Colegrove v. Gumbua
- Beth Freeman
- 5:23-cv-03874
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Colegrove v. Gumbua, Judge Freeman dismissed Colegrove’s habeas petition as second or successive and denied a certificate of appealability.
Del Eddy Colegrove, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, whose federal habeas petition was dismissed; the respondent’s motion to dismiss was granted.
What happened
In Del Eddy Colegrove v. M. Gumbua, Colegrove, a state prisoner representing himself, challenged his 2009 state-court sentence through a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He had previously challenged the same state criminal judgment in an earlier federal habeas case, which was denied on the merits and affirmed on appeal.
The respondent moved to dismiss, arguing that the new petition was a second or successive petition. Federal law required Colegrove to obtain authorization from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit before filing it in the district court. Colegrove did not provide that authorization.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman granted the motion to dismiss and dismissed the petition as second or successive. The court also denied a certificate of appealability, finding that Colegrove had not shown that reasonable judges could debate the procedural ruling or whether the petition stated a valid constitutional claim.
The detailed version
- Colegrove v. Gumbua · No. 5:23-cv-03874
- Beth Freeman
- July 24, 2024
Background
Del Eddy Colegrove, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his 2009 sentence from Santa Cruz County Superior Court. The opinion states that a jury found him guilty of several sexual offenses and that the state court sentenced him to 64 years in prison.
The California Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in 2011 and denied a state habeas petition. In 2012, the California Supreme Court denied petitions for review and another state habeas petition. Colegrove later filed a federal habeas petition challenging the same state criminal judgment. That earlier federal petition was denied on the merits in 2015, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed in 2016.
Colegrove filed the present federal habeas petition on August 2, 2023, again challenging the same state criminal judgment. The respondent moved to dismiss it as a second or successive petition. Colegrove did not file an opposition, although the court had given him an opportunity to do so.
Court’s Analysis
Under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A), a second or successive federal habeas petition cannot be filed in the district court unless the petitioner first obtains an order from the appropriate federal court of appeals authorizing the district court to consider it. A petition is second or successive when the facts underlying the claim existed by the time of the initial petition and the later petition challenges the same state-court judgment.
The court found that both conditions were met. The present petition raised new claims but challenged the same conviction that Colegrove had challenged in his earlier federal habeas action. The court also found that Colegrove had not presented an authorization order from the Ninth Circuit. Because the district court lacked authority to consider the petition without that order, it did not reach the merits of Colegrove’s claims.
Disposition
The court granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss. It dismissed the petition in its entirety as second or successive under § 2244(b)(3)(A). The court stated that Colegrove may file another petition in the district court only if he obtains the necessary order from the Ninth Circuit.
The court also determined that no certificate of appealability was warranted. This order terminated the respondent’s motion to dismiss.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.