Blue v. Medeiros

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 18-1066
LARRY BLUE,
Petitioner, Appellant,
v.
SEAN MEDEIROS,
Respondent, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Allison D. Burroughs, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Thompson, Selya, and Lipez,
Circuit Judges.
Ashley P. Allen, with whom Patricia A. DeJuneas and Sibbison
& DeJuneas were on brief, for appellant.
Eva M. Badway, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Maura
Healey, Attorney General, was on brief, for appellee.
January 4, 2019
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of
1996 ("AEDPA"), 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1), establishes a one-year
statute of limitations for a state prisoner to file a federal
habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The one-year period
generally starts when a prisoner's conviction becomes final, but
may be tolled, pursuant to the statute, during the time in "which
a properly filed application for State post-conviction or other
collateral review with respect to the pertinent judgment or claim
is pending." Id. § 2244(d)(2).
Petitioner Larry Blue, a Massachusetts prison inmate,
filed a petition for habeas corpus relief which the district court
dismissed as time-barred under AEDPA's statute of limitations.
Petitioner now seeks reconsideration of that ruling based on two
tolling theories. First, Petitioner argues that the statute of
limitations should be statutorily tolled during the month-plus-
long pendency of his motion to stay the execution of his sentence,
because that motion, he urges, constitutes an application for
collateral review under § 2244(d)(2). Second, Petitioner argues,
essentially, that unique circumstances surrounding his conviction
justify equitable tolling of the time between the finality of his
Commonwealth convictions and the filing of his habeas petition.
For reasons explained below, we reject these arguments and affirm
the dismissal of Petitioner's habeas corpus petition.
- 2 -
I. Background
Because dates are crucial to our evaluation of
Petitioner's claims, we ask the reader's patience as we detail the
travel of the proceedings below. On August 18, 2010, following a
trial by jury, Petitioner was convicted of multiple Massachusetts
state law crimes, including drug trafficking, drug possession, and
unlicensed firearm and ammunition possession. Thereafter, he
pleaded guilty to additional related charges and was handed a
cumulative sentence of up to ten years and a day to serve.
Petitioner pursued various avenues of post-conviction
relief in the Commonwealth courts.1 On June 14, 2012, Petitioner
filed a direct appeal of his convictions, based in part on
arguments previously raised and rejected by the trial court that
there were defects in the search warrants that led to his arrest.
Additionally, Petitioner premiered a new argument challenging the
constitutionality of Massachusetts's gun licensing regime.
While Petitioner's appeal was pending, revelations of
widespread misconduct at the Commonwealth's crime lab, the William
A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute, came to light with state-
employed chemist Annie Dookhan in the maelstrom of the scandal.
In response to these disclosures, in August 2012, Massachusetts's
1
First, he filed a motion for a new trial, based on his
assertion that the court reporter was unable to produce a full
transcript of his trial. This motion was denied the following day
when the parties collaborated to reconstruct the missing record.
- 3 -
governor shuttered the lab and ordered an independent
investigation.2 Dookhan, after being hit with multiple indictments
for falsifying drug test results, lying about her credentials, and
perjuring herself in court (including during Petitioner's trial),
eventually pled guilty to twenty-seven counts on November 22, 2013.
Meanwhile, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts denied
Petitioner's direct appeal on September 27, 2013. Commonwealth v.
Blue, 994 N.E.2d 817 (Table), 2013 WL 5377118 (Mass. App. Ct.
2013). First, it cited its agreement with the trial court's
reasoning for the denial of Petitioner's search warrant
suppression motions. And next, it pointed out the futility of
Petitioner's constitutional challenge, noting the state's gun
licensing regime had already been given the green light by the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ("SJC"). Id. Hoping to
change minds, Petitioner filed a motion for rehearing, but the
appeals court promptly denied it.
Soldiering on, Petitioner sought further appellate
review with the SJC in October 2013. However, that application
was summarily denied without discussion on November 21, 2013.
Commonwealth v. Blue, 998 N.E.2d 342 (Mass. 2013) (Table). Ninety
2 Not long after the Dookhan misconduct was made public, an
entry in the trial court docket reflects that Petitioner filed a
motion to stay the execution of his sentence on March 12, 2013.
The docket notation reads "(Drug Lab)"; the motion was withdrawn
in June 2013.
- 4 -
days later, on February 19, 2014, Petitioner's convictions became
final; that is the moment the AEDPA statute of limitations clock
began to tick.3
In the wake of the Dookhan fiasco, Petitioner filed with
the trial court a second motion to stay the execution of his
sentence, pursuant to Massachusetts Rule of Criminal Procedure 31
("Rule 31").4 In that February 21, 2014 filing he asserted his
belief that Dookhan's misconduct would likely result in the grant
of a new trial on all charges given (1) the unreliability of the
laboratory testing supporting his drug convictions and (2) the
overall taint Dookhan's perjured testimony cast on his
convictions, due to the prosecutor weaving together the drug
dealing and the gun possession throughout the trial. In a
memorandum in support of his stay motion, Petitioner announced his
intention to file a renewed motion for a new trial "shortly," based
on Dookhan's perjury and other grounds.
3 Cordle v. Guarino, 428 F.3d 46, 48 (1st Cir. 2005) ("The
SJC affirmed [the] convictions on March 11, 1992; her convictions
became final ninety days thereafter.").
4 The Commonwealth's investigation into the Hinton Lab came
to an end, concluding that, while Dookhan was "the sole bad actor"
at the lab, poor and inadequate training, protocols, and management
had allowed her conduct to go undetected for years. It was
conservatively estimated that Dookhan worked on close to 34,000
cases during her years at the lab. Commonwealth v. Charles, 992
N.E.2d 999, 1003 (Mass. 2013).
- 5 -
Back at the SJC, while Petitioner's motion to stay was
pending, the Commonwealth high court weighed in on the Dookhan
debacle: in cases where Dookhan had served as a primary or
secondary chemist for drug analysis, all defendants were entitled
to a conclusive presumption that her conduct was egregious and
attributable to the Commonwealth. Commonwealth v. Scott, 5 N.E.3d
530, 535 (Mass. 2014). That presumption notwithstanding, soon
after the Scott opinion issued, Petitioner's motion for a stay of
the execution of his sentence was denied on March 27, 2014. The
trial court found that Petitioner's firearms convictions were
unaffected by Dookhan's misconduct and as such, he was unlikely to
receive a new trial.
Undeterred, on May 5, 2014, Petitioner filed a second
motion for a new trial based on two theories. First, he framed
the revelation of Dookhan's perjury as "newly-discovered
evidence," casting doubt on the fairness of his conviction. (For
all intents and purposes, this taint argument is the same one that
had just been rejected by the court in response to his stay
motion.) His second argument, ineffective assistance of counsel,
was essentially a repackaging of the earlier defective search
warrant claims.5
5Petitioner alleged that the warrants failed to establish
timely probable cause because of their technical shortcomings, and
that his attorney was ineffective for failing to properly argue
- 6 -
On January 20, 2015, acting on Petitioner's new trial
motion, the trial court granted it as to the drug charges, and
denied it as to the gun charges. Commenting on the drug
convictions, the court conceded that, even though extensive
evidence supported Petitioner's drug charges aside from Dookhan's
perjured testimony, her testimony had, nonetheless, tainted the
drug convictions. As for the gun charges, the court found no
connection between Dookhan's testimony and those convictions.
Finally, the trial court dismissed the ineffective assistance
claim, describing it as not distinct from Petitioner's prior search
warrant claims, and writing:
[T]he Appeals Court implicitly rejected the defendant's
instant claim . . . and made rejection explicit when it
refused the defendant's petition for rehearing. The
issue is settled and need not be considered on its merits
here.
Two days later Petitioner appealed the partial denial to the
appellate court, and sought further review after this first appeal
was denied. Commonwealth v. Blue, 46 N.E.3d 114 (Table), 2016 WL
757758 (Mass. App. Ct. 2016). The Commonwealth nolle prossed the
drug charges at the end of January 2015.6 And, on April 27, 2016,
the defects -- an interpretive gloss that he had not explicitly
raised before.
6 "Nolle prossed" comes from the Latin phrase "nolle
prosequi," translated as "we shall no longer prosecute." In this
context, it means that the Commonwealth dropped all the drug
charges against Petitioner.
- 7 -
the SJC entered a final denial of Petitioner's application for
further appellate review of his motion for a new trial.7
Almost eleven months8 later, on March 20, 2017,
Petitioner filed his federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus,
premised solely on his allegations of ineffective assistance of
counsel.9 On the motion of Respondent Norfolk prison
superintendent Sean Medeiros, the district court dismissed the
petition as time-barred under AEDPA. Blue v. Medeiros, No. 17-
cv-10464-ADB, 2017 WL 5297910, at *1 (D. Mass. Nov. 13, 2017). In
so doing the district court held that Petitioner's motion to stay
the execution of his sentence did not toll AEDPA's one-year time
limit, under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2), because it was not an
"application for . . . collateral review." The court held further
that Petitioner was not entitled to equitable tolling because the
issues created by the Hinton Lab misconduct did not impose a bar
7 There is no dispute that the AEDPA statute of limitations
was tolled for the almost two-year period that his motion for a
new trial was pending, from May 5, 2014, through April 27, 2016.
8 327 days, to be precise.
9 Again, Petitioner alleged that the search warrants
underlying his arrest and conviction failed to establish probable
cause, and that trial counsel failed to argue this effectively.
These arguments are not before us in this appeal. Peralta v.
United States, 597 F.3d 74, 83 (1st Cir. 2010) (general rule is
that "a court of appeals should not consider the merits of an issue
advanced by a habeas petitioner unless a COA [certificate of
appealability] first has been obtained with respect to that issue"
(quoting Bui v. DiPaolo, 170 F.3d 232, 237 (1st Cir. 1999))).
- 8 -
to Petitioner filing a motion for a new trial concurrently with
his motion for stay of execution (recall Petitioner's stay motion
was filed on February 21, 2014, while his new trial motion was not
filed until May 5, 2014); and because, even after his motion for
a new trial was denied and the Commonwealth had abandoned the drug
charges, Petitioner allowed eleven months to pass by before filing
the petition for the writ of habeas corpus.
In his present appeal, Petitioner advances two
arguments relative to the timeliness of his habeas petition; we
take each in turn. Because the district court denied Petitioner
relief "on a procedural ground without taking evidence," we apply
de novo review. Holmes v. Spencer (Holmes I), 685 F.3d 51, 58
(1st Cir. 2012) (quoting Wood v. Spencer, 487 F.3d 1, 3 (1st Cir.
2007)).
II. Statutory Tolling
First, Petitioner argues that his motion to stay the
execution of his sentence tolled AEDPA's statute of limitations,
because it is a properly filed application for "collateral review"
as contemplated by 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2). In support of his
assertion that "the plain meaning" of AEDPA's tolling provision
"includes post-conviction motions [like a motion to stay] heard by
the trial judge," Petitioner cites Wall v. Kholi (Kholi III), 562
U.S. 545 (2011). To better understand Petitioner's argument, a
brief discussion of Kholi is in order.
- 9 -
Khalil Kholi was convicted by the Rhode Island Superior
Court of repeated acts of sexual assault on his two young step-
daughters and received two consecutive life sentences. He appealed
the convictions and simultaneously filed a motion to reduce his
sentence; both were unsuccessful. State v. Kholi, 706 A.2d 1326(R.I. 1998); State v. Kholi, 672 A.2d 429 (R.I. 1996).
Kholi then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus
in the federal district court, which denied relief after finding
the petition time-barred by AEDPA. Kholi v. Wall (Kholi I), No.
07-346S, 2008 WL 60194 (D.R.I. Jan. 3, 2008). In so concluding,
the court held that Kholi's motion to reduce his sentence, brought
pursuant to Rule 35 of Rhode Island's criminal procedure rules,10
did not constitute an application for "collateral review" under
AEDPA, and thus did not toll the limitations period. Instead, the
court reasoned that "a motion for correction or reduction of
sentence contemplates the defendant returning to the same court,
and pleading for mercy before the same judge that imposed the
original sentence and thus, is not 'collateral' within the meaning
of AEDPA." Id. at *3 (citing Walkowiak v. Haines, 272 F.3d 234,
237-38 (4th Cir. 2001)).
Kholi appealed and we reversed, holding that "a state
post-conviction motion for a sentence reduction, in the nature of
10 R.I. Super. Ct. R. Crim. P. 35 (a).
- 10 -
a plea for discretionary leniency, comes within the [AEDPA]
statutory sweep." Kholi v. Wall (Kholi II), 582 F.3d 147, 156
(1st Cir. 2009). In reaching this conclusion, we stressed the
importance of encouraging state prisoners to exhaust state court
remedies before seeking federal habeas review. Id. at 155.
The state of Rhode Island sought further review and the
Supreme Court granted certiorari. Kholi III, 562 U.S. at 551-53.
In affirming our ruling the Court carefully parsed the AEDPA
tolling language. Defining the phrase "collateral review" in the
AEDPA context, the Court stated, "[v]iewed as a whole, then,
'collateral review' of a judgment or claim means a judicial
reexamination of a judgment or claim in a proceeding outside of
the direct review process." Id. at 553. In considering whether a
Rule 35 motion would trigger collateral review, the Supreme Court
analyzed the meanings of the words "collateral" and "review." Id.
at 555-56.
Reasoning that a motion to reduce the sentence was
traditionally viewed as a collateral challenge, and was in no
instance a part of the direct review process, the Court quickly
determined that the motion was collateral. Id. at 555. The Court
then moved on to examine its understanding of the word "review."
Based on the operation of the state's criminal rule, the motion
would require a "judicial reexamination of the sentence to
determine whether a more lenient sentence is proper" and it
- 11 -
therefore resulted in a review. Id. Consequently, the Court
determined that Kholi's motion to reduce his sentence constituted
an application for collateral review which triggered AEDPA's
tolling provision. Id. at 556; see also Holmes I, 685 F.3d at 60;
Kholi II, 582 F.3d at 153 ("Taking into account this quotidian
understanding, it seems self-evident that a motion for a sentence
reduction in the nature of a plea for discretionary leniency is a
motion that seeks post-conviction 'review' of a sentence and, thus,
is a motion that falls squarely within the plain meaning of section
2244(d)(2).").
As our Petitioner would have it, his Massachusetts Rule
31 motion to stay execution of sentence is no different from the
Rule 35 motion discussed in Kholi III, and as such the district
court erred when it deemed AEDPA's tolling provision not triggered.
However, while we agree with Petitioner that his motion is,
assuredly, a collateral one, we find it does not have the power to
generate a review. As the government correctly suggests, we must
turn to Massachusetts law to explain why. Carey v. Saffold, 536
U.S. 214, 223 (2002) ("[F]or purposes of applying a federal statute
that interacts with state procedural rules, we look to how a state
procedure functions . . . ."); Lewis v. Jeffers, 497 U.S. 764,
780-81 (1990) (urging deference to a state court's "application of
its own law" in habeas context).
- 12 -
Rule 31 allows a trial judge or a single justice of the
Commonwealth's appellate court to make a discretionary ruling
staying the imposition of a sentence during the pendency of an
appeal.11 While the ruling on the stay will not be reversed absent
an abuse of discretion, the judge generally requires a
demonstration that the defendant has a reasonable likelihood of
success on appeal. See Commonwealth v. Levin, 388 N.E.2d 1207,
1208 (Mass. App. Ct. 1979). That means evaluating whether or not
the appeal is frivolous, or whether it is "an appeal which presents
an issue which is worthy of presentation to an appellate court,
one which offers some reasonable possibility of a successful
decision in the appeal." Id. at 1209. More recently, the SJC has
described this analysis as a "pure question of law or legal
judgment," which in no way prejudges "the merits of the defendant's
direct appeal." Commonwealth v. Mattier, 49 N.E.3d 227, 228-29
(Mass. 2016) (quoting Commonwealth v. Allen, 392 N.E.2d 1027, 1033
(Mass. 1979)).12
We have noted in the past that not all filings by a
criminal defendant which seek to advance a challenge to a judgment
11 The order is temporary and automatically expires upon
affirmation of the conviction, unless it is extended by the
appellate court. It may also be revoked. Rule 31(a), (b).
12 In addition to the merits evaluation, the judge
entertaining the motion must also consider issues relating to
security, such as the defendant's risk of flight or likelihood of
committing new criminal acts. Levin, 388 N.E.2d at 1210.
- 13 -
of conviction constitute a collateral review for AEDPA purposes.
Rodriguez v. Spencer, 412 F.3d 29, 37 (1st Cir. 2005) (petition
for extraordinary relief not application for collateral review);
Voravongsa v. Wall, 349 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir. 2003) (pro se motion
for appointment of state post-conviction counsel not collateral
review); see also Bridges v. Johnson, 284 F.3d 1201, 1203 (11th
Cir. 2002) (application before a state sentence review panel not
collateral review); Adeline v. Stinson, 206 F.3d 249, 252 (2d Cir.
2000) (motion to revive an appeal not collateral review).
Similarly here, from our perspective, the Rule 31 screening process
lacks the indicia of a "review" for this reason: Even though a
judge must take a peek at the underlying claim to see if the merits
are hopeless, she has no authority to either alter the judgment or
change the sentence. See Kholi II, 582 F.3d at 151 (in the typical
case, application for post-conviction relief that "does not seek
to alter (or even to reexamine) the judgment" does not toll
statute).
For these reasons, after a fresh review of Petitioner's
claims, we hold that a motion to stay the execution of a sentence,
under Rule 31, does not constitute a motion for collateral review,
and its filing does not trigger AEDPA's tolling provisions.13
13
Even if the statute of limitations were tolled during the
pendency of his motion to stay the execution of his sentence, he
still goes over the statutory time limit. He has a short two
days between the date his convictions became final and the date he
- 14 -
III. Equitable Tolling
Petitioner's second argument -- that equitable tolling
applies to his habeas filing -- is grounded in principles of equity
and fairness, and is primarily focused on the disruption in the
Commonwealth's administration of justice caused by Dookhan's
deceitful misconduct.14 In claiming that his petition for habeas
corpus relief should be permitted to go forward, Petitioner offers
the following argument: "The lower court presumed that equitable
tolling can only apply to the time immediately preceding the filing
of the habeas corpus petition, rather than to any period of time
after a conviction becomes final. . . .As far as petitioner is
aware, there is no requirement that the petitioner show a permanent
impediment from filing or to justify the year in which petitioner
has to file his application for a writ of habeas corpus."
Petitioner's argument, then, seems to have two parts which go like
this. First, he says that the 75 days between February 19, 2014,
the date his convictions became final, up to May 5, 2014, when he
filed his motion for a new trial, must be equitably tolled because
filed his motion for a stay. Then, 39 days elapse between the
denial of his motion to stay and the filing of his motion for a
new trial. If you add those 41 days to the 327 days he waited
between the final exhaustion of all state court review and the
date he filed the present writ, you get 368 days -- three days
over the statutory time limit.
14
As mentioned earlier, based on Scott, 5 N.E.3d at 535, this
conduct may be attributed to the Commonwealth.
- 15 -
during this time he was diligently pursuing state-court relief,
and yet was thwarted by the difficulties posed by the Hinton Lab
investigation. As he tells it: "The magnitude of the problem
effectively reopened and called into question thousands of
convictions. What followed were delays in post-conviction
hearings, discovery issues, and an on-going, ultimately fifteen-
month, investigation by the Office of the Inspector General into
the Hinton State Drug Laboratory that concluded on March 4, 2014."
Second, as for the time from April 27, 2016 to March 20,
2017, when Petitioner filed his habeas petition, he seems to be
contending that this period should be excluded altogether from our
equitable tolling analysis. We consider Petitioner's contentions,
keeping in mind the guiding principles discussed next.
To establish a basis for equitable tolling, a habeas
petitioner must demonstrate that he or she has diligently pursued
her rights, but some extraordinary circumstance, or obstacle,
prevented timely filing. Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 649
(2010); Holmes I, 685 F.3d at 62. The diligence prong covers those
affairs within the petitioner's control, while the extraordinary-
circumstances prong covers matters outside his control. Menominee
Indian Tribe of Wis. v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 750, 755-57
(2016). It is up to the petitioner to establish "a causal
relationship between the extraordinary circumstances on which the
claim for equitable tolling rests and the lateness of his filing."
- 16 -
Valverde v. Stinson, 224 F.3d 129, 134 (2d Cir. 2000).
Additionally, "we apply equitable tolling on a case-by-case basis,
avoiding mechanical rules and favoring flexibility." Ortega
Candelaria v. Orthobiologics LLC, 661 F.3d 675, 680 (1st Cir.
2011). That said, equitable tolling is applied infrequently,
Holmes I, 685 F.3d at 62, and abuse-of-discretion is the lens
through which we review an equitable tolling decision, Holmes v.
Spencer (Holmes II), 822 F.3d 609, 612 (1st Cir. 2016). This
standard of review is nuanced; "within it, abstract questions of
law are reviewed de novo, findings of raw fact are reviewed for
clear error, and judgment calls receive a classically deferential
reception." Holmes I, 685 F.3d at 62 (quoting Riva v. Ficco, 615
F.3d 35, 40 (1st Cir. 2010)).
In support of his two-part equitable tolling theory (to
remind the reader: the period between the date of his final
conviction and the date he filed his motion for a new trial should
be equitably tolled in full, and the eleven-month post new trial
denial period should be ignored altogether), Petitioner cites to
Holmes I. Accordingly, closer scrutiny of that case is warranted.
In Holmes I, habeas petitioner Holmes sought both
statutory and equitable tolling: statutory for a period during
- 17 -
which his motion to revise or revoke his sentence was pending;15
equitable for the same period based on the obstacles imposed by
his incarceration, and by the incorrect legal filing he made in
reliance on misleading advice from his lawyer during plea
bargaining. Holmes I, 685 F.3d at 55-56. On appeal this court
affirmed the district court in part, agreeing that, while Holmes's
motion to revise or revoke his sentence was in fact an application
for collateral review under AEDPA (based on the newly-minted Kholi
III decision), it still was not "properly" filed under
Massachusetts law (his filing did not specify the grounds upon
which the motion was based as Rule 29 requires)16 and so did not
trigger the statutory tolling mechanism within the meaning of 28
U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2). Id. at 60-61. However, we remanded the
matter to the district court to review its equitable tolling
ruling, pointing out that Holmes's belief that he had in fact
properly filed his motion to revise or revoke his sentence might,
15
Holmes's motion was brought pursuant to Massachusetts Rule
of Criminal Procedure 29, a rule indistinguishable from Rhode
Island's Rule 35 discussed in Kholi III.
16
An application is "properly filed" for AEDPA purposes "when
its delivery and acceptance are in compliance with the applicable
laws and rules governing filings." Holmes I, 685 F.3d at 67
(quoting Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U.S. 4, 8 (2000)).
- 18 -
after Kholi III, provide an equitable basis for excluding the time
the motion was pending.17 Id. at 63-66.
Petitioner is correct that our Holmes I decision spends
much time and analysis scrutinizing the almost nine-year period
between Holmes's guilty plea and the final denial of
reconsideration from the Commonwealth court, during which time he
argued that he faced extraordinary obstacles (a lot was going on
during those nine years). Then, extrapolating from the focus of
that discussion, Petitioner posits that the additional seven-month
period between the final ruling by the Commonwealth court and the
date Holmes filed his petition for habeas corpus must not have
been relevant to our equitable tolling analysis. "There was no
weight given to, or even mention of, the seven months it took
[Holmes] to file his habeas petition after his conviction became
final," Petitioner writes in his brief. Therefore, according to
Petitioner, it logically follows that in his case, the eleven-
month period between the conclusion of the Commonwealth court
review and the filing of his habeas petition is not relevant to
17This court rejected Holmes's arguments that allegedly bad
advice from his lawyer, coupled with the disadvantages of
incarceration, justified equitable tolling, suggesting sua sponte
a third ground for equitable tolling instead. As it turned out,
on remand, the district court held that there was no basis for
equitable tolling and again denied Holmes's petition as untimely.
The ruling was affirmed by this court in Holmes II. 822 F.3d at
612.
- 19 -
our assessment of extraordinary circumstances or diligence when it
comes to an equitable tolling analysis.
Unfortunately, Petitioner misconstrues our Holmes I
rationale. A careful read makes it clear that we considered the
entire period leading up to the filing of the habeas petition when
we wrote, "[t]he timeliness of Holmes's federal habeas petition,
then, hinges on whether there are any grounds for excluding at
least twenty-two of the remaining thirty-four unaccounted months
between May 1, 1998 [the date of Holmes's guilty plea] and April
9, 2008 [the filing date of the habeas petition]." Id. at 57. Of
course, given the procedural intricacies that animated Holmes's
journey through the Commonwealth criminal justice system, we had
reason to more closely examine the months during which Holmes
claimed he was prevented by circumstances outside of his control
from filing his habeas petition; but unquestionably, as clearly
noted in our decision, the full period was taken into account in
calculating the operation of the AEDPA time limit. Id. at 57-61.
Thus, with Holmes I's timing calculus properly understood, we
return to Petitioner's argument.
To briefly recap the timeline: approximately three
years and a month went by between the date Petitioner's convictions
became final and the date he filed his habeas petition.18 After
18In its argument on equitable tolling, the government comes
up with a different set of calculations. The government starts
- 20 -
Petitioner's motion for a new trial was finally denied, eleven
months went by before the present motion got filed. Even if we
were to accept Petitioner's argument that the entire Dookhan
debacle posed an insurmountable obstacle to Petitioner's filing a
timely habeas proceeding prior to the SJC's final resolution of
his motion for a new trial on April 27, 2016, he nevertheless can
point to no fact which demonstrates any obstacle, extraordinary or
otherwise, that hindered his filing of a habeas petition during
the final eleven months. Nor can he point to any behavior on his
part that would demonstrate reasonable diligence in pursuing his
rights during the final eleven months. When Petitioner's motion
for a new trial was denied, it should have been clear to him that
all state-court avenues for relief had been exhausted. That is
the moment he needed to move swiftly to preserve his federal rights
as the Hinton Lab misconduct could no longer be described as
the clock on November 21, 2013, the date that Petitioner's
application for further state-level appellate review was denied.
The government concludes then that 165 days elapsed before
Petitioner filed his motion for a new trial. This court has
generally determined that the judgment becomes final after an
additional ninety days have elapsed to allow for the filing of a
petition for certiorari, see Neverson v. Farquharson, 366 F.3d 32,
36 (1st Cir. 2004), starting the AEDPA clock then after that
ninety-day period. With its argument, the government seeks to
underscore that the Petitioner also had this ninety-day period
available during which he might have filed his motion for a new
trial, thereby undermining Petitioner's diligence argument. The
government does not press an argument about this clock-starting
date, and, in any case, this discrepancy is not determinative of
the outcome.
- 21 -
impeding his ability to seek post-conviction review. See Neverson
v. Farquharson, 366 F.3d 32, 44 (1st Cir. 2004). As the government
correctly points out, the Commonwealth nolle prossed Petitioner's
drug charges in January 2015. As these were the only charges
directly affected by Dookhan's malfeasance, the putative obstacle
posed by the Hinton Lab issues dematerialized over a year before
his motion for a new trial was denied. Petitioner's argument that
the gun-related convictions were tainted by the prosecutor's
closing remarks at trial (connecting the drugs with the gun) had
been repeatedly rejected by the Commonwealth courts by April 2016
-- twice by the trial court, once by the appellate court, and
finally by the SJC. As a result, Petitioner's hope, or misguided
belief, that this theory might provide him a lifeline could no
longer be reasonably understood as an obstacle preventing him from
pursuing his federal remedy.
IV. Conclusion
Because we find that Petitioner's motion to stay the
execution of his sentence was not a request for collateral review
and so did not toll the one-year statute of limitations in the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and because we find
no reason to disrupt the district court's discretionary ruling on
equitable tolling, we affirm the dismissal of Petitioner's
petition for a writ of habeas corpus as time-barred.
- 22 -