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MAYLE V. FELIX (04-563)
Web-accessible at:
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-563.ZS.html
Argued April 19, 2005 -- Decided June 23, 2005
Opinion author: Ginsburg
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Respondent Felix 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. Felix
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.
Felix'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. sect.
2244(d)(1), Felix had until August 12, 1998 to file a
habeas petition in federal court. On May 8, 1998, in a timely
filed habeas petition, Felix 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, Felix 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, Felix 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, Felix urged, both claims arose
out of the same "conduct, transaction, or
occurrence." The District Court dismissed the Fifth Amendment
claim as time barred, and rejected the Confrontation Clause
claim on its merits. The Ninth Circuit affirmed as to the
latter claim, but reversed the dismissal of the coerced
statements claim and remanded it for further proceedings. In
the court's view, the relevant "transaction" for
Rule 15(c)(2) purposes was Felix's state-court trial and
conviction. Defining transaction with greater specificity, the
court reasoned, would unduly strain the meaning of
"conduct, transaction, or occurrence" by dividing the
trial and conviction into a series of individual occurrences.
Held: 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. Pp. 7-18.
(a) Under
sect.2244(d)(1), a one-year limitation period applies to a
state prisoner's federal habeas application. Habeas
Corpus Rule 11 permits application of the Federal Rules of
Civil Procedure in habeas cases "to the extent [the civil
rules] are not inconsistent with any statutory provisions or
[the habeas] rules." Section 2242 provides that habeas
applications "may be amended ... as provided in the
rules of procedure applicable to civil actions." Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a) allows pleading amendments with
"leave of court" any time during a proceeding.
Before a responsive pleading is served, pleadings may be
amended once as a "matter of course," i.e.,
without seeking court leave. Ibid. Amendments made
after the statute of limitations has run relate back to the
date of the original pleading if the original and amended
pleadings "ar[i]se out of the same conduct, transaction,
or occurrence." Rule 15(c)(2). The "original
pleading" in a habeas proceeding is the petition as
initially filed. That pleading must "specify all the
grounds for relief available to the petitioner" and
"state the facts supporting each ground." Habeas
Corpus Rule 2(c). A prime purpose of Rule 2(c)'s demand
that petitioners plead with particularity is to assist the
district court in determining whether the State should be
ordered to "show cause why the writ should not be
granted," sect.2243, or the petition instead should be
summarily dismissed without ordering a responsive pleading.
Habeas Corpus Rule 4. Pp. 7-9.
(b) 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, Felix'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. This Court is not aware, in the run-of-the-mine
civil proceedings Rule 15 governs, of any reading of
"conduct, transaction, or occurrence" as capacious as
the Ninth Circuit's construction for habeas cases.
Decisions applying Rule 15(c)(2) in the civil context
illustrate that Rule 15(c)(2) relaxes, but does not obliterate,
the statute of limitations; hence relation back depends on the
existence of a common core of operative facts uniting the
original and newly asserted claims. The Court disagrees with
Felix's assertion that he seeks, and the Ninth Circuit
accorded, no wider range for Rule 15(c)'s relation-back
provision than was given the words "conduct, transaction,
or occurrence" in Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line
R. Co., 323
U.S. 574, 580-581. There, the amended complaint
invoked a legal theory not suggested in the original complaint
and relied on facts not originally asserted. Relation back was
nevertheless permitted. In Tiller, however, there was
but one "occurrence," the death of the
peti
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