Day v. McDonough
Encyclopedia
Day v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 198 (2006), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States
involving the one year statute of limitations
for filing habeas corpus
petitions that was established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
(AEDPA). In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that where the government has unintentionally failed to object to the filing of a petition after the AEDPA limitations period has expired, it is not an abuse of discretion for a district court
to nevertheless sua sponte
(on its own initiative) dismiss the petition on that basis.
state court and sentenced to imprisonment for 55 years. After the Florida First District Court of Appeals
affirmed Day's conviction and sentence, the AEDPA 365 day statute of limitations
for Day to obtain federal habeas corpus
relief began to run on March 20, 2000. On March 9, 2001, Day filed a postconviction petition under Florida state procedure, which tolled the limitation period for filing a habeas petition until December 3, 2002, when the First District Court of Appeals issued its mandate denying Day collateral relief. By then, Day had used 353 of his allotted 365 days, and accordingly had until December 16, 2002, to file a federal habeas petition.
However, Day did not file his petition until January 8, 2003, at which point the limitations period had run. A U.S. magistrate
judge nevertheless acknowledged that the petition was "in proper form" and ordered the State of Florida to file an answer
, and to make all arguments regarding Day's potential failure to exhaust state remedies
or procedural default. The order stated that those arguments would be waived if not addressed in the answer, but it did not expressly mention the statute of limitations. The answer of the State of Florida erroneously asserted that Day's petition was timely filed after "352 days of untolled time," and then addressed Day's substantive arguments.
In December 2003, the court sua sponte
issued an order to show cause
why Day's petition should not be dismissed as untimely. Day made three arguments against dismissal. First, Day argued that the court should not dismiss his complaint after it had been pending for nearly a year without any suggestion that it was untimely. Second, Day argued that he had 90 days from the denial of his motion for rehearing on collateral appeal to file a petition for a writ of certiorari
to the U.S. Supreme Court. Under his calculation, the limitation period for filing his federal habeas petition did not run until 90 days after November 15, 2002. Third, Day argued that the state public defender
s withheld his trial transcript
for 352 days, and the delay cost him time in which he could have worked toward filing his appeals.
The magistrate judge recommended dismissal of Day's habeas petition. In his objection to the report and recommendation of the magistrate judge, Day argued for the first time that the concession of timeliness by the state was dispositive because it constituted a forfeiture of that defense. The district court instead adopted the magistrate judge's report and dismissed Day's petition.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
granted a certificate of appealability only regarding Day's forfeiture argument, and then affirmed in a per curiam decision. The court had previously ruled on this issue to uphold the ability of a trial court to review sua sponte the timeliness of a petition. The court also believed that Florida's concession of timeliness was "patently erroneous."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
delivered the opinion for the majority, holding that district courts
are permitted, but not obliged, to consider, sua sponte, the timeliness of a state prisoner's habeas corpus
petition. Based on precedent involving other affirmative defense
s to habeas petitions, and the perceived lack of difference between outright dismissal by the district court and dismissal after allowing the State to amend its answer to include the limitations defense, the Court did not consider the district court's dismissal of Day's petition to be an abuse of discretion. Justices John Paul Stevens
and Antonin Scalia
filed dissenting opinions.
defense with other non-jurisdictional
affirmative defenses to a habeas corpus petition such as exhaustion of remedies
, which the Court had ruled in Granberry v. Greer, 481 U.S. 129 (1987) federal appellate courts
may address sua sponte
, despite the issue not having been raised at the district court level. There was similar precedent involving the nonretroactivity rule and procedural default. The Court noted that the statute of limitations is expressly grouped with those other defenses under the current version of Rule 5(b) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts (simply known as the Habeas Rules), which provides that the State's answer to a habeas petition "must state whether any claim in the petition is barred by a failure to exhaust state remedies, a procedural bar, non-retroactivity, or a statute of limitations."
Day's argument was characterized by the Court as relying primarily on Habeas Rule 4, which requires district courts to "promptly examine" petitions and dismiss "if it plainly appears...that the petitioner is not entitled to relief." Day argued that this limited a court's ability to raise AEDPA's limitation sua sponte to the preanswer, initial screening stage, and that after that point, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
governed the proceedings. Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(c), the statute of limitations defense is forfeited
if it is not asserted in its answer, or an amendment thereto, just as the State of Florida failed to do. However, the Court believed that were it to accept Day's position, courts would rarely be positioned to raise AEDPA's time bar sua sponte because information essential to the time calculation is often absent until the State has filed, along with its answer, copies of documents from the state-court proceedings, as was the case in Day's proceedings.
The Court instead agreed with the State of Florida
, which argued that "[t]he considerations of comity
, finality, and the expeditious handling of habeas proceedings that motivated AEDPA...counsel against an excessively rigid or formal approach to the affirmative defenses" such as the statute of limitations. The State argued that Granberry was instructive in establishing that courts instead have the discretion in each case to decide "whether the administration of justice" would be better served by reaching the merits of the petition or dismissing it because of the statute of limitations, and a petition should not be deemed timely simply because a government attorney miscounted the days. The Court observed that the State could have simply amended its answer had the Magistrate Judge informed it of its computation error rather than acting sua sponte. "Recognizing that an amendment to the State's answer might have obviated this controversy," the Court wrote, "we see no dispositive difference between that route, and the one taken here."
The Court concluded by emphasizing the need for the parties to receive fair notice
and an opportunity to be heard before a court acts on its own initiative. Courts must also ensure that the petitioner is not significantly prejudiced
by the delayed focus on the limitation issue, and "determine whether the interests of justice would be better served" by addressing the merits or by dismissing the petition as time barred. The Court also stated that a district court would not have the discretion to disregard the choice of a defendant to intelligently waive the limitations defense. In this case, however, the Court believed the Magistrate Judge gave Day due notice and a fair opportunity to show why the limitation period should not yield dismissal of the petition, and there was nothing to suggest that the State "strategically" withheld the defense or chose to relinquish it. The record instead indicated that the miscalculation was "merely an inadvertent error."
, though believing the case was rightly decided, dissented from the Court's decision to announce its judgment when a relevant case would be decided later in the term. Justice Breyer
, who believed the case was wrongly decided, also joined in Stevens' dissent on this issue.
The Court had recently granted certiorari
in Lawrence v. Florida, a case which would answer the question of whether Day's petition was actually barred by the statute of limitations. Stevens wrote that "[i]t seems improvident to affirm a possibly erroneous Court of Appeals
judgment that dismissed Day's habeas petition without an evaluation of its merits when we have already granted certiorari to address the issue on which the Court of Appeals may have erred." He suggested the lower court may still avoid a "miscarriage of justice
" by keeping Day's case on its docket until after Lawrence is decided, "but it would be better practice for us to do so ourselves."
, joined by Justices Breyer and Thomas
, objected that the Court was disregarding the clear provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
(FRCP), which required the forfeiture of affirmative defenses when they are not raised. Because this ordinary forfeiture rule would be entirely consistent with the Habeas Rules and statutes, it should apply to the AEDPA
statute of limitations. Scalia asserted that it is instead "the Court's unwarranted expansion of the timeliness rule enacted by Congress that is inconsistent with the statute, the Habeas Rules, the Civil Rules, and traditional practice."
The FRCP govern in habeas corpus
proceedings to the extent that those rules are not inconsistent with federal statutes or the Habeas Rules. Scalia stated that the Court did not identify any such inconsistency "because there is none." Scalia believed the forfeiture rule could not be inconsistent with traditional habeas practice because there was no applicable statute of limitations until AEDPA was enacted in 1996. It was also consistent with Habeas Rule 5(b), which requires the State's answer
to state whether any claim in the habeas petition is barred by the statute of limitations. Finally, as Day had argued, forfeiture is also consistent with Habeas Rule 4 because that rule provides for sua sponte
screening and dismissal by the district courts only prior to the filing of the State's answer. Scalia believed that the Court's concern over whether district courts
could ever raise the AEDPA limitation sua sponte under Day's construction of the Habeas Rules begged the question
, by assuming that courts should be able to raise that issue sua sponte. "That is precisely the question before us."
Scalia considered it most important that no provision of the habeas statute would be contradicted or undermined by applying the forfeiture rule to the limitations period. "Quite the contrary, on its most natural reading, the statute calls for the forfeiture rule." AEDPA enacted the one-year limitation period "without further qualification." Given the "background understanding" that failure to raise the defense of limitations constitutes waiver, "the statute implies that the usual forfeiture rule is applicable."
Scalia distinguished the other affirmative defenses to habeas petitions as having been created as judicial doctrines by the courts, "in the exercise of their traditional equitable discretion, because they were seen as necessary to protect the interests of comity
and finality that federal collateral review of state criminal proceedings necessarily implicates." None of these defenses involved a time limitation, and the one year limit in AEDPA "is entirely a recent creature of statute
. If comity and finality did not compel any time limitation at all, it follows a fortiori that they do not compel making a legislatively created, forfeitable time limitation nonforfeitable." Court precedent prior to AEDPA had furthermore affirmatively rejected that the traditionally broad discretionary powers of habeas courts would support the imposition of a time limitation. "There is, therefore, no support for the notion that the traditional equitable discretion that governed habeas proceedings permitted the dismissal of habeas petitions on the sole ground of untimeliness."
The Court's observation that there was no substantive difference between allowing the State to amend its answer and simply dismissing sua sponte was characterized by Scalia as "what appears to be the chief ground of its decision." Scalia argued that if there was truly no "dispositive difference" between the alternatives, "the natural conclusion would be that there is no compelling reason to disregard the Civil Rules. Legislatively enacted rules are surely entitled to more respect than this apparent presumption that, when nothing substantial hangs on the point, they do not apply as written." At a minimum, Scalia believed it "a nontrivial value in itself" to "observe[ ] the formalities of our adversary system" by requiring the State to amend its own pleading. Scalia also observed that in contrast to the "novel regime" adopted by the majority, there is already a well-developed body of law regarding whether a party should have leave to amend a pleading. "Ockham is offended by today's decision, even if no one else is."
Scalia also believed that under the Court's ruling, it would not be an abuse of discretion for a district court to override an affirmative waiver of the defense by the State, and that the Court's assertion to the contrary was "without relevant citation
or reasoning."
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
involving the one year statute of limitations
Statute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...
for filing habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
petitions that was established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214, is an act of Congress signed into law on April 24, 1996...
(AEDPA). In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that where the government has unintentionally failed to object to the filing of a petition after the AEDPA limitations period has expired, it is not an abuse of discretion for a district court
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
to nevertheless sua sponte
Sua sponte
In law, sua sponte describes an act of authority taken without formal prompting from another party. The term is usually applied to actions by a judge taken without a prior motion or request from the parties...
(on its own initiative) dismiss the petition on that basis.
Background of the case
On September 3, 1998, Patrick Day was convicted of second-degree murder in FloridaFlorida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
state court and sentenced to imprisonment for 55 years. After the Florida First District Court of Appeals
Florida District Courts of Appeal
The Florida District Courts of Appeal are the intermediate appellate courts of the Florida state court system. There are five DCAs:*The First District Court of Appeal is headquartered in Tallahassee...
affirmed Day's conviction and sentence, the AEDPA 365 day statute of limitations
Statute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...
for Day to obtain federal habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
relief began to run on March 20, 2000. On March 9, 2001, Day filed a postconviction petition under Florida state procedure, which tolled the limitation period for filing a habeas petition until December 3, 2002, when the First District Court of Appeals issued its mandate denying Day collateral relief. By then, Day had used 353 of his allotted 365 days, and accordingly had until December 16, 2002, to file a federal habeas petition.
However, Day did not file his petition until January 8, 2003, at which point the limitations period had run. A U.S. magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
judge nevertheless acknowledged that the petition was "in proper form" and ordered the State of Florida to file an answer
Answer
Generally, an answer is a reply to a question or is a solution, a retaliation, or a response that is relevant to the said question.In law, an answer was originally a solemn assertion in opposition to some one or something, and thus generally any counter-statement or defense, a reply to a question...
, and to make all arguments regarding Day's potential failure to exhaust state remedies
Exhaustion of remedies
The doctrine of exhaustion of remedies prevents a litigant from seeking a remedy in a new court or jurisdiction until all claims or remedies have been exhausted in the original one. The doctrine was originally created by case law based on the principles of comity.In the United States, exhaustion...
or procedural default. The order stated that those arguments would be waived if not addressed in the answer, but it did not expressly mention the statute of limitations. The answer of the State of Florida erroneously asserted that Day's petition was timely filed after "352 days of untolled time," and then addressed Day's substantive arguments.
In December 2003, the court sua sponte
Sua sponte
In law, sua sponte describes an act of authority taken without formal prompting from another party. The term is usually applied to actions by a judge taken without a prior motion or request from the parties...
issued an order to show cause
Order to show cause
An order to show cause, in most Anglo-Saxon law systems, is a type of court order that requires one or more of the parties to a case to justify, explain, or prove something to the court. Courts commonly use orders to show cause when the judge needs more information before deciding whether or not to...
why Day's petition should not be dismissed as untimely. Day made three arguments against dismissal. First, Day argued that the court should not dismiss his complaint after it had been pending for nearly a year without any suggestion that it was untimely. Second, Day argued that he had 90 days from the denial of his motion for rehearing on collateral appeal to file a petition for a writ of certiorari
Certiorari
Certiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...
to the U.S. Supreme Court. Under his calculation, the limitation period for filing his federal habeas petition did not run until 90 days after November 15, 2002. Third, Day argued that the state public defender
Public defender
The term public defender is primarily used to refer to a criminal defense lawyer appointed to represent people charged with a crime but who cannot afford to hire an attorney in the United States and Brazil. The term is also applied to some ombudsman offices, for example in Jamaica, and is one way...
s withheld his trial transcript
Transcript
Transcript may refer to:* Transcript , a copy of a student's permanent academic record* Transcription , the process of creating an equivalent RNA copy of a sequence of DNA* Transcript , a record of all court proceedings...
for 352 days, and the delay cost him time in which he could have worked toward filing his appeals.
The magistrate judge recommended dismissal of Day's habeas petition. In his objection to the report and recommendation of the magistrate judge, Day argued for the first time that the concession of timeliness by the state was dispositive because it constituted a forfeiture of that defense. The district court instead adopted the magistrate judge's report and dismissed Day's petition.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Middle District of Alabama...
granted a certificate of appealability only regarding Day's forfeiture argument, and then affirmed in a per curiam decision. The court had previously ruled on this issue to uphold the ability of a trial court to review sua sponte the timeliness of a petition. The court also believed that Florida's concession of timeliness was "patently erroneous."
The court's decision
The Court affirmed the decision of the Eleventh Circuit in a 5-4 ruling. JusticeAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States are the members of the Supreme Court of the United States other than the Chief Justice of the United States...
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice and the first Jewish female justice.She is generally viewed as belonging to...
delivered the opinion for the majority, holding that district courts
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
are permitted, but not obliged, to consider, sua sponte, the timeliness of a state prisoner's habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
petition. Based on precedent involving other affirmative defense
Affirmative defense
A defendant offers an affirmative defense when responding to a plaintiff's claim in common law jurisdictions, or, more familiarly, in criminal law. Essentially, the defendant affirms that the condition is occurring or has occurred but offers a defense that bars, or prevents, the plaintiff's claim. ...
s to habeas petitions, and the perceived lack of difference between outright dismissal by the district court and dismissal after allowing the State to amend its answer to include the limitations defense, the Court did not consider the district court's dismissal of Day's petition to be an abuse of discretion. Justices John Paul Stevens
John Paul Stevens
John Paul Stevens served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from December 19, 1975 until his retirement on June 29, 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the oldest member of the Court and the third-longest serving justice in the Court's history...
and Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia
Antonin Gregory Scalia is an American jurist who serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice on the Court, Scalia is the Senior Associate Justice...
filed dissenting opinions.
Ginsburg's majority opinion
The Court grouped the statute of limitationsStatute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...
defense with other non-jurisdictional
Subject-matter jurisdiction
Subject-matter jurisdiction is the authority of a court to hear cases of a particular type or cases relating to a specific subject matter. For instance, bankruptcy court only has the authority to hear bankruptcy cases....
affirmative defenses to a habeas corpus petition such as exhaustion of remedies
Exhaustion of remedies
The doctrine of exhaustion of remedies prevents a litigant from seeking a remedy in a new court or jurisdiction until all claims or remedies have been exhausted in the original one. The doctrine was originally created by case law based on the principles of comity.In the United States, exhaustion...
, which the Court had ruled in Granberry v. Greer, 481 U.S. 129 (1987) federal appellate courts
United States court of appeals
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system...
may address sua sponte
Sua sponte
In law, sua sponte describes an act of authority taken without formal prompting from another party. The term is usually applied to actions by a judge taken without a prior motion or request from the parties...
, despite the issue not having been raised at the district court level. There was similar precedent involving the nonretroactivity rule and procedural default. The Court noted that the statute of limitations is expressly grouped with those other defenses under the current version of Rule 5(b) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts (simply known as the Habeas Rules), which provides that the State's answer to a habeas petition "must state whether any claim in the petition is barred by a failure to exhaust state remedies, a procedural bar, non-retroactivity, or a statute of limitations."
Day's argument was characterized by the Court as relying primarily on Habeas Rule 4, which requires district courts to "promptly examine" petitions and dismiss "if it plainly appears...that the petitioner is not entitled to relief." Day argued that this limited a court's ability to raise AEDPA's limitation sua sponte to the preanswer, initial screening stage, and that after that point, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern civil procedure in United States district courts. The FRCP are promulgated by the United States Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, and then the United States Congress has 7 months to veto the rules promulgated or they become part of the...
governed the proceedings. Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(c), the statute of limitations defense is forfeited
Waiver
A waiver is the voluntary relinquishment or surrender of some known right or privilege.While a waiver is often in writing, sometimes a person's actions can act as a waiver. An example of a written waiver is a disclaimer, which becomes a waiver when accepted...
if it is not asserted in its answer, or an amendment thereto, just as the State of Florida failed to do. However, the Court believed that were it to accept Day's position, courts would rarely be positioned to raise AEDPA's time bar sua sponte because information essential to the time calculation is often absent until the State has filed, along with its answer, copies of documents from the state-court proceedings, as was the case in Day's proceedings.
The Court instead agreed with the State of Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, which argued that "[t]he considerations of comity
Comity
In law, comity specifically refers to legal reciprocity—the principle that one jurisdiction will extend certain courtesies to other nations , particularly by recognizing the validity and effect of their executive, legislative, and judicial acts...
, finality, and the expeditious handling of habeas proceedings that motivated AEDPA...counsel against an excessively rigid or formal approach to the affirmative defenses" such as the statute of limitations. The State argued that Granberry was instructive in establishing that courts instead have the discretion in each case to decide "whether the administration of justice" would be better served by reaching the merits of the petition or dismissing it because of the statute of limitations, and a petition should not be deemed timely simply because a government attorney miscounted the days. The Court observed that the State could have simply amended its answer had the Magistrate Judge informed it of its computation error rather than acting sua sponte. "Recognizing that an amendment to the State's answer might have obviated this controversy," the Court wrote, "we see no dispositive difference between that route, and the one taken here."
The Court concluded by emphasizing the need for the parties to receive fair notice
Notice
Notice is the legal concept in which a party is made aware of a legal process affecting their rights, obligations or duties. There are several types of notice: public notice , actual notice, constructive notice, and implied notice....
and an opportunity to be heard before a court acts on its own initiative. Courts must also ensure that the petitioner is not significantly prejudiced
Prejudice (law)
There are two meanings for "prejudice" in legal proceedings; civil and criminal.-Civil procedure:Within legal civil procedure, prejudice is a loss or injury, and refers specifically to a formal determination against a claimed legal right or cause of action. Thus, in a civil case, dismissal without...
by the delayed focus on the limitation issue, and "determine whether the interests of justice would be better served" by addressing the merits or by dismissing the petition as time barred. The Court also stated that a district court would not have the discretion to disregard the choice of a defendant to intelligently waive the limitations defense. In this case, however, the Court believed the Magistrate Judge gave Day due notice and a fair opportunity to show why the limitation period should not yield dismissal of the petition, and there was nothing to suggest that the State "strategically" withheld the defense or chose to relinquish it. The record instead indicated that the miscalculation was "merely an inadvertent error."
Stevens' dissent
Justice StevensJohn Paul Stevens
John Paul Stevens served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from December 19, 1975 until his retirement on June 29, 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the oldest member of the Court and the third-longest serving justice in the Court's history...
, though believing the case was rightly decided, dissented from the Court's decision to announce its judgment when a relevant case would be decided later in the term. Justice Breyer
Stephen Breyer
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law, Breyer is generally associated with the more liberal side of the Court....
, who believed the case was wrongly decided, also joined in Stevens' dissent on this issue.
The Court had recently granted certiorari
Certiorari
Certiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...
in Lawrence v. Florida, a case which would answer the question of whether Day's petition was actually barred by the statute of limitations. Stevens wrote that "[i]t seems improvident to affirm a possibly erroneous Court of Appeals
United States court of appeals
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system...
judgment that dismissed Day's habeas petition without an evaluation of its merits when we have already granted certiorari to address the issue on which the Court of Appeals may have erred." He suggested the lower court may still avoid a "miscarriage of justice
Miscarriage of justice
A miscarriage of justice primarily is the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. The term can also apply to errors in the other direction—"errors of impunity", and to civil cases. Most criminal justice systems have some means to overturn, or "quash", a wrongful...
" by keeping Day's case on its docket until after Lawrence is decided, "but it would be better practice for us to do so ourselves."
Scalia's dissent
Justice ScaliaAntonin Scalia
Antonin Gregory Scalia is an American jurist who serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice on the Court, Scalia is the Senior Associate Justice...
, joined by Justices Breyer and Thomas
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court....
, objected that the Court was disregarding the clear provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern civil procedure in United States district courts. The FRCP are promulgated by the United States Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, and then the United States Congress has 7 months to veto the rules promulgated or they become part of the...
(FRCP), which required the forfeiture of affirmative defenses when they are not raised. Because this ordinary forfeiture rule would be entirely consistent with the Habeas Rules and statutes, it should apply to the AEDPA
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214, is an act of Congress signed into law on April 24, 1996...
statute of limitations. Scalia asserted that it is instead "the Court's unwarranted expansion of the timeliness rule enacted by Congress that is inconsistent with the statute, the Habeas Rules, the Civil Rules, and traditional practice."
The FRCP govern in habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
proceedings to the extent that those rules are not inconsistent with federal statutes or the Habeas Rules. Scalia stated that the Court did not identify any such inconsistency "because there is none." Scalia believed the forfeiture rule could not be inconsistent with traditional habeas practice because there was no applicable statute of limitations until AEDPA was enacted in 1996. It was also consistent with Habeas Rule 5(b), which requires the State's answer
Answer
Generally, an answer is a reply to a question or is a solution, a retaliation, or a response that is relevant to the said question.In law, an answer was originally a solemn assertion in opposition to some one or something, and thus generally any counter-statement or defense, a reply to a question...
to state whether any claim in the habeas petition is barred by the statute of limitations. Finally, as Day had argued, forfeiture is also consistent with Habeas Rule 4 because that rule provides for sua sponte
Sua sponte
In law, sua sponte describes an act of authority taken without formal prompting from another party. The term is usually applied to actions by a judge taken without a prior motion or request from the parties...
screening and dismissal by the district courts only prior to the filing of the State's answer. Scalia believed that the Court's concern over whether district courts
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
could ever raise the AEDPA limitation sua sponte under Day's construction of the Habeas Rules begged the question
Begging the question
Begging the question is a type of logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proven is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise....
, by assuming that courts should be able to raise that issue sua sponte. "That is precisely the question before us."
Scalia considered it most important that no provision of the habeas statute would be contradicted or undermined by applying the forfeiture rule to the limitations period. "Quite the contrary, on its most natural reading, the statute calls for the forfeiture rule." AEDPA enacted the one-year limitation period "without further qualification." Given the "background understanding" that failure to raise the defense of limitations constitutes waiver, "the statute implies that the usual forfeiture rule is applicable."
Scalia distinguished the other affirmative defenses to habeas petitions as having been created as judicial doctrines by the courts, "in the exercise of their traditional equitable discretion, because they were seen as necessary to protect the interests of comity
Comity
In law, comity specifically refers to legal reciprocity—the principle that one jurisdiction will extend certain courtesies to other nations , particularly by recognizing the validity and effect of their executive, legislative, and judicial acts...
and finality that federal collateral review of state criminal proceedings necessarily implicates." None of these defenses involved a time limitation, and the one year limit in AEDPA "is entirely a recent creature of statute
Statutory law
Statutory law or statute law is written law set down by a legislature or by a legislator .Statutes may originate with national, state legislatures or local municipalities...
. If comity and finality did not compel any time limitation at all, it follows a fortiori that they do not compel making a legislatively created, forfeitable time limitation nonforfeitable." Court precedent prior to AEDPA had furthermore affirmatively rejected that the traditionally broad discretionary powers of habeas courts would support the imposition of a time limitation. "There is, therefore, no support for the notion that the traditional equitable discretion that governed habeas proceedings permitted the dismissal of habeas petitions on the sole ground of untimeliness."
The Court's observation that there was no substantive difference between allowing the State to amend its answer and simply dismissing sua sponte was characterized by Scalia as "what appears to be the chief ground of its decision." Scalia argued that if there was truly no "dispositive difference" between the alternatives, "the natural conclusion would be that there is no compelling reason to disregard the Civil Rules. Legislatively enacted rules are surely entitled to more respect than this apparent presumption that, when nothing substantial hangs on the point, they do not apply as written." At a minimum, Scalia believed it "a nontrivial value in itself" to "observe[ ] the formalities of our adversary system" by requiring the State to amend its own pleading. Scalia also observed that in contrast to the "novel regime" adopted by the majority, there is already a well-developed body of law regarding whether a party should have leave to amend a pleading. "Ockham is offended by today's decision, even if no one else is."
Scalia also believed that under the Court's ruling, it would not be an abuse of discretion for a district court to override an affirmative waiver of the defense by the State, and that the Court's assertion to the contrary was "without relevant citation
Case citation
Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...
or reasoning."