Housh v. Rackley
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:17-cv-04222
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Housh v. Rackley, Judge Gilliam denied adding an unexhausted sentencing claim to the existing petition, while allowing refiling after state-court exhaustion.
Carlos C. Housh’s federal habeas case, including his request to add a sentencing-calculation claim; the original petition remained operative.
What happened
In Housh v. Rackley, Carlos C. Housh, a self-represented prisoner, asked to add a claim that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation wrongly calculated his sentence by failing to remove a five-year enhancement. His existing petition raised several other claims about his trial and sentence.
The court explained that there can be only one operative petition. Housh could not combine his original petition with a separate amended petition. The court also found that Housh had not presented the new sentencing-calculation claim to any state court. Letters to the California governor and prison grievances did not satisfy the requirement to first give the state courts a fair opportunity to decide the claim.
The court denied Housh’s request to combine the new claim with the claims in his operative petition. It also denied leave to file an amended petition containing the new claim, without prejudice to refiling after state-court exhaustion. Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. issued the order.
The detailed version
- Housh v. Rackley · No. 4:17-cv-04222
- Haywood Gilliam
- Apr. 29, 2020
Background
Carlos C. Housh, a self-represented prisoner, filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The operative petition, docketed at Dkt. No. 1, raised claims concerning the trial court’s handling of a jury-selection challenge, a psychiatric report, references to Housh’s custodial status and prior imprisonment, prior domestic-violence evidence, a Montana prior conviction, consecutive sentences, newly discovered evidence, cumulative error, and sentencing error based on a false conviction.
Housh later sought to add a claim that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation incorrectly calculated his sentence by failing to remove a five-year enhancement. He filed an amended petition at Dkt. No. 66 containing only that new claim and asked the court to consider it together with the claims in Dkt. No. 1.
Court’s Analysis
The court stated that there can be only one operative petition. It had previously allowed Housh to file an amended petition, but instructed him that the amended petition had to include both the new sentencing-calculation claim and the claims from the original petition. Filing a new petition that omits earlier claims would waive those omitted claims.
The court also determined that Housh had not exhausted the new claim in state court. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b), a person seeking federal review of the fact or length of confinement generally must first present each claim to the highest available state court and give that court a fair opportunity to decide it. The court stated that Housh had not raised the sentencing-calculation claim in any state court. It further stated that letters to California Governor Newsom and raising the issue through the prison grievance system did not exhaust state-court remedies.
Disposition
The court DENIED Housh’s request to amend the operative petition by combining the claims in Dkt. No. 1 with the claim in Dkt. No. 66. The court also DENIED leave to file an amended petition alleging that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation failed to remove the five-year enhancement, without prejudice to refiling that motion after exhausting state-court remedies. The court stated that Dkt. No. 1 remained the operative petition and that the order terminated Dkt. No. 65. Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. signed the order.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.