Williams v. Filson, No. 13-99002 (9th Cir. 2018)
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Petitioner appealed the district court's denial of his first federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for an evidentiary hearing on one of petitioner's penalty-phase ineffective assistance of counsel claims.
The panel held that petitioner was entitled to equitable tolling for the period from August 29, 1998, to September 17, 1999, and thus reversed the district court's contrary ruling. The panel remanded for further proceedings as to Claims 1(C), 1(D), 1(E), 1(H), 1(I), 1(J), 9, and 14. In regard to two related claims alleging ineffective assistance of trial counsel, the panel held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying an evidentiary hearing as to Claim 1(A). However, the district court abused its discretion in denying an evidentiary hearing as to Claim (F). Therefore, the panel remanded for the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing so that it may properly assess whether the evidence of petitioner's childhood abuse and trauma -- in combination with the brain damage evidence that was not on its own sufficient -- gave rise to a reasonable probability that the outcome of petitioner's sentencing hearing would have been different. Finally, the panel affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's motion for relief under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b).
Court Description: Habeas Corpus / Death Penalty. The panel affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s denial of Cary Williams’ first federal habeas corpus petition challenging his Nevada murder conviction and death sentence, and remanded for an evidentiary hearing on one of Williams’ penalty-phase ineffective assistance of counsel claims; affirmed the district court’s denial of his motion for relief under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b); and denied Williams’ application to file a second or successive federal habeas petition. The panel held that Williams is entitled to equitable tolling between the date of the one-year AEDPA deadline for filing a federal habeas petition and the date he filed his amended federal petition, and that all of the claims asserted in the amended petition are therefore timely. Because Williams is entitled to equitable tolling even if the claims asserted in the original and amended opinions do not share a common core of operative facts, the panel did not need to decide whether the district court’s application of the relation- back standard from Mayle v. Felix, 545 U.S. 644 (2005), is correct. The panel remanded for further proceedings as to the claims the district court dismissed based solely on the assumed untimeliness of the amended petition. Applying AEDPA deference, the panel held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying an 4 WILLIAMS V. FILSON evidentiary hearing on Williams’ claim that his trial counsel failed to discover and present evidence that he suffers from brain damage. Reviewing de novo, the panel held that the district court did abuse its discretion in denying a hearing on Williams’ claim that trial counsel unreasonably failed to investigate and present substantial mitigating evidence regarding his abusive and traumatic childhood. The panel held that the district court did not err by denying Williams’ request for an evidentiary hearing on his claims that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance during the guilt phase by failing to prepare an adequate defense and during the penalty phase by failing to retain a medical expert who could rebut the state’s evidence that the murder involved torture. The panel held that the district court properly held that it could not consider documentary evidence as to the merits of those claims because Williams did not submit that evidence to the state courts in the manner required under state law. The panel rejected Williams’ separate argument that he is entitled to have the documentary evidence considered under the rule subsequently established in Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U.S. 1 (2012). The panel concluded that the evidence contained in the declarations at issue does not place these claims in a significantly different and stronger posture such that they must be deemed “new” claims not previously presented to state courts. The panel held that Williams’ constitutional challenges to Nevada’s “avoid lawful arrest” aggravating circumstance, Nev. Rev. Stat. § 200.033(5) (1981), lacked merit, even reviewing the merits de novo. The panel rejected Williams’ contention that the aggravated circumstance is facially invalid under the Eighth Amendment because it is too vague and because it fails to adequately narrow the class of death- WILLIAMS V. FILSON 5 eligible defendants. The panel also rejected Williams’ contention that, as applied to him, the aggravating circumstance violates the Ex Post Facto Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because he lacked adequate notice at the time he committed the offense that § 200.033(5) could be applied to the facts of his crime. The panel held that Nev. Rev. Stat. § 34.726, which imposes a general one-year deadline for the filing of petitions for post-conviction relief, is an independent and adequate state procedural bar to federal review. The panel therefore affirmed the district court’s dismissal of several of Williams’ claims as procedurally defaulted under that statute. Because all of the claims asserted in Williams’ amended petition are timely under AEDPA, the panel reversed the district court’s dismissal of five ineffective-assistance claims and remanded for the district court to determine in the first instance whether Williams’ procedural default on those claims is excused under Martinez. The panel assumed without deciding that Williams’ motion under Rule 60(b) was not a disguised second or successive petition. The panel wrote that Williams is not entitled to relief because even if Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016), established the new rule Williams urges, that rule would not apply retroactively in cases on collateral review. The panel wrote that Williams is also not entitled to relief because his Rule 60(b) motion rests on the incorrect premise that the Nevada Supreme Court did not apply a beyond-a- reasonable-doubt standard when it reweighed whether aggravating factors outweighed a mitigating circumstance. The panel denied Williams’ application to file a second or successive petition based on Hurst. 6 WILLIAMS V. FILSON
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