Charles Roger Jorss v. James H. Gomez, Director

266 F.3d 955, 2001 Daily Journal DAR 9589, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 19593, 2001 WL 1002064

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: September 4, 2001
• Docket: 99-16986
• Status: Published

Opinions

Opinion by Judge TALLMAN: Dissent by Judge WALLACE.

RICHARD C. TALLMAN, Circuit Judge:

Charles Roger Jorss, a California state prisoner, appeals pro se the district court’s dismissal of his habeas petition as time-barred under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d). Jorss argues that equitable tolling should apply because he diligently pursued his claims and his petitions were found to be time-barred due to extraordinary circumstances beyond his control. We agree and reverse.

I

Jorss is serving 188 years for forcible sexual molestation under a sentence imposed by the Santa Cruz County Superior Court on May 5, 1994. The one-year statute of limitation period under the Antiter-rorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) began to run in Jorss’s case on April 24, 1996. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1); Miles v. Prunty, 187 F.3d 1104, 1107 (9th Cir.1999). However, due to statutory tolling, the time did not elapse while Jorss was properly pursuing his state post-conviction remedies. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2); Nino v. Galaza, 183 F.3d 1003, 1006-07 (9th Cir.1999).

On September 27, 1995, the California Supreme Court denied his petition for review on direct appeal. That petition raised three claims. On February 20, 1997, Jorss filed a state habeas petition containing nine additional claims. Then on April 18, 1997, while this state petition was still pending before the California Supreme Court, Jorss filed a timely § 2254 petition and a motion to stay the federal petition pending exhaustion of his state claims. On April 22, 1997, a deputy clerk for the Northern District of California returned his § 2254 petition and motion, refusing to file it or to refer it to a United States district judge for review on the merits.

On May 28, 1997, the California Supreme Court denied Jorss’s habeas petition and, under the California Rules of Court, the decision became final 30 days later on June 27, 1997. On July 7, 1997, Jorss filed a subsequent § 2254 petition raising a total of 12 claims including the nine claims recently rejected by the California Supreme Court and the three claims which had been raised and rejected on direct appeal to the California Supreme Court in 1995. This subsequent petition is not a “second or successive petition” within the meaning of AEDPA because the initial petition submitted to federal court was not filed by the clerk.

On August 5, 1997, the district court erroneously concluded that three of the 12 claims had not been exhausted because Jorss had raised only the other nine claims in his state habeas corpus petition. Accordingly, it summarily dismissed the § 2254 petition for failure to exhaust state remedies without prejudice to refiling. Because the district court erroneously found that the July 7, 1997, petition included both unexhausted claims and exhausted claims, the district court dismissed without prejudice what it wrongly concluded was a “mixed” petition. Notwithstanding its error, the district court should have dismissed with leave to amend or otherwise provided Jorss with the opportunity to delete the ostensibly “unexhausted” claims prior to entry of judgment of dismissal. See James v. Giles, 221 F.3d 1074, 1077 (9th Cir.2000).

Jorss promptly sought reconsideration.¹ Six days after the court’s dismissal, on August 11, 1997, he re-filed his § 2254 petition, raising the same 12 claims which were all legally exhausted. The filing of this subsequent petition is also not a “second or successive petition” under AEDPA because none of the previously submitted petitions were adjudicated on the merits. See Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 475, 120 S.Ct. 1595, 146 L.Ed.2d 542 (2000). Two years later, on April 12, 1999, the district court dismissed this § 2254 petition as time-barred under AEDPA. Jorss timely appeals. The district court granted a Certificate of Appealability as to “whether equitable tolling applied.”

II

We have permitted the equitable tolling of AEDPA’s limitation period “only if extraordinary circumstances beyond a prisoner’s control make it impossible to file a petition on time.” Miles, 187 F.3d at 1107. See Tillema v. Long, No. 00-15974 (9th Cir. Aug. 3, 2001). In Miles, we recognized that despite the fact that the petitioner diligently prepared and submitted his petition a few days before the expiration of his time under AEDPA, the prison officials caused the petition to be submitted after his time had expired. See 187 F.3d at 1107. We held that the delay resulting from the prison authorities’ failure to mail his petition to the district court was beyond petitioner’s control and was an extraordinary circumstance. See id.

Here, we hold that the district court’s erroneous dismissal of Jorss’s prior petitions as unexhausted, rather than his lack of diligence, accounts for his failure to timely file a § 2254 petition. Because he has demonstrated that extraordinary circumstances beyond his control prevented him from timely filing a federal habeas petition, the statute of limitation during which his previous petition was pending in federal court is equitably tolled. See id. The district court should address the petition on the merits.

VACATED and REMANDED.

1 . Contrary to the dissent’s analysis, this case is significantly different from cases such as Green v. White, 223 F.3d 1001, 1002 (9th Cir.2000), where the petitioner had accepted the proper dismissal of his truly mixed petition and, after exhausting state remedies, filed his renewed petition and attempted to have it relate back to an earlier, properly dismissed petition. In that circumstance, we rejected the argument that the petition relates back in time as an amendment because nothing remained of the earlier proceeding. See id. Here, Jorss did not accept the dismissal of a mixed petition and return to state court in August 1997. He actively litigated the propriety of the dismissal. Cf. Anthony v. Cambra, 236 F.3d 568, 574 n. 1 (9th Cir.2000) (distinguishing Green, Van Tran v. Lindsey, 212 F.3d 1143 (9th Cir.2000), and Henry v. Lungren, 164 F.3d 1240 (9th Cir.1999) on the fact of acceptance). Furthermore, neither of Jorss’s dismissed petitions was truly mixed. They each contained only legally exhausted claims and thus the dismissals were not proper. Accordingly, case law interpreting the acceptance of proper dismissals of mixed petitions is inapposite. The only issue properly before us is the availability of equitable tolling due to extraordinary circumstances beyond Jorss's control.