Hildebrand
- Beth Freeman
- 5:23-cv-01303
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Hildebrand v. Campbell, Judge Freeman dismissed Hildebrand’s federal petition for not exhausting state remedies but allowed him to amend it.
Michael Hildebrand’s federal petition was dismissed for failure to exhaust state remedies, but he was allowed to file an amended petition within 28 days; Trisha Campbell was the respondent.
What happened
Michael Hildebrand v. Trisha Campbell involved Hildebrand’s federal petition challenging constitutional problems related to his 2006 guilty plea and sentence. He alleged, among other things, that his sentence was illegal and that his lawyer was ineffective.
Hildebrand said he had appealed a fine to a state appellate court, but he did not ask the California Supreme Court to review his case. The opinion states that he raised only the fine issue in that appeal, not the claims presented in his federal petition.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman dismissed the petition for failure to exhaust state remedies, while allowing Hildebrand to file an amended petition within 28 days. The court did not decide the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Hildebrand · No. 5:23-cv-01303
- Beth Freeman
- Aug. 24, 2023
Background
Michael Hildebrand, a state inmate proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging constitutional issues connected to his 2006 guilty plea. He pleaded guilty to lewd and lascivious conduct with a child by force under California Penal Code § 288(b)(1) and received a 36-year state-prison sentence on December 8, 2006. He paid the filing fee.
Hildebrand alleged that the sentencing court imposed an illegal sentence, that he entered the plea without knowing it was illegal or unauthorized, that he was not fully informed about his sentence, that the plea agreement should be invalidated, and that his public defender provided ineffective assistance. The opinion states that, after a guilty plea, claims generally remain available in federal review only if they challenge whether the plea was voluntary and informed or whether counsel’s advice was constitutionally inadequate. The court concluded that claims of that type could be considered in a federal petition, but only after state remedies had been exhausted.
Exhaustion analysis
Federal law requires a person in state custody to present each federal habeas claim to the highest available state court before seeking federal relief. According to Hildebrand’s petition, he appealed to a state appellate court but did not seek review in the California Supreme Court. The only issue he raised in the state appellate court was a challenge to a fine. The court therefore found that the petition did not show that Hildebrand had presented all of his federal claims to the California Supreme Court.
Ruling
Judge Beth Labson Freeman ordered that the petition be dismissed for failure to exhaust state judicial remedies, with leave to file an amended petition using the court’s form. The amended petition had to use the caption and civil case number specified in the order, state “AMENDED PETITION” on its first page, and be filed within 28 days after the order was filed. The court warned that an amended petition containing claims that had not been exhausted would be dismissed for failure to exhaust. The order did not decide whether Hildebrand’s underlying constitutional claims were valid.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.