Barillas v. Hill
- Martinez-Olguin
- 3:22-cv-02957
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 6
In Barillas v. Merchant, Judge Martinez-Olguin granted dismissal of a mixed habeas petition, allowing Barillas to delete one claim or seek a stay.
Jose Humberto Barillas, whose federal habeas petition was dismissed as mixed subject to his options to amend or seek a stay; John Merchant, the substituted respondent.
What happened
In Barillas v. Merchant, Jose Humberto Barillas, a state prisoner representing himself, challenged his state conviction and 80-year sentence for sexually abusing a child. His federal petition raised claims about expert testimony concerning child sexual abuse and a defense expert’s excluded testimony.
The court found that Barillas had presented two claims to California’s highest court but had not presented his third claim there. Because the petition combined claims that had been exhausted with one that had not, the court treated it as a mixed petition without deciding whether any claim was legally valid.
Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss. The order gave Barillas 28 days to file an amended petition containing only the two exhausted claims or request a stay while he exhausts the third claim in state court; otherwise, the petition will be dismissed without prejudice to filing a later petition containing only exhausted claims.
The detailed version
- Barillas v. Hill · No. 3:22-cv-02957
- Martinez-Olguin
- Dec. 7, 2023
Background
Jose Humberto Barillas, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a federal petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his state conviction for multiple crimes involving sexual abuse of a child. The Santa Clara County Superior Court sentenced him to 80 years in state prison. The California Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment on December 17, 2020, and the California Supreme Court denied review on March 10, 2021.
Barillas filed his federal petition on May 16, 2022. He alleged that the trial court violated due process by admitting expert testimony about Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome and that testimony about the frequency of false allegations was inadmissible and prejudicial, with trial counsel ineffective for failing to object. He also alleged that the trial court improperly excluded defense expert testimony about the alleged victim’s behavior.
Exhaustion issue
Before a federal court may grant relief to a state prisoner, the prisoner generally must first give the state courts, including the highest available state court, a fair opportunity to consider each federal claim. A petition containing both exhausted claims and unexhausted claims is called a mixed petition.
The court found that Barillas had presented the first two claims to the California Supreme Court in his petition for review. He had not presented the third claim—the claim about excluded defense expert testimony—to that court. The court therefore found Claim 3 unexhausted. It did not decide the merits of any of the claims.
Ruling
The court granted Respondent John Merchant’s motion to dismiss the mixed petition. Before entering a dismissal judgment, the court gave Barillas two alternatives: within 28 days, he could file an amended petition containing only Claims 1 and 2 and striking Claim 3, or he could request a stay while returning to state court to exhaust Claim 3. The court stated that a stay would not be granted unless Barillas showed good cause for failing to exhaust Claim 3 and that the claim was potentially meritorious.
If Barillas did neither within the deadline, the petition would be dismissed without prejudice to his later filing a new petition containing only exhausted claims. The court made no ruling on whether a future federal petition would be timely. Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin also ordered that John Merchant be substituted as respondent and terminated the motion docket entry.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.