On Monday the Supreme Court held that California prisoner Reginald Chavis’ federal habeas claim fell outside the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s (AEDPA) one year statute of limitations. The Court found that Chavis’ three year delay in filing for appeal to the California Supreme Court was not “reasonable” under California law, and thus did not qualify for tolling of the limitations period under the AEDPA provision that allows a prisoner to discount the “time during which a properly filed application for Sate post-conviction or other collateral review…is pending.”

Chavis filed his initial state habeas petition on May 14, 1993. The trial court denied the petition, as did the California Court of Appeal on September 29, 1994. Chavis did not file a petition for review in the California Supreme Court until November 5, 1997, and that court denied the petition with an order stating, “Petition for writ of habeas corpus is DENIED.”

Justice Breyer, writing for the Court, noted that California’s system for habeas review is different from most other states. Whereas most states require a notice of appeal within a finite time period, California requires only that a prisoner seek review within a “reasonable time.” In the 2002 case of Carey v. Saffold, the Court held that for purposes of AEDPA tolling, “pending” time included the time period between the time the lower state court reached an adverse decision and the day the prisoner filed a petition to a higher court, so long as the petition was “timely” filed under the state law. Under the indeterminate California system, AEDPA would be tolled so long as the petitioner’s delay was actually “reasonable,” and, absent direction from the California courts, it is the job of the federal courts to determine whether this has occurred. Saffold also held that the California Supreme Court’s denying a state habeas petition “on the merits” and “for lack of diligence” did not necessarily imply that the petition was reasonably and timely filed.

Relying on Saffold, Justice Breyer overturned the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in this case that Chavis’ state petition was pending during the three year interval between the California Court of Appeal decision and his petition for review in the California Supreme Court. Justice Breyer reasoned that “[i]f the appearance of the words ‘on the merits’ does not automatically warrant a holding that the filing was timely, the absence of those words could not automatically warrant a holding that the filing was timely.” Thus, in the absence of guidance from the California Supreme Court about the meaning of “reasonable time” or a “clear indication that a particular request for appellate review was timely or untimely,” it falls to the circuit court to examine the delay and determine whether a California court would consider it “reasonable.”

In this case, the Court was “convinced that the law does not permit a holding that Chavis’ federal habeas petition was timely.” Contrary to his assertion that his prison job’s hours and prison lockdowns prevented him from using the prison library, the Court found that he was given a new job in March 1996 that would have allowed for library use and that the prison was “relatively lockdown free” from February 1997 to August 1997. This six month period “is far longer” than the shorter periods most states provide for notice of appeal.

Justice Breyer also suggested that the “California courts themselves might alleviate the problem [of the Ninth Circuit having to review so many cases without clear guidance] by clarifying the scope of the words ‘reasonable time.’” Short of that, the Ninth Circuit will have to continue to make these determinations, keeping in mind that Saffold was based “on the assumption that California law…did not differ significantly from the laws of other states, i.e., that California’s “reasonable time” standard would not lead to filing delays substantially longer than those in States with determinate timeliness rules.”

Justice Stevens concurred in the judgment. He argued that Saffold stands for the proposition that “the answer to the timeliness question depended on what the California Supreme Court had actually decided rather than on any conclusion that the Court of Appeals itself might reach concerning…reasonableness…under California law.” There is nothing inconsistent, argued Justice Stevens, with this ruling and the presumption applied by the Ninth Circuit that “an order decided entirely on the merits indicates that the state court did not find the petition to be untimely.” Justice Stevens reasoned that the tolling issue presented by California’s reasonableness requirement–as a matter of state law–is analogous to the question of whether denial of a state habeas petition rested upon adequate and independent state law grounds. In this latter situation, the Court endeavors to determine the actual basis for the state court decision, rather than resolving the issue itself. Noting that the California courts decide state habeas requests in one of three ways–(i) expressly on the timeliness question, (ii) on the merits without comment on timeliness, or (iii) without disclosing the basis for decision–Justice Stevens outlined a set of presumptions that should apply to each case. In the second case, a presumption of timeliness is proper and consistent with Saffold. In the third case, Justice Stevens would apply a presumption of timeliness to any delay less than six months, and a presumption that the petition was denied on timeliness grounds if the delay was longer than six months. Based on these standards, Justice Stevens concurred in the judgment for two reasons. First, he found that a second set of state habeas proceedings (after the first set, but before the federal petition) in this case made clear that the California Supreme Court found Chavis’ petition untimely filed. Second, he found that the greater than six months’ delay in this case triggered the presumption against timeliness.