Loyd v. Spearmen

Background

Daniel Ray Loyd filed a federal petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging convictions from Lake County Superior Court. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, assault with a firearm, possessing a firearm as a felon, and possessing ammunition as a felon. The jury also found a special circumstance and multiple gun-use allegations true. The state court sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 26 years and four months.

Loyd’s federal petition raised six categories of claims: jury-instruction errors involving felony murder and provocative-act murder; failure to instruct on lesser-included offenses; failure to reread defense counsel’s closing argument about causation; admission of a custodial statement after he invoked his right to counsel; ineffective assistance of trial counsel; and cumulative error.

The parties agreed that the first four claims had been exhausted through Loyd’s direct appeal. Exhaustion requires a state prisoner to give the highest available state court a fair opportunity to decide each federal claim before seeking federal relief.

State-Court Proceedings and Exhaustion

Loyd presented the first four claims in a January 2018 petition for review to the California Supreme Court, which denied review in March 2018. He later filed habeas petitions in the California Court of Appeal. The record did not show what claims were raised in those petitions.

Loyd then submitted a September 2018 petition for review to the California Supreme Court concerning the Court of Appeal’s July 2018 denial of his habeas petition. The California Supreme Court returned the filing unfiled because it was submitted after the applicable deadline. The district court concluded that the filing did not satisfy California’s procedural requirements and therefore did not fairly present Loyd’s ineffective-assistance and cumulative-error claims to the state’s highest court.

Loyd argued that he had made a sincere effort to exhaust his claims, did not understand the effect of the California Supreme Court’s response, and had mislabeled the filing. The court found that the filing’s contents showed it was a request for review of the Court of Appeal’s decision, so the California Supreme Court properly treated it as a petition for review subject to the filing deadline. The court also stated that confusion about the law did not excuse the failure to exhaust, including for a person representing himself.

Ruling and Election

The court granted respondent’s motion to dismiss the petition for failure to exhaust state remedies. It did not decide the underlying constitutional or ineffective-assistance claims.

Because the petition contained both exhausted and unexhausted claims, the court gave Loyd 28 days to choose one of three paths: (1) dismiss the unexhausted claims and proceed in this action only with Claims 1 through 4; (2) dismiss the action, return to state court to exhaust all claims, and later file a new federal petition; or (3) file a motion to stay the federal proceedings while he exhausts the remaining claims in the California Supreme Court. The court described requirements that would apply to a requested stay. If Loyd did not make an election or file the required motion by the deadline, the action would proceed only on the four exhausted claims. Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. ordered that the respondent’s motion docketed as Dkt. No. 12 was terminated.