Smith v. Marvin ( 2021 )

Case: 19-31019 Document: 00515805006 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/01/2021
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
April 1, 2021
No. 19-31019 Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
Earton Smith,
Plaintiff—Appellant,
versus
John Schuyler Marvin,
Defendant—Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Louisiana
USDC No. 5:19-CV-1053
Before Ho, Oldham, and Wilson, Circuit Judges.
Per Curiam:*
Louisiana prisoner Earton Smith sued District Attorney John
Schuyler Marvin under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for due process violations related
to Smith’s application for state habeas relief. The district court dismissed the
suit for lack of jurisdiction. We affirm.
*
Pursuant to 5th Circuit Rule 47.5, the court has determined that this
opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited
circumstances set forth in 5th Circuit Rule 47.5.4.
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I.
A Louisiana jury convicted Smith of aggravated burglary in 2007
following an incident that occurred in 2006. State v. Smith, 47 So.3d 553, 554
(La. Ct. App. 2010). Smith was initially sentenced to thirty years in prison.
Id. Then the State adjudicated him a habitual offender, and Smith received a
new sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. Id. His attempts
to obtain state and federal habeas relief in 2011 and 2012 were unsuccessful.
In 2017, Smith filed another application for state habeas relief. He
claimed he had discovered two affidavits from a police officer involved in the
2006 arrest that contradicted testimony given at trial. District Attorney
Marvin filed procedural objections contending that Smith’s application was
successive and barred by Louisiana’s two-year limitations period for
postconviction relief. See La. Code Crim. Proc. arts. 930.4, 930.8.
Smith responded that the limitations period did not apply because he based
his claim on facts in the affidavits not known to him or his attorney at trial.
See id. art. 930.8A(1). Marvin disagreed and asserted that Smith had received
the affidavits during the state-court litigation. The trial court rejected
Smith’s application as successive and untimely. The state appellate court and
the Louisiana Supreme Court declined to overturn the trial court’s ruling.
Smith filed this § 1983 action against Marvin a few months later.
Proceeding pro se, Smith alleged that Marvin had deprived him of due
process by “using . . . state procedur[es] to deny [him] postconviction relief.”
Smith faulted Marvin for objecting to his application and ignoring the “new
facts exception” to the limitations period, which Smith thought applicable.
But Smith also claimed he “d[id] not challenge the prosecutor’s conduct or
the Louisiana[] state court’s decision.” Instead, he “assert[ed] that he
challenges Louisiana’s postconviction exceptions to the [limitations] period
. . . as construed by the Louisiana courts.” Smith sought an injunction
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ordering Marvin “to conduct an evidentiary hearing . . . at which [the] district
court will determine” whether an exception to the limitations period applies.
A magistrate judge reviewed Smith’s complaint and recommended
dismissing it for lack of jurisdiction. The magistrate judge reasoned that
though Smith purported to challenge the constitutionality of the state
limitations statute itself, he “actually s[ought] a writ of mandamus to order
[Marvin] to conduct evidentiary hearings regarding his application for post-
conviction relief.” It concluded that such a request was barred by the
principle that district courts “lack[] jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus
to compel [state officials] to perform an alleged duty.”
The district court agreed with the magistrate judge and dismissed
Smith’s suit for lack of jurisdiction. Smith timely appealed. Our review is de
novo. Lefebure v. D’Aquilla, 987 F.3d 446, 448 (5th Cir. 2021).
II.
We have held that “a federal court lacks the general power to issue
writs of mandamus to direct state . . . officers in the performance of their
duties where mandamus is the only relief sought.” Moye v. Clerk, Dekalb
Cnty. Superior Ct., 474 F.2d 1275, 1276 (5th Cir. 1973) (per curiam). And we
recently applied this principle to a prisoner like Smith who alleged that state
officials “violated his right to due process in relation to his state habeas
applications.” See Thoele v. Hamlin, 747 F. App’x 242, 242 (5th Cir. 2019)
(per curiam) (applying Moye).
Smith contends the Moye principle does not apply because his
complaint only “challeng[es] Louisiana’s postconviction statute” and “does
not challenge the conduct of the defendant[] or the decisions of the Louisiana
state courts” in administering state law. The magistrate judge and the district
court understandably rejected that contention. A central theme in Smith’s
complaint is that Marvin and the state court misapplied state law. And the
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injunctive relief he sought was an evidentiary hearing conducted “pursuant
to” a state statute. But see Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465
U.S. 89, 106 (1984) (holding state sovereign immunity prohibits federal
courts from ordering state officials to comply with state law). Nevertheless,
we assume for the sake of argument that Smith’s complaint directly
challenges Louisiana’s postconviction regime. Cf. Carlucci v. Chapa, 884
F.3d 534, 538 (5th Cir. 2018) (“If a complaint is written pro se, we are to give
it a liberal construction.”).
That assumption does not get him far. Smith’s theory is that his
complaint cannot have a jurisdictional defect because it resembles the
complaint upheld in Skinner v. Switzer, 562 U.S. 521 (2011). The plaintiff in
Skinner sued a district attorney seeking access to postconviction DNA testing
that a state statute did not permit. Id. at 527–29. The district attorney
interpreted Skinner’s complaint to seek federal review of a state-court
decision in contravention of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Id. at 531–32. But
Skinner’s counsel clarified that the “gist of [his] due process claim” was not
a “challenge [to] the prosecutor’s conduct or the decisions reached by the
[state court].” Id. at 530. Skinner instead challenged the “postconviction
DNA statute” itself. Id. In light of that clarification, the Supreme Court held
that “[t]here was . . . no lack of subject-matter jurisdiction over Skinner’s
federal suit.” Id. at 533.
Skinner’s jurisdictional holding does not control this case. While it
remains true that a federal plaintiff can generally challenge “a statute or rule
governing [a state-court] decision,” id. at 532, he still must have Article III
standing to do so, see Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 559–60 (1992).
Standing was not a problem in Skinner because the plaintiff sought relief
against a defendant who caused an injury that a court could redress: Skinner
wanted DNA tests for certain evidence, the district attorney refused to
surrender that evidence, and a court could order her to surrender it. See 562
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U.S. at 529; Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61. But in this case, Smith alleges an
injury that District Attorney Marvin did not cause and the court cannot
redress. If Smith’s claim is that state law permitted him to file his habeas
application, the erroneous ruling came from the state judge and not from
Marvin. Any injury is therefore “the result of the independent action of some
third party not before the court.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 (quotation omitted).
And if Smith’s claim is that state law unconstitutionally prohibited him from
filing his habeas application, there is nothing we could order Marvin to do
that would change Smith’s ability to file it. It is therefore impossible for
Smith’s injury to “be redressed by a favorable decision.” Id. at 561 (quotation
omitted).
AFFIRMED.
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