Johnson v. Secretary of Corrections

Background

Eric Johnson, identified as a California prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a federal petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He challenged a state conviction for indecent exposure from 1993.

The court referred to an earlier federal petition in which Johnson had challenged a different conviction from 2005. That earlier petition had been dismissed as untimely under the one-year filing limit established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, commonly called AEDPA, because four years had passed between the end of direct appeals and the filing of the federal petition.

Timeliness ruling

The court held that the present petition was also untimely. It stated that the challenged conviction became final before AEDPA took effect in 1996, giving Johnson until April 24, 1997, to file a timely federal petition. Johnson did not file this petition until 2020, more than two decades after that deadline.

The court also stated that Johnson’s state habeas petitions challenging the conviction, filed in 2019, did not save the federal petition from being untimely because they were filed after the federal limitations period had already expired.

Disposition

The court dismissed the petition. It granted Johnson’s request to proceed without paying the filing fee. Because of that ruling, it denied as unnecessary his motions for a temporary restraining order concerning trust-fund documentation.

The court found that no certificate of appealability was warranted because a reasonable judge would not find the dismissal debatable or wrong. The clerk was directed to enter judgment and close the case. Judge William Alsup signed the order.