McDaniels v. Castelo

Background

Alpacino McDaniels, an inmate at California Men’s Colony, filed a federal petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging an Alameda County Superior Court conviction for first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a felon. The jury also found three firearm enhancements true. The state trial court imposed a total consecutive sentence of 25 years to life for the firearm enhancement involving discharge causing death, plus a concurrent two-year term for firearm possession; the other two enhancement terms were stayed.

McDaniels’s federal petition raised eight claims: ineffective assistance by appellate counsel; admission of tainted evidence; failure to preserve or disclose exculpatory evidence; admission of a video reenactment; prosecutorial misconduct involving allegedly false testimony; instructional error; comment on McDaniels’s failure to testify; and prosecutorial misconduct in closing argument.

The respondent moved to dismiss the federal petition for failure to exhaust state remedies. Exhaustion generally requires a state prisoner to give the state courts, including the highest available state court, a fair opportunity to decide each federal claim before the federal court grants relief. McDaniels did not oppose the motion, but he submitted the California Supreme Court’s September 11, 2019 summary denial of his state habeas petition.

Court’s Analysis

The court found that Claims 6 and 8 were exhausted. It also found that McDaniels’s June 10, 2019 petition to the California Supreme Court fairly presented Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7. The California Supreme Court’s denial therefore exhausted those claims, even though the denial occurred after McDaniels filed the federal petition.

The court separately considered Claim 3, which alleged that the prosecution failed to preserve or disclose exculpatory body-camera evidence. McDaniels had included the claim and supporting facts in his petition to the Alameda County Superior Court, but he submitted only the second page of that claim to the California Court of Appeal and California Supreme Court. That page cited legal standards but did not identify the evidence allegedly lost or destroyed or explain how it was material and exculpatory. The court concluded that the California Supreme Court would have had to look beyond the petition to understand the claim, so Claim 3 was not fairly presented and remained unexhausted.

Because the petition contained both exhausted and unexhausted claims, the court described it as a “mixed” petition. Rather than immediately dismissing the entire action, the court gave McDaniels three choices because dismissal could affect the one-year filing deadline for federal habeas petitions: proceed only with the exhausted claims; dismiss the action and return to state court to exhaust all claims before filing a new federal petition; or seek a stay while exhausting Claim 3. The court explained that a stay request would have to satisfy the requirements of either the Rhines or King/Kelly procedure described in the order.

Ruling

Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. granted in part and denied in part the respondent’s motion to dismiss. The court denied the motion to dismiss Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 as unexhausted, and granted the motion to dismiss Claim 3 as unexhausted. Claims 6 and 8 were also treated as exhausted. The court required McDaniels, within 28 days, to file a notice choosing one of the three available options. If he did not choose an option or file a motion by the deadline, the action would proceed solely on Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. The order did not decide the merits of any habeas claim.