Catchings v. Fisher, No. 13-60823 (5th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePetitioner, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison, filed a 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for habeas corpus relief. The district court dismissed the petition as untimely and denied petitioner's request for a certificate of appealability (COA). However, this court granted a COA on the question of whether petitioner's federal habeas petition was untimely following the Supreme Court's unexplained denial on direct appeal of his apparently untimely petition for certiorari. The court affirmed the district court's judgment, declining to read the Supreme Court’s apparent practice of denying late petitions without explanation, rather than simply refusing to file them, as reviving the direct review of tardy petitioners for purposes of section 2244(d)(1)(A). In this case, that petitioner eventually filed a petition for certiorari, a year late, does not mean that the limitations period did not begin to run when he missed the deadline for doing so - or that he does not fall into Gonzalez v. Thaler’s second category of petitioners, those who do not pursue direct review all the way to the Supreme Court because “no petition is filed.”
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