Cleveland v. Bradshaw, No. 11-3162 (6th Cir. 2012)
Annotate this CaseCleveland is serving a term of life imprisonment for the 1991 murder of Marsha Blakely. On January 21, 2010, Cleveland filed a habeas petition asserting: actually innocence; that the state presented testimony that it knew, or should have known, was false; that the state failed to disclose favorable evidence; prosecutorial misconduct; and ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel. He argued that his “actual innocence” of the crime mandated equitable tolling of the limitations period and that the discovery of a new factual predicate for his habeas claims entitled him to statutory tolling under 28 U.S.C. 2244(d). The district court dismissed. The Sixth Circuit reversed, finding that Cleveland has presented a credible claim of actual innocence that entitles him to equitable tolling of AEDPA’s one-year limitations period and review of his habeas petition on the merits. The court noted a witness’s unsolicited recantation, evidence that Cleveland was in New York a couple of hours before Blakely’s murder and could not have flown from New York to Ohio in time to commit the murder, and that there was no other evidence tying Cleveland to the crime.
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