PRESS RELEASE

Supreme Court Upholds Law Limiting Attacks on Convictions

In a 7 to 2 decision announced today, the United States Supreme Court rejected a habitual criminal's claim that a rule of civil procedure allowed a second review of his conviction on federal habeas corpus. The Court held that, with very limited exceptions, the limits on successive review established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) would be undermined if defendants were able to utilize rules governing civil cases to raise new claims or reconsider previously decided claims.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "using Rule 60(b) to present new claims for relief from a state court's judgment of conviction . . . circumvents AEDPA's requirement that a new claim be dismissed unless it relies on either a new rule of constitutional law or newly discovered facts."

"If the Court's decision had gone the other way, Congress's limits on repeated federal court review would have been evaded in many cases," 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 a new decision regarding the statute of limitations allowed federal court review of his case. In 2003, the federal Court of Appeals decided that the AEDPA barred review of his case.

Last January, because there was disagreement among the lower federal courts regarding which rule applied, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear Gonzalez's appeal.
The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation submitted an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the case arguing that Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not apply to habeas corpus proceedings 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. The Court held that the civil rules could be used to reopen a case in "extraordinary circumstances" which "rarely occur in a habeas context."

"Even though this is not a death penalty case, the court's decision will have a significant effect in limiting the delay in capital cases," said Scheidegger.

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