MAYLE, WARDEN v. FELIX
No. 04-563
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Argued April 19, 2005—Decided June 23, 2005
545 U.S. 644
Lisa S. Blatt argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With her on the brief were Acting Solicitor General Clement, Assistant Attorney General Wray, Deputy Solicitor General Dreeben, and Richard A. Friedman.
David M. Porter argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the State of Arizona et al. by Terry Goddard, Attorney General of Arizona, Mary O‘Grady, State Solicitor General, Randall M. Howe, Criminal Appeals Section Chief, Michael O‘Toole, Assistant Attorney General, and Dan Schweitzer, by Roberto J. Sanchez Ramos, Secretary of Justice of Puerto Rico, by Scott J. Nordstrand, Acting Attorney General of Alaska, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Mike Beebe of Arkansas, John W. Suthers of Colorado, M. Jane Brady of Delaware,
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for Albert Alschuler et al. by Seth P. Waxman and David W. Ogden; and for Professor Arthur R. Miller et al. by Carter G. Phillips, Jeffrey T. Green, and Eric A. Shumsky.
JUSTICE GINSBURG delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case involves two federal prescriptions: the one-year limitation period imposed on federal habeas corpus petitioners by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA),
Jacoby Lee Felix, California prisoner and federal habeas petitioner, was convicted in California state court of first-degree murder and second-degree robbery, and received a life sentence. Within the one-year limitation period AEDPA allows for habeas petitions, Felix filed a pro se petition in federal court. He initially alleged, inter alia, that the admission into evidence of videotaped testimony of a witness for the prosecution violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment‘s Confrontation Clause. Five months after the expiration of AEDPA‘s time limit, and eight months after the federal court appointed counsel to represent him, Felix filed
In ordinary civil proceedings, the governing Rule, Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, requires only “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”
The issue before us is one on which federal appellate courts have divided: Whether, under
I
In 1995, after a jury trial in Sacramento, California, respondent Jacoby Lee Felix was found guilty of murder and robbery stemming from his participation in a carjacking in which the driver of the car was shot and killed. App. E to Pet. for Cert. 2-7. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. App. C to Pet. for Cert. 1-2. The current controversy centers on two alleged errors at Felix‘s trial. Both involve the admission of out-of-court statements during the prosecutor‘s case in chief, but the two are otherwise unrelated. One prompted a Fifth Amendment self-incrimination objection originally raised in the trial court, the other, a Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause challenge, also raised in the trial proceedings.
Felix‘s Fifth Amendment claim rested on the prosecution‘s introduction of statements Felix made during pretrial police interrogation. These statements were adduced at trial on direct examination of the investigating officer. Felix urged that the police used coercive tactics to elicit the statements. Id., at 8-9. His Sixth Amendment claim related to the admission of the videotaped statements prosecution witness Kenneth Williams made at a jailhouse interview. The videotape records Williams, a friend of Felix, telling the police that he had overheard a conversation in which Felix described the planned robbery just before it occurred. When Williams testified at trial that he did not recall the police interview, the trial court determined that Williams’ loss of
On direct appeal, Felix urged, inter alia, that the admission of Williams’ videotaped statements violated Felix‘s constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him. He did not, however, argue that admission of his own pretrial statements violated his right to protection against self-incrimination. The intermediate appellate court affirmed Felix‘s conviction and sentence, id., at 10-13, 17, and the California Supreme Court denied his petition for review, App. F to Pet. for Cert. 2. Felix‘s conviction became final on August 12, 1997. App. C to Pet. for Cert. 10.
Under AEDPA‘s one-year statute of limitations, Felix had until August 12, 1998, to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. See
On January 28, 1999, over five months after the August 12, 1998 expiration of AEDPA‘s time limit, and eight months after the appointment of counsel to represent him, Felix filed an amended petition. Id., at 5. In this pleading, he reasserted his Confrontation Clause claim, and also asserted, for the first time post-trial, that his own pretrial statements to
The Magistrate Judge recommended dismissal of Felix‘s Fifth Amendment coerced statements claim. Relation back was not in order, the Magistrate said, because Felix‘s “allegedly involuntary statements to police d[id] not arise out of the same conduct, transaction or occurrence as the videotaped interrogation of [prosecution witness] Kenneth Williams.” Ibid. It did not suffice, the Magistrate observed, that Felix‘s Fifth and Sixth Amendment claims attack the same criminal conviction. Ibid. Adopting the Magistrate Judge‘s report and recommendation in full, the District
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court‘s dismissal of Felix‘s Confrontation Clause claim, but reversed the dismissal of his coerced statements claim and remanded that claim for further proceedings. 379 F. 3d 612 (2004). In the majority‘s view, the relevant “transaction” for purposes of Rule 15(c)(2) was Felix‘s “trial and conviction in state court.” Id., at 615. Defining the transaction at any greater level of specificity, the majority reasoned, would “unduly strai[n] the usual meaning of ‘conduct, transaction, or occurrence‘” by dividing the “trial and conviction [into] a series of perhaps hundreds of individual occurrences.” Ibid. Judge Tallman concurred in part and dissented in part. In his view, defining “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” under
We granted certiorari, 543 U. S. 1042 (2005), to resolve the conflict among Courts of Appeals on relation back of habeas petition amendments. Compare 379 F. 3d, at 614 (if original petition is timely filed, amendments referring to the same trial and conviction may relate back); Ellzey v. United States, 324 F. 3d 521, 525-527 (CA7 2003) (same), with United States v. Hicks, 283 F. 3d 380, 388-389 (CADC 2002) (relevant transaction must be defined more narrowly than the trial and conviction); United States v. Espinoza-Saenz, 235 F. 3d 501, 503-505 (CA10 2000) (same); Davenport v. United States, 217 F. 3d 1341, 1344-1346 (CA11 2000) (same); United States v. Pittman, 209 F. 3d 314, 317-318 (CA4 2000) (same); United States v. Duffus, 174 F. 3d 333, 337 (CA3 1999) (same); United States v. Craycraft, 167 F. 3d 451, 457 (CA8 1999) (same). We now reverse the Ninth Circuit‘s judgment to the extent that it allowed relation back of Felix‘s Fifth Amendment claim.
A
In enacting AEDPA in 1996, Congress imposed for the first time a fixed time limit for collateral attacks in federal court on a judgment of conviction. Section 2244(d)(1) provides: “A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court.” See also
A discrete set of Rules governs federal habeas proceedings launched by state prisoners. See
The Civil Rule governing pleading amendments,
The “original pleading” to which Rule 15 refers is the complaint in an ordinary civil case, and the petition in a habeas proceeding. Under
“CAUTION: You must include in this petition all the grounds for relief from the conviction or sentence that you challenge. And you must state the facts that support each ground. If you fail to set forth all the grounds in this petition, you may be barred from presenting additional grounds at a later date.” Petition for Relief From a Conviction or Sentence By a Person in State Custody, Habeas Corpus Rules, Forms App., 28 U. S. C., p. 685 (2000 ed., Supp. V) (emphasis in original).
A prime purpose of
B
This case turns on the meaning of
The majority of Circuits, mindful of “Congress’ decision to expedite collateral attacks by placing stringent time restrictions on [them],” ibid., define “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” in federal habeas cases less broadly. See id., at 388-389; Espinoza-Saenz, 235 F. 3d, at 503-505; Davenport, 217 F. 3d, at 1344-1346; Pittman, 209 F. 3d, at 317-318; Duffus, 174 F. 3d, at 337; Craycraft, 167 F. 3d, at 457. They allow relation back only when the claims added by amendment arise from the same core facts as the timely filed claims, and not when the new claims depend upon events separate in “both time and type” from the originally raised episodes. Ibid. Because Felix‘s own pretrial statements, newly raised in his amended petition, were separated in time and type from witness Williams’ videotaped statements, raised in Felix‘s original petition, the former would not relate back under the definition of “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” to which most Circuits adhere.
We are not aware, in the run-of-the-mine civil proceedings Rule 15 governs, of any reading of “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” as capacious as the construction the Ninth and Seventh Circuits have adopted for habeas cases. Compare Maegdlin v. International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, 309 F. 3d 1051, 1052 (CA8 2002) (allowing relation back where original complaint alleged that defendant union had breached its duty of fair representation by inadequately representing plaintiff because of his gender, and amended complaint asserted a Title VII gender discrimination claim based on the same differential treatment);
Felix asserts that he seeks, and the Ninth Circuit accorded, no wider range for Rule 15(c)‘s relation-back provision than this Court gave to the Rule‘s key words “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” in Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 323 U. S. 574, 580-581 (1945). We disagree. In Tiller, a railroad worker was struck and killed by a railroad car. His widow sued under the
Felix contends, however, that his amended petition qualifies for relation back because the trial itself is the “transaction” or “occurrence” that counts. See Brief for Respondent 21-23. Citing Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U. S. 760 (2003) (plurality opinion), Felix urges that neither the videotaped interview with witness Williams nor the pretrial police interrogation to which Felix himself was exposed transgressed any constitutional limitation. Until the statements elicited by the police were introduced at trial, Felix argues, he had no actionable claim at all. Both the confrontation right he timely presented and the privilege against self-incrimination he asserted in his amended petition are “trial right[s],” Felix underscores. Brief for Respondent 21 (emphasis deleted). His claims based on those rights, he maintains, are not “separate,” id., at 22; rather, they are related in time and type, for “they arose on successive days during the trial and both
Felix artificially truncates his claims by homing in only on what makes them actionable in a habeas proceeding. We do not here question his assertion that his Fifth Amendment right did not ripen until his statements were admitted against him at trial. See Chavez, 538 U. S., at 766-767. Even so, the essential predicate for his self-incrimination claim was an extrajudicial event, i. e., an out-of-court police interrogation. The dispositive question in an adjudication of that claim would be the character of Felix‘s conduct, not in court, but at the police interrogation, specifically, did he answer voluntarily or were his statements coerced. See Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503, 513-514 (1963) (voluntariness is evaluated by examining the “totality of circumstances” surrounding the “making and signing of the challenged confession“).
Habeas Corpus Rule 2(c), we earlier noted, see supra, at 655-656, instructs petitioners to “specify all [available] grounds for relief” and to “state the facts supporting each ground.” Under that Rule, Felix‘s Confrontation Clause claim would be pleaded discretely, as would his self-incrimination claim. Each separate congeries of facts supporting the grounds for relief, the Rule suggests, would delineate an “occurrence.” Felix‘s approach, the approach that prevailed in the Ninth Circuit, is boundless by comparison. A miscellany of claims for relief could be raised later rather than sooner and relate back, for “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” would be defined to encompass any pretrial, trial, or post-trial error that could provide a basis for challenging the conviction. An approach of that breadth, as the Fourth Circuit observed, “views ‘occurrence’ at too high a level of generality.” Pittman, 209 F. 3d, at 318.6
Congress enacted AEDPA to advance the finality of criminal convictions. See Rhines v. Weber, 544 U. S. 269, 276 (2005). To that end, it adopted a tight time line, a one-year limitation period ordinarily running from “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review,”
Felix urges that an unconstrained reading of Rule 15(c)(2) is not problematic because Rule 15(a) arms district courts with “ample power” to deny leave to amend when justice so requires. See Brief for Respondent 31-33. Under that Rule, once a responsive pleading has been filed, a prisoner may amend the petition “only by leave of court or by written consent of the adverse party.”
Our rejection of Felix‘s translation of same “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” to mean same “trial, conviction, or sentence” scarcely leaves
As to the question presented, for the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE SOUTER, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS joins, dissenting.
This case requires the Court to decide how the relation back provision of
I
At the outset, there is need for care in understanding the narrow scope of the problem this case presents. A habeas petitioner‘s opportunity to amend as a matter of course, without permission of the trial court, exists only before the responsive pleading is served, and even then only once.
The limited opportunity to amend also supplies perspective on the claim that Felix‘s reading of the relation back rule would undermine the 1-year limitation period of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) and the statute‘s concomitant concern for finality of judgments. See ante, at 662, 663. In fact, AEDPA‘s objectives bear little weight in the analysis, because the very point of every relation back rule is to qualify a statute of limitations, and
II
Felix‘s disputed right to amend with relation back effect turns entirely, as the Court says, ante, at 656, on how nar-
The text alone does not tell us the answer, for either the facts specific to the claim or the trial as a whole could be the relevant “conduct, transaction, or occurrence.” The Court assumes that the former approach is correct and then proceeds to explain, based on that assumption, the infirmity of a contrary approach. For example, the Court asserts that under Felix‘s rule, “all manner of factually and temporally unrelated conduct may be raised after the statute of limitations has run. . . .” Ante, at 658, n. 5. But in saying this the Court presumes that the relevant transaction is what occurred outside the courtroom. Felix‘s entire argument is that the proper transaction is instead what occurred in court, namely, the imposition of the conviction that justifies the challenged custody. If he is right, then the Court‘s assertion is incorrect, for what Felix seeks to add is a claim not about
The Court also cautions that “it would be anomalous to allow relation back under
Nor is there any policy underlying the particular habeas pleading rule that requires a more grudging relation back standard. As the Court concedes, ante, at 656, the purpose of the heightened pleading standard in habeas cases is to help a district court weed out frivolous petitions before call-
While considerations based on habeas pleading fail to pan out with support for Mayle‘s restricted reading of
Then there are a number of indications that Congress would not want the rule read narrowly, the first centering on the word “transaction.” That term not only goes to the breadth of relation back, but also to the scope of claim preclusion. E. g., Kremer v. Chemical Constr. Corp., 456 U. S. 461, 482, n. 22 (1982) (“Res judicata has recently been taken to bar claims arising from the same transaction even if brought under different statutes . . .“); accord, 1 Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 24(1) (1980) (“[T]he claim extinguished includes all rights with respect to all or any part of the transaction, or series of connected transactions, out of which the action arose“). For purposes of claim preclusion in habeas cases, the scope of “transaction” is crucial in applying AEDPA‘s limitation on second or successive petitions: with very narrow exceptions, federal habeas limits a prisoner to only one petition challenging his conviction or sentence. See
There is, rather, a fair indication that Congress would have intended otherwise, in the fact that it has already placed limits on the right of some habeas petitioners to amend their petitions. In Chapter 154 of Title 28, providing special procedures for habeas cases brought by petitioners subject to capital sentences in certain States, Congress specifically prohibited amendment of the original habeas petitions after the filing of the answer, except on the grounds specified for second or successive petitions under
The Court of Appeals got it right, and I respectfully dissent.