Mount v. Sullivan

Background

Bill Ray Mount, a state prisoner representing himself, filed a petition for federal habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, challenging his state conviction. A jury in Lake County Superior Court convicted him in 2016 of second-degree murder with firearm-discharge and criminal-gang-activity enhancements. The state court later sentenced him to 45 years to life plus 17 years in prison. The California Court of Appeal modified one enhancement, ordered resentencing on another, and affirmed the judgment in all other respects. The California Supreme Court denied review in 2019.

Mount filed this federal case on January 7, 2020. His petition raised three claims: (1) evidence concerning a third-party shooter, David Cox, should have been presented more fully to the jury; (2) evidence used to support the gang enhancement was improperly admitted to show motive; and (3) his trial lawyer was ineffective for not presenting alibi-witness testimony.

Motion to dismiss

W. J. Sullivan, the warden, moved to dismiss because Mount had not exhausted his state-court remedies. Exhaustion generally requires a state prisoner to give the state’s highest available court a fair opportunity to decide each federal claim before seeking federal review.

Sullivan argued that Mount presented none of the three federal claims to the California Supreme Court. The state appellate claims identified in the motion involved different issues, including trial counsel’s failure to argue that the “Clearlake Skinheads” was not a criminal street gang and a sentencing issue concerning a felon-in-possession conviction. Mount also referred to state-court motions involving a third-party shooter and juror identity, but the opinion states that he did not pursue those claims through the state’s highest court.

Mount did not present evidence disputing Sullivan’s exhaustion argument. He argued that his case was an “exception” and requested an evidentiary hearing. The court explained that it could consider an evidentiary hearing only for exhausted claims properly before it, not for unexhausted claims.

Ruling

Judge Beth Labson Freeman found that Mount had not exhausted state remedies for any of the three claims in his federal petition. Because none had been presented to the state high court for a fair opportunity to rule on the merits, the court granted Sullivan’s motion to dismiss.

The court dismissed the petition for failure to exhaust state judicial remedies. The dismissal was without prejudice to Mount returning to the federal court after exhausting available state remedies. The court also denied a certificate of appealability, finding that Mount had not shown that reasonable judges would debate either whether the petition stated a valid constitutional claim or whether the court was correct in its procedural ruling. The order terminated Docket No. 9.