Bergeron v. Schnell

Background

Joseph Bergeron, who was representing himself, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1988 and received a life sentence. He was released under supervision in 2011, violated the conditions of that release at least three times, and had his supervised release revoked after the final violation in October 2014. He then returned to the custody of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Bergeron filed a petition asking for a writ of habeas corpus, a court order concerning the legality of a person’s custody. Magistrate Judge Becky R. Thorson recommended that the petition be denied as untimely, that the case be dismissed with prejudice, and that no Certificate of Appealability issue. Bergeron objected, including through a filing submitted by fellow inmate Joel Munt, and later filed his own supplemental objections.

Timeliness and equitable tolling

The court agreed with the magistrate judge that the one-year limitation period in 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d) applied. Bergeron did not challenge the calculation of the limitation period, and the court found that calculation correct. The court determined that the filing period closed on May 28, 2019, while Bergeron filed his petition on March 4, 2020.

Bergeron argued that the period should be extended through equitable tolling. Equitable tolling is an exception that can extend a filing deadline when a person has pursued rights diligently and an extraordinary circumstance prevented timely filing. Bergeron relied on periods when Munt was unavailable, the alleged confiscation of Munt’s research in November 2019, and an alleged lack of access to the prison law library during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The court held that the lack of assistance from Munt, a non-lawyer, did not constitute an extraordinary circumstance. It also held that the other alleged obstacles did not justify extending the deadline because they occurred after the filing period had already closed. The court noted that the limitation period had been tolled while Bergeron pursued state-court mandamus proceedings from December 4, 2017, through March 19, 2019, but that tolling did not make the federal petition timely.

Whether the federal deadline applied

Bergeron argued that § 2244(d) did not apply because his current detention resulted from the administrative revocation of supervised release rather than directly from a state-court judgment. The court rejected that argument. It held that his detention remained pursuant to the 1988 state-court judgment imposing his life sentence because that judgment made the supervised release—and its later revocation—possible.

The court therefore held that the one-year limitation period applied and that the petition was untimely. It dismissed the petition. The court also declined to issue a Certificate of Appealability because it found that the basis for dismissal was not reasonably debatable.

Disposition

The court overruled Bergeron’s objections, adopted the Report and Recommendation, dismissed the habeas petition with prejudice, and ordered that no Certificate of Appealability issue.