Hatchett v. Clark
- James Donato
- 3:24-cv-03246
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Hatchett v. Clark, Judge A. Lui granted fee-waiver status and ordered Cecil Jerome Hatchett to explain why his habeas petition should not be dismissed.
Cecil Jerome Hatchett must respond within 28 days to address the court’s concerns about timeliness and the second-or-successive-petition bar. The petition remains pending at this stage; Ken Clark is the respondent.
What happened
In Hatchett v. Clark, Cecil Jerome Hatchett, a prisoner, filed a petition challenging his 55-years-to-life sentence from Monterey County Superior Court. The case was transferred to the Northern District of California, where the court reviewed it before requiring a response from the respondent.
Hatchett alleged that his sentence was increased based on falsely obtained information about his classification score and prison-rule violations. He claimed violations of due process and entrapment. The court said the petition appeared untimely and appeared to be a second or successive petition that lacked the required authorization from the Court of Appeals.
Judge A. Lui granted Hatchett permission to proceed without paying the filing fee and ordered him to show cause within 28 days why the petition should not be dismissed. The order did not dismiss the petition at that point; it warned that failure to respond, or failure to show that the petition was timely and not barred as second or successive, would lead to a recommendation of dismissal.
The detailed version
- Hatchett v. Clark · No. 3:24-cv-03246
- James Donato
- July 31, 2024
Background
Cecil Jerome Hatchett, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition for a federal writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He challenged a sentence imposed by Monterey County Superior Court. The case was originally filed in the Eastern District of California and was transferred to the Northern District of California.
According to the petition, Hatchett was convicted of sodomy on an inmate and sentenced in 2003 to 55 years to life. He alleged that the sentencing court chose the higher sentence based on a classification score of about 288 points and 48 rule violations by 2000, which he claimed were falsely procured. He alleged due-process violations and entrapment.
The opinion also states that Hatchett had filed numerous state and federal habeas petitions since 2003. It refers to a prior related proceeding in which a petition challenging the 2003 resentencing was dismissed as untimely.
Court’s analysis
The court reviewed the petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2243 and Rule 4 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases. It concluded that the petition appeared to be untimely. For a state prisoner challenging a noncapital conviction or sentence, federal law generally requires filing within one year of specified events. The court stated that Hatchett’s conviction became final on June 12, 2003, and that he had not identified a qualifying impediment to filing, a newly recognized and retroactive constitutional right, or newly discoverable facts.
The court also concluded that the petition appeared to be second or successive. Federal law requires court-of-appeals authorization before a district court may consider such a petition, subject to limited exceptions involving a new retroactive constitutional rule or newly discovered facts showing innocence. The court stated that Hatchett had not identified grounds meeting those requirements and had not received authorization from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Order
The court granted Hatchett leave to proceed without paying the filing fee. It ordered him to show cause within 28 days why the petition should not be dismissed as untimely under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1) and/or as second or successive under § 2244(b). The order stated that if Hatchett did not respond, or could not demonstrate that the petition was timely and not barred as second or successive, the case would be referred to a district judge with a recommendation that it be dismissed. The petition was not dismissed by this order.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.