Philip Walter Jones v. Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections , 906 F.3d 1339 ( 2018 )

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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 17-10693
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 3:14-cv-00757-BJD-JBT
PHILIP WALTER JONES,
Petitioner - Appellant,
versus
SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
ATTORNEY GENERAL, STATE OF FLORIDA,
Respondents - Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
________________________
(October 29, 2018)
Before WILSON and NEWSOM, Circuit Judges, and VINSON,∗ District Judge.
∗
Honorable C. Roger Vinson, United States District Judge for the Northern District of
Florida, sitting by designation.
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VINSON, District Judge:
In June 2006, the petitioner, Philip Walter Jones, was convicted in a Florida
state court of aggravated domestic battery (for shooting his wife) and sentenced to
20 years incarceration. After his conviction became final on September 18, 2007,
he filed numerous motions for post-conviction relief in state court (including two
petitions for habeas corpus; two motions to correct illegal sentence under Florida
Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.800; and a petition for writ of mandamus), but only
one of his several motions requires our attention. Specifically, on September 19,
2013—a full six years after his conviction became final—the petitioner moved to
vacate his sentence based on newly discovered evidence under Rule 3.850 of the
Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure. He alleged in this motion that he had only
recently discovered that his trial counsel failed to tell him that the prosecutor had
offered a pre-trial plea deal with ten years imprisonment, and that if he had been
told of the plea offer at that time he would have accepted it instead of going to trial
where, as noted, he was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years. He argued that his
lawyer’s failure to tell him about a plea offer that he would have accepted and that
would have cut his prison time in half constituted “ineffective assistance of counsel
[that] prejudiced him.” The state trial court denied the motion by written order on
November 6, 2013 (Trial Court Order), and Florida’s First District Court of Appeal
summarily affirmed without opinion on April 15, 2014.
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Two months later, on June 27, 2014, the petitioner filed a federal petition for
habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
The respondents moved to dismiss the federal petition as untimely. In granting the
motion, the District Court held that the Rule 3.850 Motion was not “properly filed”
in the state court and thus did not toll the one-year statute of limitations in the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which (without tolling)
expired nine days before he filed his federal petition. The petitioner subsequently
filed this appeal pro se, and we appointed him counsel and granted a Certificate of
Appealability (COA) on one issue: whether the Rule 3.850 Motion was a “properly
filed” tolling motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2), such that the District Court
erred in dismissing his federal petition as time-barred. 1
Therefore, the only question for us to decide is whether the petitioner’s Rule
3.850 Motion was properly filed in state court so that it tolled ADEPA’s one-year
statute of limitations. If it was properly filed, his federal petition was timely (and
the District Court erred in dismissing it); if it wasn’t, then his petition was untimely
(and the District Court did not err). After carefully reviewing the briefs and record
1
The petitioner argues that he is entitled to equitable tolling in the alternative to statutory
tolling under Section 2244(d)(2). However, our review is cabined by the COA, so that argument
is not properly before us. Murray v. United States, 145 F.3d 1249, 1251 (11th Cir. 1998) (“[W]e
hold that in an appeal brought by an unsuccessful habeas petitioner, appellate review is limited to
the issues specified in the COA.”).
3
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de novo, 2 and having the benefit of oral argument, we find that the District Court
did not err and we affirm.
I.
A.
We begin our analysis with some brief history and basic legal principles.
The writ of habeas corpus is “‘the most celebrated writ in the English law.’” Fay
v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 399-400 (1963) (quoting 3 Blackstone, Commentaries 129).
“It is ‘a writ antecedent to statute, and throwing its root deep into the genius of our
common law. . . . It is perhaps the most important writ known to the constitutional
law of England, affording as it does a swift and imperative remedy in all cases of
illegal restraint or confinement.’” Id. at 400 (quoting Secretary of State for Home
Affairs v. O’Brien (1923) A.C. 603, 609 (H.L.)). The “Great Writ” was received
into our own law in the colonial period, id., and it is now codified by statute. See,
e.g., 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (providing that federal courts shall entertain habeas petitions
filed by state prisoners); 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (providing same for federal prisoners).
Pursuant to the former statute—the one relevant to this case—a state prisoner may
bring a petition for habeas corpus in federal court “only on the ground that he is in
2
See, e.g., Chavers v. Secretary, Florida Dep’t of Corr., 468 F.3d 1273, 1274 (11th Cir.
2006) (“We review de novo a district court’s denial of a habeas petition as untimely.”) (citing
Nix v. Secretary for the Dep’t of Corr., 393 F.3d 1235, 1236 (11th Cir. 2004), cert. denied, 545
U.S. 1114 (2005)).
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custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.”
28 U.S.C. § 2254(a).
Like all good things, however, the writ may be (and has been) abused. See
Woodard v. Hutchins, 464 U.S. 377 (1984); see also, e.g., McCleskey v. Zant, 499
U.S. 467, 496 (1991) (“The writ of habeas corpus is one of the centerpieces of our
liberties. ‘But the writ has potentialities for evil as well as for good. Abuse of the
writ may undermine the orderly administration of justice and therefore weaken the
forces of authority that are essential for civilization.’”) (citation omitted). In years
past, federal courts were “deluged with a flood” of habeas petitions, and statistics
from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts showed that only a very
small percentage of the petitions were meritorious. See John J. Parker, Limiting
the Abuse of Habeas Corpus, 8 F.R.D. 171, 172 & n.3 (1948) (noting that between
the years 1943-1945, for example, relief was granted in just 76 of the 3,126 federal
petitions filed during that period).
Against this historical backdrop, Congress enacted AEDPA in 1996, which,
among other things, “included many significant restrictions on the availability of
post-conviction relief in the federal courts” and “‘incorporate[d] reforms to curb
the abuse of the statutory writ of habeas corpus[.]’” See Medberry v. Crosby, 351
F.3d 1049, 1058 (11th Cir. 2003) (quoting H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 104-518, at p. 111
(1996), reprinted in 1996 U.S.C.C.A.N. 944, 944).
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In relevant part, AEDPA requires that a state prisoner seeking habeas relief
under Section 2254 must bring his federal petition within a year from the date that
his state conviction becomes “final,” either by the conclusion of his direct review
or the expiration of time to seek such review. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(A); accord
Carey v. Saffold, 536 U.S. 214, 216 (2002). This one-year statute of limitations
will be tolled, however, for “[t]he time during which a properly filed application
for State post-conviction or other collateral review” is pending in the state court.
28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2) (emphasis added).
B.
In Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408 (2005), the United States Supreme
Court expressly held that a state court motion for post-conviction relief cannot be
considered “properly filed” for tolling under Section 2244(d)(2) if the motion was
untimely under state law. That case has significant—and potentially dispositive—
bearing on this appeal. Before getting to Pace, however, and in order to properly
understand it, we have to discuss an earlier Supreme Court case: Artuz v. Bennett,
531 U.S. 4 (2000).
In Artuz, the Supreme Court was called upon to decide if an application for
state post-conviction relief that contained a claim that was procedurally barred by
New York law was “properly filed” within the meaning of Section 2244(d)(2).
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531 U.S. at 5. In deciding that question (which it answered in the affirmative), the
Supreme Court said the following:
An application is “filed,” as that term is commonly understood, when
it is delivered to, and accepted by, the appropriate court officer for
placement into the official record. And an application is “properly
filed” when its delivery and acceptance are in compliance with the
applicable laws and rules governing filings. These usually prescribe,
for example, the form of the document, the time limits upon its
delivery, the court and office in which it must be lodged, and the
requisite filing fee. In some jurisdictions the filing requirements also
include, for example, preconditions imposed on particular abusive
filers, or on all filers generally. But in common usage, the question
whether an application has been “properly filed” is quite separate
from the question whether the claims contained in the application are
meritorious and free of procedural bar.
***
The state procedural bars at issue in this case—N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law
§§ 440.10(2)(a) and (c) (McKinney 1994)—simply prescribe a rule of
decision for a court confronted with claims that were “previously
determined on the merits upon an appeal from the judgment” of
conviction or that could have been raised on direct appeal but were
not: “[T]he court must deny” such claims for relief. Neither provision
purports to set forth a condition to filing, as opposed to a condition to
obtaining relief. Motions to vacate that violate these provisions will
not be successful, but they have been properly delivered and accepted
so long as the filing conditions have been met. Consequently, the
alleged failure of respondent’s application to comply with §§
440.10(2)(a) and (c) does not render it “[im]properly filed” for
purposes of § 2244(d)(2).
Id. at 8-11 (internal citations and footnote omitted). After noting that time limits
on post-conviction motions are “condition[s] to filing,” so that an untimely motion
would not be regarded as “properly filed,” the Supreme Court went on to say: “We
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express no view on the question whether the existence of certain exceptions to a
timely filing requirement can prevent a late application from being considered
improperly filed.” See id. at 8, 11 & n.2 (emphasis added). Five years later, the
Court in Pace had to confront the precise question that it left unanswered in Artuz.
In Pace, a state prisoner in Pennsylvania filed a petition for post-conviction
relief pursuant to the Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA). 544 U.S.
at 410. The PCRA rendered untimely any petition filed more than a year after the
judgment became final—unless the petition alleged and the petitioner could prove
that he fell within one of three exceptions, including that the facts upon which the
claim was predicated were both unknown to the petitioner and could not have been
discovered with due diligence. Id. at 410-11 & n.1; accord id. at 422 n.4 (Stevens,
J., dissenting). The Pennsylvania Superior Court dismissed the petitioner’s petition
as untimely after it found that he had “neither alleged nor proven” that he satisfied
one of the three statutory exceptions. Id. at 411. The petitioner subsequently filed
a federal habeas petition, and the respondent moved to dismiss it as untimely. Id.
at 411-12. The District Court recognized that, without tolling, the federal petition
was indeed time-barred. Id. at 412. Nevertheless, it concluded that the petitioner
was entitled to statutory tolling for the time that his PCRA petition was pending in
state court. Id. In so holding, the District Court found that, even though the state
court had rejected his PCRA petition as untimely, that did not prevent the petition
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from being “properly filed” within the meaning of § 2244(d)(2). Id. It reasoned
that because the PCRA provided judicially reviewable exceptions to the one-year
time limit, that time limit wasn’t a “condition to filing” but, rather, a “condition to
obtaining relief” as the Supreme Court had described those “distinct concepts” in
Artuz. Id. On appeal, the Third Circuit reversed, and the Supreme Court affirmed,
holding:
As in Artuz, we are guided by the “common usage” and “commo[n]
underst[anding]” of the phrase “properly filed.” Id., at 8, 9, 121 S. Ct.
361. In common understanding, a petition filed after a time limit, and
which does not fit within any exceptions to that limit, is no more
“properly filed” than a petition filed after a time limit that permits no
exception. The purpose of AEDPA’s statute of limitations confirms
this commonsense reading. On petitioner’s theory, a state prisoner
could toll the statute of limitations at will simply by filing untimely
state postconviction petitions. This would turn § 2244(d)(2) into a de
facto extension mechanism, quite contrary to the purpose of AEDPA,
and open the door to abusive delay.
***
. . . [Petitioner] asserts that “condition[s] to filing” are merely those
conditions necessary to get a clerk to accept the petition, as opposed
to conditions that require some judicial consideration. [Respondent]
characterizes petitioner’s position . . . as a juridical game of “hot
potato,” in which a petition will be “properly filed” so long as a
petitioner is able to hand it to the clerk without the clerk tossing it
back. Be that as it may, petitioner’s theory is inconsistent with Artuz,
where we explained that jurisdictional matters and fee payments, both
of which often necessitate judicial scrutiny, are “condition[s] to
filing.” See 531 U.S., at 9, 121 S. Ct. 361. We fail to see how
timeliness is any less a “filing” requirement than the mechanical rules
that are enforceable by clerks, if such rules exist.
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544 U.S. at 413-15 (internal citation and footnote omitted). In short, the Supreme
Court held that “time limits, no matter their form, are ‘filing’ conditions. Because
the state court rejected petitioner’s PCRA petition as untimely, it was not ‘properly
filed,’ and he is not entitled to statutory tolling under § 2244(d)(2).” Id. at 417.
This Court has recognized that “[t]he key takeaway from Pace is that an
untimely application was not, and could not ever have been considered, properly
filed.” Hernandez-Alberto v. Secretary, Florida Dep’t of Corr., 840 F.3d 1360,
1366 (11th Cir. 2016). But that, of course, does not answer the question we face
here: was the Rule 3.850 Motion an “untimely application” under state law?
II.
Florida’s Rule 3.850(b)(1) provides as follows:
(b) Time Limitations. A motion to vacate a sentence that exceeds
the limits provided by law may be filed at any time. No other motion
shall be filed or considered pursuant to this rule if filed more than 2
years after the judgment and sentence become final unless it alleges
that
(1) the facts on which the claim is predicated were unknown to the
movant or the movant’s attorney and could not have been ascertained
by the exercise of due diligence, and the claim is made within 2 years
of the time the new facts were or could have been discovered with the
exercise of due diligence[.]
As previously noted, the petitioner argued in his Rule 3.850 Motion that his
trial counsel had been ineffective for not informing him about the plea offer from
the prosecutor. In arguing that his motion was timely (even though it was filed six
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years after his judgment and sentence became final, and thus well beyond the two
years set out in the rule), he alleged in his motion that he had only recently learned
of the plea offer and that he could not have learned of it earlier with the exercise of
due diligence. With these allegations, the petitioner was attempting to satisfy the
exception to untimeliness provided in Rule 3.850(b)(1).
The state trial court denied the motion. Because the parties disagree about
what the trial court actually held in its order—and because the petitioner contends
that this appeal largely turns on what the state court held or did not hold—we will
quote the Trial Court Order almost in full. In denying the Rule 3.850 Motion, the
state trial court said:
On June 7, 2006, following a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of
one count of Aggravated Battery, and sentenced to a term of twenty
(20) years incarceration. Defendant’s conviction and sentence were
affirmed on appeal through a Mandate issued by the First District
Court of Appeal on June 20, 2007.
***
In the instant Motion, Defendant avers that he has recently discovered
that his trial counsel failed to convey a ten-year plea offer from the
State. He further states that had such a plea offer been conveyed, he
would have taken the offer rather than go to trial.
To be considered newly discovered, evidence must have been
unknown by the trial court, by the party, or by counsel at the time of
trial, and it must appear that defendant or his counsel could not have
known of it by the use of diligence. Newly discovered evidence must
be filed within two (2) years of the date that the evidence could have
been discovered through the use [sic] due diligence.
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Defendant’s allegations do not meet the parameters of newly
discovered evidence. On April 29, 2010, while under oath at a Rule
3.850 evidentiary hearing, trial counsel testified that he reviewed “any
potential offers the State had made” and that Defendant rejected any
and all State Offers. Assuming arguendo that counsel did fail to
convey a ten-year offer, Defendant had the opportunity to discover the
offer in question within the two-year time limit imposed by Rule
3.850. On July 19, 2007, Defendant filed a petition for writ of
mandamus for trial counsel’s records, in which he requested copies of
all communication from the state attorney’s office. Defendant is not
entitled to relief for this claim.
Finally, upon review of the instant Motion in conjunction with the
record, this Court finds the instant Motion to be frivolous. Defendant
is, therefore, cautioned that if he continues to file frivolous pro se
motions, he will be referred to the Department of Corrections for the
imposition of disciplinary proceedings in accordance with section
944.279(1), Florida Statutes, which may include the forfeiture of gain
time pursuant to section 944.28(2)(a), Florida Statutes.
Trial Court Order at 1-3 (internal citations, quotation marks, and brackets omitted).
III.
In considering the petitioner’s federal habeas petition, the District Court (as
we just did) quoted at length from the state court’s order denying the Rule 3.850
Motion. Jones v. Secretary, DOC, 2017 WL 275796, at *2-*3 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 20,
2017). After reviewing the order, the District Court found that the state court had
rejected the Rule 3.850 Motion as untimely, even though the state court appeared
to have “also reached the merits of the claim” when it found the claim “frivolous.”
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See id. at *3. 3 Consequently, the District Court held that the Rule 3.850 Motion
was not “properly filed” under Pace. See id. (citing Losey v. McNeil, 2008 WL
4693139, at *5 (N.D. Fla. Oct. 21, 2008) (Vinson, J.), in turn citing Pace). The
petitioner contends on appeal that the District Court’s ruling was wrong for two
reasons.
A.
The petitioner first argues that the state court did not actually find the Rule
3.850 Motion untimely. See Pet. Brief at 17. He says that, “in denying Mr. Jones’
Rule 3.850 motion, the state court ruled on the merits of Mr. Jones’ new-evidence
allegations; it did not rule on whether his motion was untimely on its face.” Id. at
13-14. The petitioner points out that the state court “never mentioned the word
‘untimely,’” and he goes so far as to suggest that it “never [even] alluded to the
issue of timeliness.” Id. at 18. According to the petitioner, these omissions are
significant because a state court’s ruling that a post-conviction motion is untimely
must be clear and unambiguous. Id. at 17-18. He calls this a “rule,” and he claims
3
The District Court cited to Sweet v. Secretary, Florida Dep’t of Corr., 467 F.3d 1311
(11th Cir. 2006), which in turn cited Carey, supra, for the proposition that “when a state court
determines that a petition is untimely, and also rejects the substantive claim on the merits, the
timeliness decision standing alone compels a federal court to conclude that the state motion was
not ‘properly filed.’” See Sweet, 467 F.3d at 1318; see also Carey, 536 U.S. at 226 (stating that
if the state court finds a post-conviction motion untimely, that finding conclusively resolves the
issue, “regardless of whether it also addressed the merits of the claim, or whether its timeliness
ruling was ‘entangled’ with the merits”).
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that it is “consistent” with the so-called “plain-statement rule” the Supreme Court
applies to state court rulings that pertain to procedural bars. Id. at 18 n.4 (quoting
Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255, 263 (1989) (“[A] procedural default does not bar
consideration of a federal claim on . . . habeas review unless the last state court
rendering a judgment in the case ‘clearly and expressly’ states that its judgment
rests on a state procedural bar.”) (emphasis added)). We disagree with petitioner
on both the law and with his interpretation of the Trial Court Order.
Preliminarily, the petitioner has not cited any case law—and we are aware
of none—holding that state courts must use particular words or phrases in ruling on
the untimeliness of a post-conviction motion. Magic words are not required. Nor
does a state court’s ruling have to be clear and unambiguous. To the contrary, the
state court doesn’t even have to make a timeliness ruling at all before a federal
court can find that it was untimely and not “properly filed” for Section 2244(d)(2)
purposes. See generally Evans v. Chavis, 546 U.S. 189 (2006); see also id. at 207-
08 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) (noting that because untimeliness rulings
“need not be explicitly stated,” it is “sometimes easy and sometimes difficult” to
ascertain what, if anything, the state court actually determined as to timeliness; the
“easiest cases” are those where the state court “expressly states that a petition was
either untimely or timely,” whereas the more “difficult . . . cases” are those where
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the state court “rules on the merits without any comment on timeliness”) (emphasis
added). 4
Take Gorby v. McNeil, 530 F.3d 1363 (11th Cir. 2008), for example. In that
case, the Supreme Court of Florida had reviewed the trial court’s denial of a Rule
3.851 motion—the capital version of Rule 3.850—where the movant sought relief
based on Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) (barring testimonial hearsay
under the Confrontation Clause unless the witness is unavailable and defendant had
prior opportunity for cross-examination). The state trial court originally denied the
motion as untimely and the Supreme Court of Florida affirmed, but it “did not state
explicitly that Petitioner’s motion was time-barred under Florida law[.]” 530 F.3d
at 1367. Instead, Florida’s Supreme Court denied the Rule 3.851 motion “based on
our decision in Chandler.” Id. 5 Without any language “explicitly” saying that the
Supreme Court of Florida denied the Rule 3.851 motion as untimely, the petitioner
argued there (just as petitioner does here) that the state court decided the motion on
4
The petitioner notes in his brief that in Sweet, supra, we relied on an “unambiguous”
finding of untimeliness in holding that that the petitioner’s state court motion wasn’t properly
filed. See 467 F.3d at 1318 (“when a state court unambiguously rules that a post-conviction
petition is untimely under state law, we must respect that ruling and conclude that the petition
was not ‘properly filed’ for the purposes of § 2244(d)(2)”) (emphasis added). Sweet, in turn,
cited Carey, supra, where the Supreme Court said that: “If the California Supreme Court had
clearly ruled that Saffold’s 4 ½-month delay was ‘unreasonable,’ that would be the end of the
matter[.]” See 536 U.S. at 226 (emphasis added). But to say that “unambiguous” and “clear”
untimeliness rulings by state courts are sufficient is not the same thing as saying that they are
necessary. As just indicated in the text, and as will be discussed further above, they are not.
5
In Chandler v. Crosby, 916 So. 2d 728 (Fla. 2005), the Supreme Court of Florida held
that Crawford would not be applied retroactively.
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its merits, and not on timeliness grounds. See id. at 1366. He further argued that
resolving the motion on its merits rendered it “properly filed,” i.e., timely. See id.
at 1366-67. The petitioner based his argument there (once again, just as petitioner
does here) on the plain-statement rule in the procedural default context. See id. at
1367. This is what Gorby had to say about that:
Petitioner cites the plain-statement rule set forth in Parker v. Sec’y for
the Dept. of Corr., 331 F.3d 764 (11th Cir. 2003): “‘[A] procedural
default does not bar consideration of a federal claim on either direct or
habeas review unless the last state court rendering a judgment in the
case clearly and expressly states that its judgment rests on a state
procedural bar.’” Id. at 771 (quoting Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255,
109 S. Ct. 1038, 1043, 103 L. Ed. 2d 308 (1989)). Petitioner suggests
that the plain-statement rule for procedural default should apply to
AEDPA’s “properly filed” requirement as well. Because the Florida
Supreme Court—here, the last state court to render judgment—did not
say that his motion was untimely, Petitioner claims that the state
supreme court must have reached the merits and that, as a result, his
motion was properly filed.
That procedural default is distinct from the “properly filed”
requirement for tolling AEDPA’s statute of limitations is clear. See
Artuz, 121 S. Ct. at 364 (“[T]he question whether an application has
been ‘properly filed’ is quite separate from the question whether the
claims contained in the application are meritorious and free of
procedural bar.” (emphasis in original)). Petitioner offers no
explanation why the plain-statement rule for procedural default should
be extended to AEDPA’s “properly filed” requirement. We see no
reason to extend the rule here.
Id. at 1367. Citing and quoting Evans, 546 U.S. at 189, we went on to say that if
the state court doesn’t clearly rule on the timeliness of a post-conviction motion,
“‘the federal court must decide whether the filing’ was timely under state law.”
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See 530 F.3d at 1367 (emphasis added). After independently reviewing the record,
we decided that petitioner’s Rule 3.851 motion was untimely. Id. at 1367-68. Our
opinion concluded with the following:
We are applying a federal statute and are guided by congressional
intent. We will not allow the tolling of AEDPA’s limitations period
when it is clear that the petitioner failed to seek timely review in state
court. Cf. Carey, 122 S. Ct. at 2141 (observing that the “willingness
to take [the words ‘on the merits’] as an absolute bellwether [for
timeliness] risks the tolling of the federal limitations period even
when it is highly likely that the prisoner failed to seek timely review
in the state appellate courts”). To do otherwise would “undermine the
statutory purpose of encouraging prompt filings in federal court in
order to protect the federal system from being forced to hear stale
claims.” Id.
Id. at 1368. 6
We reached a similar conclusion in Walton v. Secretary, Florida Dep’t of
Corr., 661 F.3d 1308 (11th Cir. 2011). The petitioner in that case, Jason Walton,
filed a second state habeas petition in the Supreme Court of Florida, which denied
the petition as successive. See id. at 1309. Like in Gorby, “[t]he Florida Supreme
Court did not address whether Walton’s second habeas petition was timely.” Id.
6
We note that in Gorby the petitioner appeared to concede (or at least he did not dispute)
that his state motion was untimely. See 530 F.3d at 1367 (“Strictly speaking, Petitioner does not
dispute that his motion actually was untimely under Florida’s Rule 3.851(d). . . . Even if we were
to accept that the Florida Supreme Court reached the ‘merits,’ consideration of the merits cannot
alone convert a motion for post-conviction relief that no one disputes is time-barred under state
law into a properly filed motion for tolling purposes under AEDPA.”) (emphasis added). Here,
by contrast, the petitioner doesn’t appear to make the same concession. Regardless, that factual
distinction doesn’t undermine the point of law cited above, which is simply that, in the AEDPA
“properly filed” context, the state court doesn’t have to issue a ruling on the timeliness of a post-
conviction motion—let alone clearly and unambiguously—and the federal court can review the
record and make the timeliness determination for itself.
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The petitioner subsequently filed a federal habeas petition, but the District Court
dismissed the petition as untimely because it determined that the state petition was
not “properly filed” and thus did not toll AEDPA’s one-year statute of limitations.
In affirming, the Walton panel cited Evans and Gorby and concluded that it was of
no moment that the Supreme Court of Florida did not address the timeliness of the
second state habeas petition:
When a state court has not addressed the timeliness of an application
for collateral relief, the federal court “must itself examine the delay in
each case and determine what the state courts would have held in
respect to timeliness.” Evans v. Chavis, 546 at 198, 126 S. Ct. at 852.
We “will not allow the tolling of AEDPA’s limitations period when it
is clear that the petitioner failed to seek timely review in state court.”
Gorby v. McNeil, 530 F.3d 1363, 1368 (11th Cir. 2008). Walton’s
second state habeas petition was untimely, and the district court did
not err by dismissing his petition.
Id. at 1312.
While the foregoing precedent authorizes us to independently assess the
timeliness of the petitioner’s Rule 3.850 Motion, we need not do so because we
conclude that the state trial court considered the issue and decided that the motion
was untimely—albeit not clearly and unambiguously—and we are required to give
deference to that ruling. Notwithstanding the petitioner’s contention that the state
court never ruled on or “alluded” to untimeliness in its order, we believe that is the
only reasonable and logical way to read the Trial Court Order (even though it then
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went on to find that the claim was “frivolous,” which is at least arguably a ruling
on the merits).7
The state court noted the following in sequential fashion: (1) the petitioner
was convicted in 2006; (2) his conviction was affirmed by the First District Court
of Appeal in 2007; (3) in the pending motion (filed six years later), he claimed to
have had newly discovered evidence that his trial counsel failed to tell him about
the plea offer; (4) assuming that claim was true, such evidence was required to be
filed within two years from when it could have been discovered with the exercise
of due diligence; (5) the petitioner “had the opportunity to discover the [evidence]
in question within the two-year time limit imposed by Rule 3.850” (specifically, in
July 2007, when the trial court granted his mandamus petition which gave him the
opportunity to access all communication between the prosecutor and his attorney,
as long as he made reasonable payment for copies); and therefore (6) he was “not
entitled to relief for this claim.” Trial Court Order at 1-2. If the state court wasn’t
ruling on timeliness, why would it have engaged in the preceding analysis, which
7
The respondents dispute that the state court ruled on the merits (even in the alternative)
because “[t]here was no discussion of the merits—the alleged ineffective assistance of counsel
claim—anywhere in the order.” Resp. Brief at 26. They maintain that the state court found the
motion “frivolous” only because it was untimely. See id. Since it would have no bearing on the
outcome of this appeal even if the state court had reached the actual merits, see supra note 3 and
the text above, we don’t need to resolve this dispute.
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had nothing to do with the merits of the ineffective assistance of counsel claim but,
rather, had everything to do with timing of that claim?
Florida cases are legion in denying Rule 3.850 motions when the alleged
“new evidence” could have been discovered within the rule’s two-year deadline.
See, e.g., Jules v. State, 233 So. 3d 1196 (Fla. 3d DCA 2017) (Rule 3.850 motion
“time-barred” where the evidence “could [have been] ascertained . . . within [the]
two-year period”); Gaston v. State, 141 So. 3d 627 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014) (Rule
3.850 motion “untimely” where the evidence “was available before the two-year
deadline had expired”); Schultheis v. State, 125 So. 3d 932 (Fla. 4th DCA 2013)
(Rule 3.850 motion “untimely” where the evidence “was unquestionably available
to both appellant and his attorney prior to the two-year deadline”); Santos v. State,
79 So. 3d 112 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012) (Rule 3.850 motion “untimely” where the new
evidence “could have been discovered with due diligence within the two-year time
limit”); Rogers v. State, 932 So. 2d 620 (Fla. 4th DCA. 2006) (Rule 3.850 motion
denied for “untimeliness” where the evidence “could have been discovered through
the exercise of due diligence”); Scott v. State, 702 So. 2d 309 (Fla. 5th DCA 1997)
(Rule 3.850 motion “untimely” where the alleged new evidence “could have been
discovered through the exercise of due diligence within the two-year time period”).
It is true that in each of the foregoing cases, the state courts used the word
“untimely” or some derivation. In denying the motions, the courts in those cases
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essentially said that the movants could have discovered the alleged new evidence
sooner and filed their Rule 3.850 motions within two years, but they did not; and
therefore, their motions were untimely. While the “therefore” clauses made the
state court rulings explicit, it seems apparent to us that their omission would not
have negated the court’s obvious rulings on timeliness. Nor can that be said here.
We conclude that based on the language in the Trial Court Order, an untimeliness
finding was subsumed within the state court’s denial of relief because (according
to that court) the petitioner could have discovered the new evidence several years
before. To hold otherwise would be tantamount to saying that “magic words” are
required, which, as we have stated, is not the law.
In short, the state court ruled that the Rule 3.850 Motion was untimely, and
we are required to defer to that ruling. E.g., Stafford v. Thompson, 328 F.3d 1302,
1305 (11th Cir. 2003) (citing Webster v. Moore, 199 F.3d 1256 (11th Cir. 2000)).
That necessarily means that the motion wasn’t “properly filed,” and thus it didn’t
toll AEDPA’s one-year statute of limitations. See Pace, 544 U.S. at 417 (when a
state court rejects the petitioner’s post-conviction motion as untimely, “it was not
‘properly filed,’ and he is not entitled to statutory tolling under § 2244(d)(2)”).
Pace is quite emphatic on this point: “When a postconviction petition is untimely
under state law, that is the end of the matter for purposes of § 2244(d)(2).” Id. at
414 (quotation marks and brackets omitted).
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B.
Not so fast, says the petitioner. His second argument is that Pace does not
even apply here because in that case the Supreme Court was addressing “a narrow
issue” (i.e., whether the mere existence of statutory exceptions to a timely filing
requirement can prevent an untimely motion from being considered improperly
filed), and it involved a “materially distinguishable” post-conviction scheme (i.e.,
the Pennsylvania statute at issue there required movants to both allege and prove
that an exception to the limitation period applied, as opposed to Rule 3.850 which
only requires movants to allege that they fall within an exception to the limitation
period). See Pet. Brief at 21-24. Because Pace does not apply here, the petitioner
further argues, that means pre-Pace circuit precedent is still binding on us. See id.
And, according to that precedent, a Rule 3.850 motion is a “properly filed” tolling
motion under Section 2244(d)(2) so long as the movant alleged—as the petitioner
here did—that the motion fell within a timeliness exception, even if the state court
subsequently found the motion to be untimely. See Delancy v. Florida Dep’t. of
Corr., 246 F.3d 1328, 1331 (11th Cir. 2001) (“Because Rule 3.850 requires only
that the motion allege that facts ‘were unknown to the movant . . . and could not
have been ascertained by the exercise of due diligence’ we find that if Delancy’s
Rule 3.850 motion in fact alleges ‘newly discovered evidence,’ it was ‘properly
filed.’”) (emphasis added); Drew v. Florida Dep’t of Corr., 297 F.3d 1278, 1285
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(11th Cir. 2002) (holding pursuant to Delancy that “Drew’s third [Rule] 3.850
motion would have been properly filed despite its untimeliness if it had [merely]
alleged” that the new evidence was unknown and couldn’t have been discovered
with the exercise of due diligence) (emphasis added). These arguments, although
they have some superficial appeal, don’t hold up under closer examination.8
At the outset, Pace is not nearly as “narrow” in its scope as the petitioner
suggests. As we have noted several times now, the Supreme Court emphatically
held in that case that when a state court finds a post-conviction motion untimely
“‘that [is] the end of the matter’” for tolling purposes. 544 U.S. at 414 (emphasis
in the original) (quoting Carey, 536 U.S. at 226). If there was any doubt about that
holding (and we fail to see how there could be based on the language in Pace), that
doubt was later cleared up in Allen v. Siebert, 552 U.S. 3 (2007)—discussed further
infra—where the Supreme Court stated that Pace was “plainly meant to [lay down]
a general rule.” See id. at 6. And that general rule is simply this: “[T]ime limits, no
matter their form, are ‘filing’ conditions,’ and . . . a state postconviction petition is
therefore not ‘properly filed’ if it was rejected by the state court as untimely.” See
id. (quoting Pace, 544 U.S. at 417) (second emphasis added).
8
Indeed, we have already rejected these same arguments in an unpublished opinion. See
Sykosky v. Crosby, 187 F. App’x 953, 958 (11th Cir. 2006) (finding that both Delancy and Drew
“conflict with the Supreme Court’s decision in Pace and must be disregarded,” and also finding
the “distinction” between what is required by Rule 3.850 and the Pennsylvania statute in Pace to
be “unavailing”).
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As indicated, Delancy and Drew can both be read for the proposition that a
Rule 3.850 motion is a properly filed tolling motion as long as the movant alleged
in the motion that it fell within the timeliness exception, regardless of whether the
state court later found the motion untimely. This obviously cannot be reconciled
with the “general rule” laid down in Pace. Thus, to the extent that Delancy and
Drew—and a third case that the petitioner has cited which relies on both cases for
that legal interpretation, Estes v. Chapman, 382 F.3d 1237 (11th Cir. 2004)—can
be read to suggest that time limits are not filing conditions, and/or that a post-
conviction motion that has been rejected as untimely by the state court may still be
considered “properly filed” as long as the motion merely alleges that it falls within
an exception, those cases have been overruled by Pace and must be disregarded.9
9
It is worth noting that under the petitioner’s Delancy/Drew/Estes-based argument, all a
Rule 3.850 movant would have to do to toll the time for filing a Section 2254 petition—at least
until he is sanctioned for abusing the rule and barred from further filings—is allege (in motion
after motion) that he has new evidence that couldn’t have been discovered within two years of
his judgment and sentence, and that would be sufficient to toll the statute of limitations even if
the state court later finds (in order after order) that the motions were untimely. Pace forecloses
that situation. As the respondents have persuasively argued, to hold otherwise would mean that
no matter how frivolous the motions a petitioner filed, and no matter whether they were filed in
obvious bad faith, the time would toll until the state post-conviction court ordered the motions
dismissed and the highest state appellate court finally ended the litigation, see Resp. Brief at 22,
and that is precisely the sort of abusive situation that the Supreme Court refused to countenance
in Pace:
On petitioner’s theory, a state prisoner could toll the statute of limitations at will
simply by filing untimely state postconviction petitions. This would turn §
2244(d)(2) into a de facto extension mechanism, quite contrary to the purpose of
AEDPA, and open the door to abusive delay.
544 U.S. at 413.
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And finally, we address the petitioner’s interrelated (but separate) argument
that Pace should not apply to this case insofar as the Pennsylvania statute at issue
there required movants to allege and prove that their motions were timely (and the
petitioner in that case didn’t do so), whereas the plain language of Rule 3.850 only
requires movants to allege timeliness (and the petitioner here did). Although the
petitioner has identified a distinction between these two post-conviction schemes
(and thus a distinction between the facts of Pace and this case), it is a distinction
without any meaningful difference. On this point, we find the Supreme Court’s
decision in Allen v. Siebert analogous and instructive.
The petitioner in Allen filed a petition for post-conviction relief in Alabama
state court. 552 U.S. at 4. The state court denied his petition as untimely because
it was brought three months too late under Rule 32.2(c) of the Alabama Rules of
Criminal Procedure, after which the petitioner filed a federal habeas petition. Id.
Relying on Pace, the District Court held that the state post-conviction petition was
not “properly filed” (and, thus, not a tolling motion), and it dismissed the federal
petition as untimely. See id. at 4-5. We reversed on appeal, distinguishing Pace
on the ground that “Rule 32.2(c), unlike the statute of limitations at issue in Pace
[which was a jurisdictional time bar under Pennsylvania law], ‘operate[s] as an
affirmative defense.’” See id. at 5 (quoting Siebert v. Allen, 480 F.3d 1089, 1090
(11th Cir. 2007)). In reversing us, the Supreme Court said:
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The Court of Appeals’ carveout of time limits that operate as
affirmative defenses is inconsistent with our holding in Pace.
Although the Pennsylvania statute of limitations at issue in Pace
happens to have been a jurisdictional time bar under state law, the
jurisdictional nature of the time limit was not the basis for our
decision. Rather, we built upon a distinction that we had earlier
articulated in Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U.S. 4, 121 S. Ct. 361, 148 L. Ed.
2d 213 (2000), between postconviction petitions rejected on the basis
of “‘filing’ conditions,” which are not “properly filed” under §
2244(d)(2), and those rejected on the basis of “procedural bars [that]
go to the ability to obtain relief,” which are. Pace, supra, at 417, 125
S. Ct. 1807 (citing Artuz, supra, at 10-11, 121 S. Ct. 361). We found
that statutes of limitations are “filing” conditions because they “go to
the very initiation of a petition and a court’s ability to consider that
petition.” Pace, 544 U.S., at 417, 125 S. Ct. 1807. Thus, we held
“that time limits, no matter their form, are ‘filing’ conditions,” and
that a state postconviction petition is therefore not “properly filed” if
it was rejected by the state court as untimely. Ibid. (emphasis added).
In short, our holding in Pace turned not on the nature of the particular
time limit relied upon by the state court, but rather on the fact that
time limits generally establish “conditions to filing” a petition for state
postconviction relief. Whether a time limit is jurisdictional, an
affirmative defense, or something in between, it is a “condition to
filing,” Artuz, supra, at 9, 121 S. Ct. 361—it places a limit on how
long a prisoner can wait before filing a postconviction petition. The
fact that Alabama’s Rule 32.2(c) is an affirmative defense that can be
waived (or is subject to equitable tolling) renders it no less a “filing”
requirement than a jurisdictional time bar would be; it only makes it a
less stringent one. . . .
Excluding from Pace’s scope those time limits that operate as
affirmative defenses would leave a gaping hole in what we plainly
meant to be a general rule[.]”
Id. at 5-6 (some internal citations omitted).
To repeat, Pace holds that a state post-conviction motion is not, and cannot
ever be, “properly filed” if it was rejected by the state court as untimely. To limit
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this clear holding to cases involving movants who are required (but fail) to “allege
and prove” that their motion was timely, and not apply the holding to movants who
are only required to (and do) “allege” timeliness, would—like in Allen—“leave a
gaping hole in what [Pace] plainly meant to be a general rule.” 552 U.S. at 6. We
are not aware of any case—by any court, anywhere—that has adopted the crabbed
reading of Pace that the petitioner suggests, and we will not be the first to do so.10
IV.
Under AEDPA, Jones had one year from the date his conviction became
final to bring his Section 2254 petition for habeas corpus. Unless his Rule 3.850
Motion constituted a tolling motion, it is undisputed that he missed that deadline.
Because Pace clearly holds that when a state court finds a post-conviction motion
untimely “‘that [is] the end of the matter’” and the motion cannot be considered a
10
In fact, it appears that the petitioner’s argument on this point was actually rejected by
Pace itself sub silentio. In Pace, the Supreme Court was resolving a circuit split that developed
post-Artuz. See 544 U.S. at 412-13 & n.3 (comparing Dictado v. Ducharme, 244 F.3d 724, 726-
28 (9th Cir. 2001), with Merritt v. Blaine, 326 F.3d 157, 162-68 (3d Cir. 2003)). Notably, the
case that turned out to be on the losing side of that split and abrogated by Pace—Dictado—did
not involve a post-conviction scheme, like in Pace, that required movants to “allege and prove”
the existence of newly discovered evidence that couldn’t have been discovered earlier with due
diligence. Instead, the statute there, like here, simply required that a motion filed thereunder be
“based . . . on” (i.e., allege) such “newly discovered evidence.” Wa. Rev. Code § 10.73.100(1).
Significantly, the petitioner in Dictado had done exactly that. See 244 F.3d at 728 (holding that
petitioner’s Section 10.73.100(1) motion “was properly filed [because he] asserted that it was
based on newly discovered evidence,” which was all that the statute required) (emphasis added).
Because the Supreme Court expressly abrogated Dictado with its opinion in Pace (and because
the facts of that case are similar to ours), the “allege” vs. “allege and prove” distinction that the
petitioner has argued is unpersuasive and must be rejected.
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tolling motion, and that is what the state court did here, and because Pace applies
to this case, we must affirm the District Court’s dismissal of his federal petition as
untimely.
Furthermore, as and to the extent discussed above, Delancy v. Florida Dep’t.
of Corr., 246 F.3d 1328 (11th Cir. 2001); Drew v. Florida Dep’t of Corr., 297 F.3d
1278 (11th Cir. 2002); and Estes v. Chapman, 382 F.3d 1237 (11th Cir. 2004),
have been overruled by Pace and must be disregarded.
AFFIRMED.
28