Julio Navas v. James Baca , 606 F. App'x 414 ( 2015 )

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION JUL 09 2015
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
JULIO CESAR NAVAS, No. 13-16218
Petitioner - Appellant, D.C. No. 3:10-cv-00647-RCJ-
WGC
v.
JAMES BACA and NEVADA MEMORANDUM*
ATTORNEY GENERAL,
Respondents - Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
Robert Clive Jones, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted December 10, 2014
San Francisco, California
Before: FISHER and PAEZ, Circuit Judges and QUIST,** Senior District Judge.
Julio Navas appeals the district court’s dismissal of his amended federal
habeas petition, containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims. The district
court denied his motion to stay proceedings and hold Nava’s petition in abeyance
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
**
The Honorable Gordon J. Quist, Senior District Judge for the U.S.
District Court for the Western District of Michigan, sitting by designation.
while Navas pursued state court relief. The district court instead dismissed his
petition without prejudice, concluding that Navas had not shown good cause for
failure to exhaust his state claims under Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269 (2005).
The district court held that Navas was required to show that his pending state
habeas proceedings presented “an actual significant timeliness issue” before he
was entitled to a stay.
The district court erred when it required Navas to show an “actual
significant timeliness issue.” As the Supreme Court stated in Pace v. DiGuglielmo,
“[a] petitioner’s reasonable confusion about whether a state filing would be timely
will ordinarily constitute ‘good cause’ for him to file in federal court.” 544 U.S.
408, 416 (2005). Moreover, as Pace indicates, the district court should have
assessed whether Navas had good cause at the moment Navas filed his petition
under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, not at the moment he sought to stay proceedings. When
Navas filed his original petition, he was pro se and elderly, and serious questions
had arisen regarding his mental competency. Additionally, some of Navas’s
premature and duplicative pro se state filings caused reason for concern that Navas
would face a procedural bar in Nevada state court. The district court should have
considered these factors when examining whether it was “reasonable” for Navas to
file his original federal habeas petition.
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However, on April 15, 2015, the Nevada Supreme Court issued a decision
affirming the Nevada district court’s grant of limited post-conviction relief to
Navas. That court had granted Navas’s state habeas petition for one of his
convictions and denied it for the other. Because the Nevada Supreme Court
reached the merits of Navas’s state petition, it is clear that Navas’s state court
proceedings tolled the one-year statute of limitations, see 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2),
and that Navas is neither procedurally barred nor time-barred from filing a new
federal habeas petition. Thus, there is no longer any need for the relief that Navas
originally sought. But, the Nevada Supreme Court’s decision has also obviated the
district court’s basis for dismissal, as Navas has now fully exhausted the claims in
his amended federal petition.
Therefore, we vacate the district court’s dismissal and remand for the district
court to consider how it should proceed.
Navas shall recover costs on appeal.
VACATED AND REMANDED.
3