PRESS RELEASE

SUPREME COURT CONSIDERS REPEATED ATTACKS ON CONVICTIONS

Oral argument in Gonzalez v. Crosby on Monday, April 25

In a Florida case before the United States Supreme Court, a habitual criminal argues that a rule of civil procedure allows a second review of his case on federal habeas corpus, although a 1996 act of Congress intended to limit successive reviews.

“The defendant in this case is attempting to use a rule of civil procedure to get around a law enacted specifically to prevent endless federal court review of convictions and sentences,” said Kent Scheidegger, Legal Director of the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

The case of Gonzalez v. Crosby involves the 1982 conviction of Aurelio Gonzalez. Gonzalez received a 99-year prison sentence after he pled guilty to three counts of armed robbery, one count of armed burglary, and one count of armed kidnapping. Twelve years after his conviction, Gonzalez’s first petition for state post-conviction relief was denied. Florida has a two year statute of limitations for raising post-conviction claims. His later claim, that newly discovered evidence questioned the validity of his guilty plea, was rejected by two state courts. Gonzalez’s petition for federal habeas corpus review of his claim was dismissed by the federal District Court. Three years later, Gonzalez filed a motion under rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to reopen the case. He argued that an appeals court holding regarding the statute of limitations allowed federal court review of his case. In 2003, the federal court of appeals decided that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) barred review of his case.

Because there is disagreement among the lower federal courts regarding which rule applies, on January 14, 2005, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear Gonzalez’s appeal.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has submitted an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the case. The Foundation is seeking a decision announcing that Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not apply to habeas corpus when their application would be contrary to the statutes or rules specifically governing habeas corpus review of criminal cases, or when they are unsuited to the specialized needs of such cases.

In this case, using a civil rule to do an end-run around Congress’s limits on repeated reviews of the same case should not be allowed.

CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger is available for comment at (916) 446-0345.
The Foundation has helped win three U. S. Supreme Court decisions during the current term.
CJLF'S Brief in Gonzalez v. Crosby is available on the internet at http://www.cjlf.org/briefs/GnzlzA.pdf.