete one full round of review, free of federal interference. Inclusion of California‘s “reasonableness” periods carries out that purpose in the same way, and to the same degree, as does inclu-
The fact that California‘s timeliness standard is general rather than precise may make it more difficult for federal courts to determine just when a review application (i. e., a filing in a higher court) comes too late. But it is the State‘s interests that the tolling provision seeks to protect, and the State, through its supreme court decisions or legislation, can explicate timing requirements more precisely should that prove necessary.
Ordinarily, for purposes of applying a federal statute that interacts with state procedural rules, we look to how a state procedure functions, rather than the particular name that it bears. See Richfield Oil Corp. v. State Bd. of Equalization, 329 U. S. 69, 72 (1946) (looking to function rather than “designation” that state law gives a state-court judgment for purposes of determining federal jurisdiction); Department of Banking of Neb. v. Pink, 317 U. S. 264, 268 (1942) (per curiam) (same). We find that California‘s system functions in ways sufficiently like other state systems of collateral review to bring intervals between a lower court decision and a filing of a new petition in a higher court within the scope of the statutory word “pending.”
The dissent contends that this application of the federal tolling provision to California‘s “original writ” system “will disrupt the sound operation of the federal limitations period in at least 36 States.” Post, at 227 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.). This is so, the dissent believes, because the prisoner is given two choices when his petition has been denied by the intermediate court: He can file a “petition for hearing” in the supreme court within 10 days, or he can file a “new petition” in the supreme court. In re Reed, 33 Cal. 3d 914, 918, and n. 2, 663 P. 2d 216, 217, and n. 2 (1983). Why is California different, the dissent asks, from “appeal” States that also
The answer to this question is “no.” In “appeal” systems, the original writ plays a different role. As the Supreme Court of Idaho (one of the States cited by the dissent) explains:
“The Supreme Court, having jurisdiction to review on appeal decisions of the district courts in habeas corpus proceedings . . . will not exercise its power . . . to grant an original writ of habeas corpus, except in extraordinary cases.” In re Barlow, 48 Idaho 309, 282 P. 380 (1929).
See also, e. g., Commonwealth v. Salzinger, 406 Pa. 268, 269, 177 A. 2d 619, 620 (1962) (“extraordinary circumstances” required for exercise of original jurisdiction); La Belle v. Hancock, 99 N. H. 254, 255, 108 A. 2d 545 (1954) (per curiam) (“original authority” to grant habeas relief “not ordinarily exercised“); Ex parte Lambert, 37 Tex. Crim. 435, 436, 36 S. W. 81, 82 (1896) (“[E]xcept in extraordinary cases, we will not entertain jurisdiction as a court to grant original writs of habeas corpus“).
California, in contrast, has engrained original writs—both at the appellate level and in the supreme court—into its normal collateral review process. As we have explained, and as the dissent recognizes, the only avenue for a prisoner to challenge the denial of his application in the superior court is to file a “new petition” in the appellate court. And to challenge an appellate court denial, “[f]urther review [of a habeas application] may be sought in [the supreme] court
IV
It remains to ask whether Saffold delayed “unreasonably” in seeking California Supreme Court review. If so, his application would no longer have been “pending” during this period. Saffold filed his petition for review in the California Supreme Court 4 1/2 months after the California Court of Appeal issued its decision. The Ninth Circuit held that this filing was nonetheless timely. It based its conclusion primarily upon the fact that the California Supreme Court wrote that it denied the petition “on the merits and for lack of diligence.” These first three words, the Ninth Circuit suggested, showed that the California Supreme Court could not have considered the petition too late, for, if so, why would it have considered the merits? 250 F. 3d, at 1267.
There are many plausible answers to this question. A court will sometimes address the merits of a claim that it believes was presented in an untimely way: for instance, where the merits present no difficult issue; where the court wants to give a reviewing court alternative grounds for deci-
If the California Supreme Court had clearly ruled that Saffold‘s 4 1/2-month delay was “unreasonable,” that would be the end of the matter, regardless of whether it also addressed the merits of the claim, or whether its timeliness ruling was “entangled” with the merits. 250 F. 3d, at 1267. We cannot say in this case, however, that the Ninth Circuit was wrong in its ultimate conclusion. Saffold argues that special circumstances were present here: He was not notified of the Court of Appeal‘s decision for several months, and he filed within days after receiving notification. And he contends it is more likely that the phrase “lack of diligence” referred to the delay between the date his conviction became final and the date he first sought state post-conviction relief—a matter irrelevant to the question whether his application was “pending” during the 4 1/2-month interval. We leave it to the Court of Appeals to evaluate these and any other relevant considerations in the first instance. We also leave to the Court of Appeals the decision whether it would be appropriate to certify a question to the California Supreme Court
*
*
*
For the foregoing reasons, we answer the first two issues presented in this case in the affirmative, vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE KENNEDY, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE SCALIA, and JUSTICE THOMAS join, dissenting.
Respondent is a California prisoner who did not file a notice of appeal. The Court, however, begins by considering a question not presented, whether the statute of limitations would have been tolled for a hypothetical prisoner who filed an appeal somewhere else. This is a strong indication that the Court is off in the wrong direction. After holding that tolling applies for its hypothetical appellant, the Court finally gets to California, where no appeal was filed. On the Court‘s view, California‘s procedures are “unique,” ante, at 217, so giving them special treatment under the statute will affect only that one State. It is quite wrong about this. In fact, today‘s ruling will disrupt the sound operation of the federal limitations period in at least 36 States. This is what happens when the Court departs from the text of a nationwide statute to reach a result in one particular State.
The Court‘s conclusion that an application is pending before the filing of an original writ in the California Supreme Court rests on three propositions: First, “application” means “petition, appeal from the denial of a petition, and anything else that functions as an appeal.” Second, California‘s procedures are very different from those in other States. Third, a petition for an original writ in the California Supreme Court functions as an appeal. The first is an untenable interpretation of statutory text. The second and third, however, are wrong on both the facts and the law. The rem-
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA),
Instead of identifying a particular pending application, the Court relies upon an expansive definition of the term. The Court begins by defining “pending,” offering one definition for when the word is used as an adjective and another for when used as a preposition. See ante, at 219. As the statute only uses the word as an adjective (tolling while the application “is pending“), the latter definition is irrelevant and misleading. When used as an adjective, the definition does not help the Court. The Court says “pending” means “‘in continuance’ or ‘not yet decided.‘” Ibid. (quoting Webster‘s Third New International Dictionary 1669 (1993)). The real
The Court explains that the original petition in the California Supreme Court is part of the ordinary collateral review process because it functions as an appeal under California law. California, the Court says, “does not require, technically speaking, appellate review of a lower court determination. Instead it contemplates that a prisoner will file a new ‘original’ habeas petition.” Ante, at 221. This is an incorrect statement of California law. While California does not permit appeals of the California Superior Court‘s denial of habeas corpus, it does provide for “appellate review” of the denial of a petition for habeas corpus by the California Court of Appeal. That appeal is not just available; as the Court concedes, ante, at 224-225, the California Supreme
Had respondent filed the appeal provided by
An application does not remain pending, however, once the court that has denied it loses the power to ever grant it. When the Court of Appeal denied respondent‘s petition and respondent did not appeal, the petition became final and was no longer pending before that court. See
Even if California recognized an original writ as an equivalent procedure to an appeal for purposes of state law, the two procedures would differ with respect to the federal statutory question in this case. When a prisoner files an appeal, the original application remains pending in the lower court, but when a prisoner files an original writ, there is no application pending in any lower court. As it turns out, however, California law does not regard an appeal and an original writ as equivalents. California recognizes that a prisoner may obtain relief through either procedure, but the California Supreme Court has said an appeal is preferred. In re Reed, supra, at 918-919, and n. 2, 663 P. 2d, at 217, n. 2. At the same time, a prisoner may use an original writ in circumstances where an appeal is not available. Although California encourages prisoners to exhaust claims in the lower courts, the claims within an original petition need not be the same as those presented earlier. E. g., In re Black, 66 Cal. 2d 881, 428 P. 2d 293 (1967);
“Where a petitioner was remanded to custody by a superior court, and the proceeding instituted in that court was thus terminated and was no longer a matter pending therein, he could inaugurate a new proceeding for relief in another court and can still do so, but is now limited in the making of a new application by statutory provision to a higher court, either the district court of appeal having jurisdiction, or the supreme court.” In re Zany, 164 Cal. 724, 727, 130 P. 710 (1913).
The petition thus is not pending even under state law: Each habeas petition is a “new proceeding for relief,” ibid., and is not the same case, let alone the same application. Each time a California court denies a petition, the application is “no longer a matter pending,” ibid., before any court, because it can no longer be granted by that court or any other court in the future.
The Court‘s contrary conclusion does not depend upon any reasonable construction of a “pending application.” It depends entirely upon the proposition that when California says “original writ,” it means “appeal,” and federal courts must not privilege form over substance. But California provides for an appeal, see
The Court also has ignored the fact that most other States provide for original writs, just like California. As a consequence, the Court‘s error is of substantial significance beyond this case; for the California Supreme Court‘s original jurisdiction to issue writs of habeas corpus is not some quirk
The Court is thus quite mistaken to conclude that its decision concerns only the procedures within California. The Court distinguishes California from other States because California “has engrained original writs—both at the appellate level and in the supreme court—into its normal collateral review process.” Ante, at 224. This statement is not correct even for California. See supra, at 231-232. It may or may not be true for the four other States the Court cites, but even so the federal courts will have to test that point for dozens more. The Court‘s distinction between “appeal States” and “original writ States” is its own creation with no clear meaning under state law, not to mention a tie to the law Congress has enacted. Having departed from the sensible meaning of application, and the well-understood distinction between an appeal and an original writ, the Court now requires federal courts to define the ordinary collateral review procedures in each State. It may not be clear in how many States original writs will fall on the side of the ordinary, but it is clear that the question will be litigated. In
In those jurisdictions the Court will create a strange anomaly. Now an application can be both pending and not pending, taking on what the Seventh Circuit has described as a “Cheshire-cat like quality, both there and not there at the same time.” Fernandez v. Sternes, 227 F. 3d 977, 980 (2000). If, for instance, the Court‘s hypothetical prisoner declined to file an appeal to the State‘s highest court, and he went to federal court more than a year later, his petition would be dismissed as time barred. As no application had been on the docket of any court for a year, and no petition that he had addressed to any state court could ever be granted, no “properly filed application” was “pending” anywhere. Under the Court‘s view, however, it would be premature to say that the federal statute of limitations had expired. The prisoner could file a new petition invoking the original jurisdiction of the state high court, and if the court denied it on the merits (or without comment), a subsequent federal application could be timely even though the earlier one was too late.
Under today‘s ruling, the federal court would be required to rule that the state petition, which was not pending before, had retroactively become so, and the prisoner‘s new federal application was timely. This is not a sensible way of determining when an application is “pending” under the federal tolling provision. Whether an application is pending at any given moment should be susceptible of a yes or no answer. On the Court‘s theory the answer will often be “impossible to tell,” because it depends not on whether an application is
The Court‘s insistence on treating an original writ as an appeal will create serious confusion in California—and elsewhere—for another reason. Federal courts will have to determine when an original writ is timely under California law because on the Court‘s holding only timely petitions cause an application to be (retroactively) pending. The problem, however, is that an original writ in California—like original writs elsewhere and unlike appeals in California and most everywhere else—does not have a strict time limit. Under California law the question is not whether a petition is “timely” but whether the prisoner exercised “due diligence” in filing his petition within a reasonable time after he becomes aware of the grounds for relief. In re Harris, 5 Cal. 4th 813, 828, n. 7, 855 P. 2d 391, 398, n. 7 (1993). This equitable concept is designed to be flexible, and it allows California courts to correct miscarriages of justice, even those which happened long ago. E. g., In re Stankewitz, 40 Cal. 3d 391, 396, n. 1, 708 P. 2d 1260, 1262, n. 1 (1985) (hearing the merits despite an 18-month delay); In re Moss, 175 Cal. App. 3d, at 921, 221 Cal. Rptr., at 648 (hearing the merits despite a 9-month delay). Nothing about AEDPA suggests that Congress wanted to inject this degree of unpredictability into the 1-year statute of limitations, and it is hard to see how federal courts are to approach this state-law inquiry.
While there may be cases, like this one, where the California courts expressly deny a petition for lack of diligence, the California courts routinely deny petitions filed after lengthy delays without making specific findings of undue delay. Brief for Respondent 40-41, n. 27. Under the Court‘s rule, federal courts will be required to assess, without clear guidance from state law, whether respondent exercised due diligence. This inquiry will create substantial uncertainty, and resulting federal litigation, over whether a prisoner had filed his habeas petition within a reasonable time. The uncer-
The Court‘s disposition in this very case proves that the timing question is often unanswerable. Even though this is the rare case where the California Supreme Court made a specific finding of “lack of diligence,” the Court does not hold respondent‘s petition untimely. Instead, the Court concludes that the lack of diligence finding is ambiguous, because it might refer, not to respondent‘s 4-month delay in filing his final writ, but to his 5-year delay in pursuing any collateral relief at all. Ante, at 226. This ambiguity, however, should not benefit respondent. If the California court held that all of respondent‘s state habeas petitions were years overdue, then they were not “properly filed” at all, and there would be no tolling of the federal limitations period. See Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U. S., at 8. Our consideration whether respondent‘s petition was “pending” presupposes that it was “properly filed” in the California courts.
The Court takes a different view, but in delivering the case back to the Court of Appeals, it provides no guidance for resolving the ambiguity. As the question has been thoroughly briefed before our Court, it is difficult to see how the lower court would resolve it, if we could not. The Court says that the Court of Appeals might certify a question to the California Supreme Court, but it gives no indication what that court might ask. Presumably, it is not suggesting that in every case where the California Supreme Court issues a summary denial, the Court of Appeals should certify the factbound question of what it really meant to say.
The Court begins in a hypothetical jurisdiction, and it ends without answering the question presented. Both points are telling. By leaving the text of the federal statute behind and calling California‘s procedures something they are not, the Court has complicated the disposition of the thousands of petitions filed each year in the federal district courts in
I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.