Stevens v. Bloomfield

Background

Andre L. Stevens, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his 2007 Lake County conviction for first-degree murder, which included an enhancement for personal use of a knife and various prior convictions. The opinion states that Stevens’s appeal was unsuccessful.

In 2010, Stevens filed an earlier federal petition challenging the same state-court judgment. That petition was denied on the merits, and the district court denied a certificate of appealability on February 1, 2012. The Ninth Circuit later denied a certificate of appealability on May 14, 2013. Stevens filed the current petition on March 17, 2021.

Motion to dismiss

The warden moved to dismiss the petition as an unauthorized second or successive petition. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A), a federal prisoner petition challenging the same state-court judgment generally cannot be filed in the district court unless the petitioner first obtains an order from the appropriate federal court of appeals authorizing the filing.

The court explained that a petition is second or successive when the facts underlying the claims existed by the time of the initial petition and the new petition challenges the same state-court judgment. The opinion states that the parties did not dispute that the current petition challenged the same conviction as the earlier federal petition. Stevens had not presented an authorization order from the Ninth Circuit. The court therefore concluded that the current petition was subject to the authorization requirement and had to be dismissed in its entirety as second and successive.

The court noted that Stevens stated he had sought permission from the Ninth Circuit on October 7, 2021. The court explained that, if the Ninth Circuit granted authorization, Stevens could return to the district court with the new petition and a copy of that authorization.

Other motions and disposition

The court denied a certificate of appealability, finding that Stevens had not shown that reasonable judges could debate whether the petition stated a valid constitutional claim or whether the district court’s procedural ruling was correct. The court denied Stevens’s motion for a certificate of appealability and motion for an extension of time as moot.

Judge Beth Labson Freeman granted the warden’s motion to dismiss. The petition was dismissed as second and successive. The order did not decide the merits of Stevens’s new claims.