DUNCAN, SUPERINTENDENT, GREAT MEADOW CORRECTIONAL FACILITY v. WALKER
No. 00-121
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 26, 2001—Decided June 18, 2001
533 U.S. 167
Preeta D. Bansal, Solicitor General of New York, argued the cause for petitioner. With her on the briefs were Eliot
Deborah Wolikow Loewenberg, by appointment of the Court, 531 U. S. 1066, argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief were John H. Blume and Keir M. Weyble.*
JUSTICE O‘CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.
Title
I
In 1992, several judgments of conviction for robbery were entered against respondent Sherman Walker in the
Respondent unsuccessfully pursued a number of state remedies in connection with his convictions. It is unnecessary to describe all of these proceedings herein. Respondent‘s last conviction was affirmed on June 12, 1995. Respondent was later denied leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals. Respondent also sought a writ of error coram nobis, which the Appellate Division denied on March 18, 1996. Respondent‘s last conviction became final in April 1996, prior to the April 24, 1996, effective date of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214.
In a single document dated April 10, 1996, respondent filed a complaint under
On May 20, 1997, more than one year after AEDPA‘s effective date, respondent filed another federal habeas petition in the same District Court. It is undisputed that respondent had not returned to state court since the dismissal of his first federal habeas filing. On May 6, 1998, the District Court dismissed the petition as time barred because
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the District Court‘s judgment, reinstated the habeas petition, and remanded the case for further proceedings. Walker v. Artuz, 208 F. 3d 357 (2000). The Court of Appeals noted at the outset that, because respondent‘s conviction had become final prior to AEDPA‘s effective date, he had until April 24, 1997, to file his federal habeas petition. The court also observed that the exclusion from the limitation period of the time during which respondent‘s first federal habeas petition was pending in the District Court would render the instant habeas petition timely.
The Court of Appeals held that respondent‘s first federal habeas petition had tolled the limitation period because it was an application for “other collateral review” within the meaning of
The Court of Appeals also found no conflict between its interpretation of the statute and the purpose of AEDPA. The court found instead that its construction would promote the goal of encouraging petitioners to file their federal habeas applications as soon as possible.
We granted certiorari, 531 U. S. 991 (2000), to resolve a conflict between the Second Circuit‘s decision and the decisions of three other Courts of Appeals. See Jiminez v. Rice, 222 F. 3d 1210 (CA9 2000); Grooms v. Johnson, 208 F. 3d 488
II
Our task is to construe what Congress has enacted. We begin, as always, with the language of the statute. See, e. g., Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 420, 431 (2000); Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio v. Betts, 492 U. S. 158, 175 (1989); Watt v. Energy Action Ed. Foundation, 454 U. S. 151, 162 (1981). Respondent reads
We believe that petitioner‘s interpretation of
Section
Further, were we to adopt respondent‘s construction of the statute, we would render the word “State” insignificant, if not wholly superfluous. “It is our duty ‘to give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute.‘” United States v. Menasche, 348 U. S. 528, 538-539 (1955) (quoting Montclair v. Ramsdell, 107 U. S. 147, 152 (1883)); see also Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 404 (2000) (describing this rule as a “cardinal principle of statutory construction“); Market Co. v. Hoffman, 101 U. S. 112, 115 (1879) (“As early as in Bacon‘s Abridgment, sect. 2, it was said that ‘a statute ought, upon the whole, to be so construed that, if it can be prevented, no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant‘“). We are thus “reluctan[t] to treat statutory terms as surplusage” in any setting. Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter, Communities for Great Ore., 515 U. S. 687, 698 (1995); see also Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U. S. 135, 140 (1994). We are especially unwilling to do so when the term occupies so pivotal a place in the statutory scheme as does the word “State” in the federal habeas statute. But under respondent‘s rendition of
The most that could then be made of the word “State” would be to say that Congress singled out applications for “State post-conviction” review as one example from the universe of applications for collateral review. Under this approach, however, the word “State” still does nothing to
The Court of Appeals characterized petitioner‘s interpretation as producing the “linguistic oddity” of “State other collateral review,” which is “an ungainly construction that [the Court of Appeals did] not believe Congress intended.” 208 F. 3d, at 360. But nothing precludes the application of the word “State” to the entire phrase “post-conviction or other collateral review,” regardless of the resulting construction that one posits. The term “other collateral” is easily understood as a unit to which “State” applies just as “State” applies to “post-conviction.” Moreover, petitioner‘s interpretation does not compel the verbal formula hypothesized by the Court of Appeals. Indeed, the ungainliness of “State other collateral review” is a very good reason why Congress might have avoided that precise verbal formulation in the first place. The application of the word “State” to the phrase “other collateral review” more naturally yields the understanding “other State collateral review.”
The Court of Appeals also reasoned that petitioner‘s reading of the statute fails to give operative effect to the phrase “other collateral review.” The court claimed that “the phrase ‘other collateral review’ would be meaningless if it did not refer to federal habeas petitions.” Ibid. This argument, however, fails because it depends on the incorrect premise that there can be no form of state “collateral” review “other” than state “post-conviction” review within the meaning of
Section
Incarceration pursuant to a state criminal conviction may be by far the most common and most familiar basis for satisfaction of the “in custody” requirement in
Congress also may have employed the construction “post-conviction or other collateral” in recognition of the diverse terminology that different States employ to represent the different forms of collateral review that are available after a conviction. In some jurisdictions, the term “post-conviction” may denote a particular procedure for review of a conviction that is distinct from other forms of what conventionally is considered to be postconviction review. For example, Florida employs a procedure that is officially entitled a “Motion to Vacate, Set Aside, or Correct Sentence.”
Examination of another AEDPA provision also demonstrates that “other collateral” need not refer to any form of
Consideration of the competing constructions in light of AEDPA‘s purposes reinforces the conclusion that we draw from the text. Petitioner‘s interpretation of the statute is consistent with “AEDPA‘s purpose to further the principles of comity, finality, and federalism.” Williams, 529 U. S., at 436. Specifically, under petitioner‘s construction,
The exhaustion requirement of
The 1-year limitation period of
The tolling provision of
By tolling the limitation period for the pursuit of state remedies and not during the pendency of applications for federal review,
A diminution of statutory incentives to proceed first in state court would also increase the risk of the very piecemeal litigation that the exhaustion requirement is designed to reduce. Cf. Rose, 455 U. S., at 520. We have observed that “strict enforcement of the exhaustion requirement will encourage habeas petitioners to exhaust all of their claims in state court and to present the federal court with a single habeas petition.” Ibid. But were we to adopt respondent‘s construction of
The Court of Appeals reasoned that its interpretation of the statute would further Congress’ goal “to spur defendants to file their federal habeas petitions more quickly.” 208 F. 3d, at 361. But this view fails to account sufficiently for AEDPA‘s clear purpose to encourage litigants to pursue claims in state court prior to seeking federal collateral review. See, e. g.,
Respondent contends that petitioner‘s construction of the statute creates the potential for unfairness to litigants who file timely federal habeas petitions that are dismissed without prejudice after the limitation period has expired. But our sole task in this case is one of statutory construction, and upon examining the language and purpose of the statute, we are convinced that
We also note that, when the District Court dismissed respondent‘s first federal habeas petition without prejudice, respondent had more than nine months remaining in the limitation period in which to cure the defects that led to the dismissal. It is undisputed, however, that petitioner neither returned to state court nor filed a nondefective federal habeas petition before this time had elapsed. Respondent‘s May 1997 federal habeas petition also contained claims different from those presented in his April 1996 petition. In light of these facts, we have no occasion to address the alternative scenarios that respondent describes. We also have no occasion to address the question that JUSTICE STEVENS raises concerning the availability of equitable tolling.
We hold that an application for federal habeas corpus review is not an “application for State post-conviction or other collateral review” within the meaning of
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE SOUTER, concurring.
Although I join the Court‘s opinion in full, I have joined JUSTICE STEVENS‘S separate opinion pointing out that nothing bars a district court from retaining jurisdiction pending complete exhaustion of state remedies, and that a claim for equitable tolling could present a serious issue on facts different from those before us.
JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER joins, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
For substantially the reasons stated in the Court‘s opinion, ante, at 172-178, I agree that the better reading of
First, although the Court‘s pre-AEDPA decision in Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509, 522 (1982), prescribed the dismissal of federal habeas corpus petitions containing unexhausted claims, in our post-AEDPA world there is no reason why a district court should not retain jurisdiction over a meritorious claim and stay further proceedings pending the complete
Second, despite the Court‘s suggestion that tolling the limitations period for a first federal habeas petition would undermine the “purposes” of AEDPA, see ante, at 178-182, neither the Court‘s narrow holding, nor anything in the text or legislative history of AEDPA, precludes a federal court from deeming the limitations period tolled for such a petition as a matter of equity. The Court‘s opinion does not address a federal court‘s ability to toll the limitations period apart from
After all, federal habeas corpus has evolved as the product of both judicial doctrine and statutory law. See generally E. Chemerinsky, Federal Jurisdiction § 15 (3d ed. 1999). In the context of AEDPA‘s 1-year limitations period, which by its terms runs from “the date on which the judgment became final,” see
courts may well conclude that Congress simply overlooked the class of petitioners whose timely filed habeas petitions remain pending in district court past the limitations period, only to be dismissed after the court belatedly realizes that one or more claims have not been exhausted.2 See post, at 186 (BREYER, J., dissenting) (district courts on average take 268 days to dismiss petitions on procedural grounds; 10% remain pending more than 2 years). As a result, equitable considerations may make it appropriate for federal courts to fill in a perceived omission on the part of Congress by tolling AEDPA‘s statute of limitations for unexhausted federal habeas petitions. Today‘s ruling does not preclude that possibility, given the limited issue presented in this case and the Court‘s correspondingly limited holding.3
I concur in the Court‘s holding on the understanding that it does not foreclose either of the above safeguards against the potential for injustice that a literal reading of
The federal habeas corpus statute limits the period of time during which a state prisoner may file a federal habeas petition to one year, ordinarily running from the time the prisoner‘s conviction becomes final in the state courts. See
To understand my conclusion, one must understand why the legal issue before us is significant. Why would a state prisoner ever want federal habeas corpus proceedings to toll the federal habeas corpus limitations period? After all, the very point of tolling is to provide a state prisoner adequate time to file a federal habeas petition. If the prisoner has already filed that petition, what need is there for further tolling?
The answer to this question—and the problem that gives rise to the issue before us—is that a federal court may be required to dismiss a state prisoner‘s federal habeas petition, not on the merits, but because that prisoner has not exhausted his state collateral remedies for every claim presented in the federal petition. See
This possibility is not purely theoretical. A Justice Department study indicates that 63% of all habeas petitions are dismissed, and 57% of those are dismissed for failure to exhaust state remedies. See U. S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Habeas Corpus Review: Challenging State Court Criminal Convictions 17 (1995) (hereinafter Federal Habeas Corpus Review). And it can take courts a significant amount of time to dispose of even those petitions that are not addressed on the merits; on the average, district courts took 268 days to dismiss petitions on procedural grounds. Id., at 23-24; see also id., at 19 (of all habeas petitions, nearly half were pending in the district court for six months or longer; 10% were pending more than two years). Thus, if the words “other collateral review” do not include federal collateral review, a large group of federal habeas petitioners, seeking to return to federal court after subsequent state-court rejection of an unexhausted claim, may find their claims time barred. Moreover, because district courts vary substantially in the time they take to rule on habeas petitions, two identically situated prisoners can receive opposite results. If Prisoner A and Prisoner B file mixed petitions in different district courts six months before the federal limitations period expires, and the court takes three months to dismiss Prisoner A‘s petition, but seven months to dismiss Prisoner B‘s petition, Prisoner A will be able to return to federal court after exhausting state remedies, but Prisoner B—due to no fault of his own—may not.
On the other hand, if the words “other collateral review” include federal collateral review, state prisoners whose federal claims have been dismissed for nonexhaustion will simply add to the 1-year limitations period the time they previously spent in both state and federal proceedings. Other things being equal, they will be able to return to federal court after pursuing the state remedies that remain available. And similarly situated prisoners will not suffer different outcomes simply because they file their petitions in different district courts.
The statute‘s language, read by itself, does not tell us whether the words “State post-conviction or other collateral review” include federal habeas proceedings. Rather, it is simply unclear whether Congress intended the word “State” to modify “post-conviction” review alone, or also to modify “other collateral review” (as the majority believes). Indeed, most naturally read, the statute refers to two distinct kinds of applications: (1) applications for “State post-conviction” review and (2) applications for “other collateral review,” a broad category that, on its face, would include applications for federal habeas review. The majority‘s reading requires either an unusual intonation—“State post-conviction-or-other-collateral review“—or a slight rewrite of the language, by inserting the word “State” where it does not appear, between “other” and “collateral.” Regardless, I believe that either reading is possible. The statute‘s words, by themselves, have no singular “plain meaning.”
Neither do I believe that the various interpretive canons to which the majority appeals can solve the problem. Invoking the principle that “‘Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion‘” of particular words, Bates v. United States, 522 U. S. 23, 29-30 (1997) (quoting Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983)), the majority attempts to ascertain Congress’ intent by looking to the tolling provision‘s statutory neighbors. It points to other provisions where Congress explicitly used the
But other statutory neighbors show that, when Congress wished unambiguously to limit tolling to state proceedings, “it knew how to do so.” Custis v. United States, 511 U. S. 485, 492 (1994). In the special tolling provision governing certain capital cases, Congress said explicitly that the limitations period is tolled “from the date on which the first petition for post-conviction review or other collateral relief is filed until the final State court disposition of such petition,” thus making it clear that federal proceedings, for example, petitions for certiorari, do not count.
The majority also believes that only its interpretation gives effect to every word in the statute—in particular the word “State.” It asks: If Congress meant to cover federal habeas review, why does the word “State” appear in the statute? Federal habeas proceedings are a form of post-conviction proceedings. So, had Congress meant to cover them, it would have just said “post-conviction and other collateral review.” See ante, at 174.
But this argument proves too much, for one can ask with equal force: If Congress intended to exclude federal habeas proceedings, why does the word “post-conviction” appear in the statute? State postconviction proceedings are a form of collateral review. So, had Congress meant to exclude federal collateral proceedings, it could have just said “State col-
In fact, this kind of argument, viewed realistically, gets us nowhere. Congress probably picked out “State post-conviction” proceedings from the universe of collateral proceedings and mentioned it separately because state post-conviction proceedings are a salient example of collateral proceedings. But to understand this is not to understand whether the universe from which Congress picked “State post-conviction” proceedings as an example is the universe of all collateral proceedings, or the universe of state collateral proceedings. The statute simply does not say.
Indeed, the majority recognizes that neither the statute‘s language nor the application of canons of construction is sufficient to resolve the problem. It concedes that the phrase “other collateral review,” if construed as “other [state] collateral review,” would add little to the coverage that the words “State post-conviction...review” would provide in its absence. See ante, at 176 (noting that a state criminal conviction is “by far the most common” basis for seeking federal habeas review). The majority resolves this difficulty by noting that “other collateral review” could also include either review of state civil confinement proceedings or state postconviction review to which a State refers by some other name, such as state “habeas” proceedings. See ante, at 176-177.
But it is difficult to believe that Congress had state civil proceedings in mind, given that other provisions within
Faced with this statutory ambiguity, I would look to statutory purposes in order to reach a proper interpretation. And, while I agree that Congress sought to “further the principles of comity, finality, and federalism,” ante, at 178 (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 420, 436 (2000)), I would also ask whether Congress would have intended to create the kind of “unexhausted petition” problem that I described at the outset. The answer is no. Congress enacted a statute that all agree gave state prisoners a full year (plus the duration of state collateral proceedings) to file a federal habeas corpus petition. Congress would not have intended to shorten that time dramatically, at random, and perhaps erase it altogether, “den[ying] the petitioner the protections of the Great Writ entirely,” Lonchar v. Thomas, 517 U. S. 314, 324 (1996), simply because the technical nature of the habeas rules led a prisoner initially to file a petition in the wrong court.
The majority‘s argument assumes a congressional desire to strengthen the prisoners’ incentive to file in state court first. But that is not likely to be the result of today‘s holding. After all, virtually every state prisoner already
Nor is it likely that prisoners will deliberately seek to delay by repeatedly filing unexhausted petitions in federal court, as the Court suggests. See ante, at 180. First, prisoners not under a sentence of death (the vast majority of habeas petitioners) have no incentive to delay adjudication of their claims. Rather, “[t]he prisoner‘s principal interest is in obtaining speedy federal relief.” Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S., at 520. Second, the prisoner who chooses to go into federal court with unexhausted claims runs the risk that the district court will simply deny those claims on the merits, as it is permitted to do, see
Finally, the majority‘s construction of the statute will not necessarily promote comity. Federal courts, understanding that dismissal for nonexhaustion may mean the loss of any opportunity for federal habeas review, may tend to read ambiguous earlier state-court proceedings as having adequately exhausted a federal petition‘s current claims. For similar reasons, wherever possible, they may reach the merits of a federal petition‘s claims without sending the petitioner back to state court for exhaustion. To that extent, the majority‘s interpretation will result in a lesser, not a greater, respect for the state interests to which the majority refers. In addition, by creating pressure to expedite consideration of habeas petitions and to reach the merits of arguably exhausted claims, it will impose a heavier burden on the district courts. (While JUSTICE STEVENS’ sound suggestions that district courts hold mixed petitions in abeyance and employ equitable tolling, see ante, at 182-184 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment), would properly ameliorate some of the unfairness of the majority‘s interpretation, they will also add to the burdens on the district courts in a way that simple tolling for federal habeas petitions would not.)
In two recent cases, we have assumed that Congress did not want to deprive state prisoners of first federal habeas corpus review, and we have interpreted statutory ambiguities accordingly. In Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal, 523 U. S. 637 (1998), we held that a federal habeas petition filed after the initial filing was dismissed as premature should not be deemed a “second or successive” petition barred by
In both Martinez-Villareal and Slack, the Court discerned the purpose of an ambiguous statutory provision by assuming that (absent a contrary indication) congressional purpose would mirror that of most reasonable human beings knowledgeable about the area of the law in question. And the Court kept those purposes firmly and foremost in mind as it sought to understand the statute. See Slack, supra, at 486-487; Martinez-Villareal, supra, at 644 (refusing to adopt an interpretation whose “implications for habeas practice would be far reaching and seemingly perverse“). Today it takes a different approach—an approach that looks primarily, though not exclusively, to linguistic canons to dispel the uncertainties caused by ambiguity. Where statutory language is ambiguous, I believe these priorities are misplaced. Language, dictionaries, and canons, unilluminated by purpose, can lead courts into blind alleys, producing rigid interpretations that can harm those whom the statute affects. If generalized, the approach, bit by bit, will divorce law from the needs, lives, and values of those whom it is meant to serve—a most unfortunate result for a people who live their lives by law‘s light. The Court was right in Martinez-Villareal and Slack to see purpose as key to the statute‘s meaning and to understand Congress as intending the same; it is wrong to reverse its interpretive priorities here.
With respect, I dissent.