Alexeev v. Beccera
- William Alsup
- 3:19-cv-05150
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Alexeev v. Becerra, Judge Alsup granted dismissal because the federal habeas petition was untimely and denied a certificate of appealability.
Victor Alexeev’s federal challenge to his state-court criminal judgment was dismissed; the order also affected Xavier Becerra as the respondent who sought dismissal.
What happened
Victor Alexeev, a California prisoner representing himself, asked the federal court to review his state-court criminal judgment. Xavier Becerra moved to dismiss the petition as filed too late.
The court concluded that Alexeev’s one-year federal filing deadline expired in November 2014. His later state petitions did not provide enough time extension, and the court found no basis to extend the deadline for extraordinary circumstances.
Judge William Alsup granted the motion to dismiss and dismissed the petition. The court also ruled that Alexeev was not entitled to a certificate of appealability and ordered the case closed.
The detailed version
- Alexeev v. Beccera · No. 3:19-cv-05150
- William Alsup
- June 24, 2020
Background
Victor Alexeev, a California prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition asking the federal court to review his state-court criminal judgment under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The opinion states that he pleaded no contest to two sex-offense charges involving a minor in 2013, received a five-year state-prison sentence, and did not file a direct appeal.
Alexeev filed state post-conviction petitions in June 2014, February 2018, and July 2018. The state courts denied those petitions. He then filed the federal petition. Xavier Becerra moved to dismiss it as untimely, meaning filed after the legal deadline. Alexeev opposed the motion.
Timeliness and tolling
Federal law generally gives a person one year to file a petition challenging a state conviction or sentence, measured from when the judgment becomes final after direct review ends or the time for seeking review expires. Because Alexeev did not seek direct review in the California Supreme Court, the court determined that his judgment became final on November 17, 2013, and that the federal deadline was November 17, 2014.
The court found that Alexeev’s first state petition paused the federal deadline for one day. His later state petitions could not pause the deadline because it had already expired. The court also found no tolling—an extension or pause of the deadline—during the more than three-year gap between his first and second state petitions.
Alexeev argued for equitable tolling, which can extend a deadline when a person diligently pursues his rights but an extraordinary circumstance prevents timely filing. The court rejected that argument for two reasons. First, even tolling the entire gap would not make the federal petition timely because additional untolled time passed after the second state petition was denied. Second, Alexeev did not show that his trial lawyer’s alleged failure to investigate prevented him from filing on time, and he did not show the required diligence.
Ruling
The court granted Becerra’s motion to dismiss the petition as untimely and dismissed the petition. The order does not state that the dismissal was with or without prejudice. The court also ruled that no certificate of appealability was warranted because Alexeev had not made the required substantial showing that reasonable judges could debate whether the dismissal was legally or factually wrong. The clerk was directed to enter judgment and close the file.
Classification
This is a procedural order because the court dismissed the petition on the filing-deadline issue without deciding the underlying challenges to Alexeev’s criminal judgment.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.