This case involves two federal prescriptions: the one-year limitation period imposed on federal habeas corpus petitioners by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(1); and the rule that pleading amendments relate back to the filing date of the original pleading when both the original plea and the amendment arise out of the same “conduct, transaction, or occurrence.
A New York Criminal Lawyer said the respondent was convicted of murder and robbery in California state court and sentenced to life imprisonment. His current application for federal habeas relief centers on two alleged trial-court errors, both involving the admission of out-of-court statements during the prosecutor’s case in chief but otherwise unrelated. Respondent had made inculpatory statements during pretrial police interrogation. He alleged that those statements were coerced, and that their admission violated his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. He also alleged that the admission of a videotape recording of testimony of a prosecution witness violated the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause.
Respondent’s conviction was affirmed on appeal and became final on August 12, 1997. Under the one-year limitation period imposed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(1), he had until August 12, 1998, to file a habeas petition in federal court. On May 8, 1998, in a timely filed habeas petition, respondent asserted his Confrontation Clause challenge to admission of the videotaped prosecution witness testimony, but did not then challenge the admission of his own pretrial statements. On January 28, 1999, over five months after the August 12, 1998 expiration of AEDPA’s time limit and eight months after the court appointed counsel to represent him, respondent filed an amended petition asserting a Fifth Amendment objection to admission of his pretrial statements. In response to the State’s argument that the Fifth Amendment claim was time barred, respondent asserted the rule that pleading amendments relate back to the filing date of the original pleading when both the original plea and the amendment arise out of the same “conduct, transaction, or occurrence set forth . . . in the original pleading,” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 15(c)(2). Because his Fifth Amendment and Confrontation Clause claims challenged the constitutionality of the same criminal conviction, respondent urged, both claims arose out of the same “conduct, transaction, or occurrence.”
The Court held that an amended habeas petition does not relate back (and thereby avoid AEDPA’s one-year time limit) when it asserts a new ground for relief supported by facts that differ in both time and type from those set forth in the original pleading.
Under the Ninth Circuit’s comprehensive definition of “conduct, transaction, or occurrence,” virtually any new claim introduced in an amended habeas petition will relate back, for federal habeas claims, by their very nature, challenge the constitutionality of a conviction or sentence, and commonly attack proceedings anterior thereto. The majority of Circuits define “conduct, transaction, or occurrence” in federal habeas cases far less broadly, allowing relation back only when the claims added by amendment arise from the same core facts as the timely filed claims, and not when the new claims depend upon events separate in both time and type from the originally raised episodes. Under that view, respondent’s own pretrial statements, newly raised in his amended petition, would not relate back because they were separated in time and
type from the videotaped witness testimony.
Respondent’s contention that the trial itself is the appropriate “transaction” or “occurrence” artificially truncates his claims by homing in only on what makes those claims actionable in a habeas proceeding. A Suffolk County Criminal Lawyer said that although his self-incrimination claim did not ripen until the prosecutor introduced his pretrial statements at trial, the essential predicate for his Fifth Amendment claim was an extrajudicial event, i. e., an out-of-court police interrogation. The dispositive question in an adjudication of that claim would be the character of the police interrogation, specifically, did respondent answer voluntarily or were his statements coerced.
Under Habeas Corpus Rule 2(c)’s particularity-in-pleading requirement, respondent’s Confrontation Clause claim would be pleaded discretely, as would his self-incrimination claim. Each separate congeries of facts supporting the grounds for relief, the Rule suggests, would delineate an “occurrence.” Respondent’s and the Ninth Circuit’s approach is boundless by comparison, allowing a miscellany of claims for relief to be raised later rather than sooner and to relate back. If claims asserted after the one-year period could be revived simply because they relate to the same trial, conviction, or sentence as a timely filed claim, AEDPA’s limitation period would have slim significance.
Respondent’s argument that a firm check against petition amendments presenting new, discrete claims after AEDPA’s limitation period has run is provided by Rule 15(a)—which gives district courts discretion to deny petition amendments once a responsive pleading has been filed—overlooks a pleader’s right to amend without leave of court “any time before a responsive pleading is served.” That time can be long under Habeas Corpus Rule 4, pursuant to which a petition is not served until the judge first examines it to determine whether “it plainly appears . . . that the petitioner is not entitled to relief.” This Court’s reading that relation back will be in order so long as the original and amended petitions state claims that are tied to a common core of operative facts is consistent with Rule 15(c)(2)’s general application in civil cases, with Habeas Corpus Rule 2(c), and with AEDPA’s tight time line for petitions.
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