Smith v. Spearman

Background

Anthony Smith, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a federal petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his 2009 burglary conviction. The respondent moved to dismiss the petition as untimely under the one-year limitations period for state prisoners’ federal petitions.

Smith was sentenced on January 8, 2010, to 37 years to life. The California Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in most respects but sent the case back for resentencing on one prior-conviction enhancement. The California Supreme Court denied review on November 16, 2011.

On December 5, 2011, the superior court struck the fourth prior conviction and issued a first amended abstract of judgment. Later, additional amended abstracts were issued in 2019, 2020, and 2021 to address the description of a finding that another person was present during the burglary and to correct statutory citations.

Limitations Period

The court applied the federal one-year limitations period for state prisoners. It determined that direct review concluded when the time to seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court expired after the California Supreme Court denied review. The court treated February 14, 2012, as the relevant finality date and February 14, 2013, as the presumptive federal filing deadline.

The court gave Smith statutory tolling—pausing the limitations clock while qualifying state post-conviction petitions were pending—for his first four state petitions. It also counted certain periods between those petitions because the later petition was filed in a higher-level state court. After those tolling periods, the court found that 204 days remained when the California Supreme Court denied the fourth petition on July 10, 2013. The limitations period therefore expired on January 30, 2014.

The court ruled that Smith’s later state petitions, beginning in 2017, could not restart a limitations period that had already expired. It also found that Smith had not shown entitlement to equitable tolling, which can provide additional time when an extraordinary circumstance prevented a timely filing.

Amended Abstracts of Judgment

The court considered whether the amended sentencing documents created a new judgment that would have started a later limitations period. It concluded that the December 5, 2011 resentencing was a new judgment, but that it occurred before the conclusion of direct review and therefore did not provide Smith with a later starting date.

The court concluded that the second amended abstract was a correction of a clerical mistake rather than a new judgment. The sentencing judge had referred to the “person-present finding” and stated that the burglary sentence would be served at 85 percent, which the court understood as showing that the judge had sentenced Smith based on that finding even though the earlier abstract did not identify it correctly.

The court likewise concluded that the third and fourth amended abstracts merely corrected citation errors in the earlier amended abstract. None of those documents created a later limitations-period starting date.

Ruling

Judge Susan Illston granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss. The action was dismissed because Smith filed the federal petition after the habeas statute of limitations expired. The court ordered the clerk to close the file and stated that no certificate of appealability would issue.

The opinion contains internal date inconsistencies: one discussion identifies February 14, 2012, as the relevant finality date, while the summary refers to February 12, 2012; the opinion also gives differing January 2020 filing dates and contains an apparently inconsistent date for the denial of one state petition. The disposition and stated limitations analysis nevertheless identify the petition as untimely and the motion to dismiss as granted.