Flemming v. Matteson, No. 19-17038 (9th Cir. 2022)
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The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a habeas corpus petition where the district concluded that the petition was timely but denied petitioner's claim on the merits. Relying on Trigueros v. Adams, 658 F.3d 982 (9th Cir. 2011), petitioner argues that the California Court of Appeal's silence on timeliness triggers an exception to the general "look through" rule under which the California Court of Appeal's one-line denial of his petition would presumptively be considered a tacit affirmation of the superior court's finding of untimeliness.
The panel declined to extend Trigueros to new contexts, concluding that there are at least two materially important distinctions between this case and Trigueros. First, Trigueros centers around a ruling from the California Supreme Court, while the case at hand centers around a ruling from the California Court of Appeal. Second, the California Supreme Court in Trigueros ordered "an informal response on the merits," Trigueros, while the California Court of Appeal here merely requested a general "opposition to the petition." Therefore, the panel declined to apply Trigueros in this context and concluded that the government's failure to present certain additional arguments does not prevent it from addressing these matters in this appeal.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus. The panel affirmed the district court’s judgment denying California state prisoner Dajuan Flemming’s habeas corpus petition, in a case in which the district court concluded that Flemming’s petition was timely but denied his claim on the merits. The panel found the petition untimely under the one-year statute of limitations set forth in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Flemming initially sought state habeas relief in August of 2014, but his claims were pending in the California state courts until December 2017—well after AEDPA’s one-year requirement, which means that his subsequently filed federal claims were timely only if his state habeas petitions were themselves timely. The parties disputed whether Flemming’s state habeas petitions were timely filed and thus properly tolled the federal deadline. A California superior court sua sponte held that the habeas claims Flemming filed in that court were untimely, while also concluding that the claims lack merit. After the California Court of Appeal requested and obtained from the government an “opposition to the petition,” that court denied the petition in a one-line order stating that “[t]he petition for a writ of habeas corpus is DENIED.” Flemming filed a subsequent habeas petition with the California Supreme FLEMMING V. MATTESON 3 Court, which, without requesting any response briefing from the government, denied that petition with the same one-line order language. The parties disputed the implication of the California Court of Appeal’s silence on timeliness. Relying on Trigueros v. Adams, 658 F.3d 982 (9th Cir. 2011), which the district court also relied on, Flemming argued that the California Court of Appeal’s silence on timeliness triggers an exception to the general “look through” rule under which the California Court of Appeal’s one-line denial of Flemming’s petition would presumptively be considered a tacit affirmation of the superior court’s finding of untimeliness. Reviewing the procedural history in that case, Trigueros determined that the California Supreme Court’s decision not to address timeliness meant that it rejected the superior court’s holding of untimeliness. Declining to extend Trigueros to new contexts, the panel explained that there are at least two materially important distinctions between this case and Trigueros, which justify following the Supreme Court’s general “look through” presumption: (1) Trigueros, which anchored much of its analysis on the particular order practice of the California Supreme Court, does not purport to address how other courts within the California judiciary conduct their habeas orders practice; and (2) the California Supreme Court in Trigueros ordered “an informal response on the merits,” while the California Court of Appeal here merely requested a general “opposition to the petition,” and the government’s brief addressed both timeliness and the merits. The panel followed Curiel v. Miller, 830 F.3d 864 (9th Cir. 2016) (en banc), and Wilson v. Sellers, 138 S. Ct. 1188 (2018), in deciding not to affirmatively extend Trigueros to this case. The panel noted that a recent California Supreme Court case explaining the state habeas review system, Robinson v. Lewis, 469 P.3d 414 4 FLEMMING V. MATTESON (2020), is consistent with this conclusion. The panel concluded that the government’s failure to present these arguments below does not prevent the panel from addressing these matters in this appeal. Tenth Circuit Judge Lucero concurred. He agreed with the majority that this case is distinguishable from Trigueros, and therefore concurred that Flemming’s petition was untimely under AEDPA. He declined to join the sections of the majority opinion discussing the three post-Trigueros cases—Curiel, Wilson, and Robinson—which are superfluous to the panel’s narrow holding distinguishing Trigueros. Judge Lucero disagreed, moreover, with the majority’s analysis regarding what these cases say about the scope of the Trigueros rule as applied to this dispute. In a separate concurrence joined by Judge Ikuta, Judge VanDyke wrote to explain why Curiel, Wilson, and Robinson do support the panel’s holding. Judge VanDyke wrote that the point in citing these additional authorities is not that any one of them alone mandates the conclusion; each has some differences from the Trigueros decision distinguished by the majority opinion, but each is nonetheless helpful in confirming various aspects of the majority’s analysis.
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