Stepp v. In Re: Writ of Habeas Corpus
- James Donato
- 3:20-cv-01688
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Stepp v. In Re: Writ of Habeas Corpus, Judge Donato dismissed Stepp’s late federal habeas petition and declined to issue a certificate of appealability.
Robert William Stepp’s federal challenge to his state conviction and sentence was dismissed as untimely; the respondent obtained dismissal.
What happened
In Stepp v. In Re: Writ of Habeas Corpus, Robert William Stepp, a state prisoner representing himself, filed a federal petition challenging his state conviction and sentence. The respondent moved to dismiss, arguing that the petition was filed after the legal deadline, and Stepp did not oppose the motion.
The court calculated that Stepp’s state judgment became final on January 15, 2018, and that the one-year filing period ended on January 15, 2019. His state petitions were filed after that deadline, so they did not restart or pause the expired period. Even under a calculation more favorable to Stepp, the federal petition filed on February 22, 2020, was still late.
Judge Donato granted the motion to dismiss and dismissed the case. The court also decided that a certificate of appealability would not issue because the procedural ruling was not reasonably debatable.
The detailed version
- Stepp v. In Re: Writ of Habeas Corpus · No. 3:20-cv-01688
- James Donato
- Apr. 13, 2021
Background
Robert William Stepp, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, which allows a state prisoner to ask a federal court to review custody resulting from a state-court judgment. The respondent moved to dismiss the petition as barred by the statute of limitations. Stepp did not file an opposition or otherwise communicate with the court, despite receiving an additional reminder.
In 2017, Stepp pleaded no contest to attempted murder and admitted a great-bodily-injury allegation and one prior strike conviction. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison on November 16, 2017, and did not file a direct appeal. He later filed state habeas petitions in the Humboldt County Superior Court, the California Court of Appeal, and the California Supreme Court. Those petitions were filed on February 16, July 17, and September 13, 2019, respectively. The California Supreme Court denied the final petition on January 2, 2020. Stepp filed his federal petition on February 22, 2020.
Statute of Limitations
The court applied the one-year statute of limitations for state-prisoner federal habeas petitions under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Because Stepp did not appeal, his state-court judgment became final on January 15, 2018, 60 days after sentencing. The one-year period began on January 16, 2018, and expired on January 15, 2019.
The court concluded that Stepp’s first state habeas petition, filed on February 16, 2019, came approximately one month after the federal limitations period had already expired. As a result, the state petitions did not provide statutory tolling, meaning they did not pause or restart the already expired filing period. The court also explained that even if Stepp received credit for the period before his first state petition and for the time while his state petitions were pending, the federal petition would still be untimely because more than six weeks passed between the California Supreme Court’s denial and the federal filing.
Disposition
The court granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss, dismissed the case, and requested that the Clerk close the case. The court also stated that a certificate of appealability would not issue because reasonable judges would not debate both whether the petition stated a valid constitutional claim and whether the court correctly applied the procedural filing deadline.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.