Allen v. Siebert and Statutes of Limitation and Claim Filing Deadlines

This case represents the fairly unusual situation where certiorari is sought on an issue that the Court has expressed an opinion while the case is still proceeding through the lower court system. In such a case, as here, the Court may grant cert. and then immediately, without oral argument, issue a per curiam opinion. It did so here, but the 7-2 opinion reversing the 11th Circuit should probably have told the Court that something is "up" here on how it uses language and how it looks at statutes of limitations and filing deadlines in law. In fact, I think the Court is currently layering its jurisprudence with unclear rules of law under using the following confusing terminology: 'jurisdictional,' 'procedural bar,' 'claim-filing notice' and 'very initiation of a petition.' Someone will sort all this out some day, but this essay won't do it--I am just writing about this case.

The Issue Below

This case concerns whether Allen, a man on Alabama's Death Row, timely filed his papers for post-conviction review. Here are some facts. His conviction and sentence of death was affirmed on appeal, and the "certificate of judgment" issued on May 22, 1990. Under Alabama law at the time, he had two years from the date of issuing of such certificate to submit a petition for state post-conviction relief (former Rule 32.2(c) of the Ala. Rules of Crim. Proc.). So, as is normal in death penalty cases, his attorney first petitioned the US Supreme Court for direct review. This petition was denied on Nov. 5, 1990. Probably thinking that the two year period of Rule 32.2(c) meant two years from the time of denial of cert. petition, Allen's lawyer submitted his state post-conviction petition on August 25, 1992. The state courts denied the petition as untimely, because it was filed about three months after the two years, from May 22, 1990, had elapsed. Finally, on Sept. 15, 2000, the Alabama Court denied review of Allen's claim. You kind of wonder why things took eight years to get there, but, as Lincoln said (quoting even a better source), 'let us judge not, lest we be judged.'

So, he was "timed out" at the state level and moved to the federal appeals. According to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA," 22 USC sec. 2254), a person must file a federal habeas corpus claim within a year from the close of state proceedings. This one year period could be tolled (i.e., "stopped"), however, while "a properly filed application for State post-conviction or other collateral review with respect to the pertinent judgment or claim is pending." Well, just to be safe, Mr. Allen's attorney filed his AEDPA claim on Sept. 15, 2001, a year less a day from the state Supreme Court's denial of cert.

Federal Court Decisions/Supreme Court Decision

But then, like in the movie Groundhog Day, Allen's nightmare's seemed to recur. The district court rejected the claim because it decided that since the state claim for postconviction relef was rejected by the state court back in 1992 (when it was untimely filed), it was not "properly filed" for purposes of AEDPA. This meant that the state proceedings had not closed in 2000 but, in fact, had finished several years earlier. Thus, no federal remedy either. The 11th Circuit reversed, telling the district court that "properly filed" had to do with the content of the petition and not its timing. It remanded the case to the district court. While the district court was mulling the remand order, the US Supreme Court issued its Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 US 408 (2005), decision. Pace held that a state postconviction petition rejected by the state court as untimely is not "properly filed" within the meaning of AEDPA. Hence, we seem to have a slam-dunk here. Since Allen had not timely filed his state claim, it wasn't properly filed. His case had "timed out." T Yet, the 11th Circuit reversed again and remanded. So as not to turn this into a ping-pong match, the US Supreme Court stepped in to weigh in on the issue in November 2007.

It said, in its Nov. 5 per curiam opinion, that Pace controls here. Since Allen's petition was not "timely filed" under state law, the "tolling" provision of AEDPA didn't apply to him. Then, citing another case, the Supreme Court said that AEDPA's one year time-line would run, in this case, from the effective date of AEDPA, which was in 1996. Therefore, Allen's 2001 petition was late, by four years. Case closed.

The upshot of all this is that Allen, to quote Maxwell Smart--Secret Agent 86, missed by "that much." He never therefore got his case heard on the merits because a continuing series of deadlines, which seemed to be related to earlier deadlines, which earlier deadline he has missed by 3 months (because his lawyer probably misread the procedural rule), meant that his case wasn't heard. I think that Justices Stevens and Ginsburg dissented from the per curiam opinion because they thought that something was wrong here. Why can't a person get his claim heard if he was three months late, when it has taken five courts 15 years to tell him that he was three months late? At least, this is my way of stating this case.

In the end, however, the Court descended into language of "claim-filing" vs. "jurisidictional" vs. "procedural bar" deadlines that does nothing to clarify anything. I predict it will immire the Court for years to come, even as the Court is trying to clarify how statutes of limitations relate to "jurisdictional bars." So, even though the Court dispensed of this with a heave-ho, which I guess means that Mr. Allen will face execution pretty soon, I think they create more problems than they solved with this decision. Just think. If you are going to execute someone, and it takes you 15 years to say so, why can't someone look at the merits of his petition in that time? It is all a bit ridiculous, if you ask me.

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