Ward v. Beltz
- Wilhelmina Wright
- 0:21-cv-00930
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 8
In Ward v. Beltz, Judge Wright declined to reopen Ward’s habeas case because it was time-barred and denied counsel appointment as moot.
Earl Lionell Ward, whose federal habeas action was not reopened and whose motion to appoint counsel was denied as moot; Tracy S. Beltz, the respondent.
What happened
Earl Lionell Ward challenged his state conviction and sentence in a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The court had previously dismissed this action as second and successive, but later reconsidered whether that ruling was correct after reviewing Ward’s earlier federal petition and his state-court proceedings.
The court concluded that Ward’s petition was not second or successive because his earlier federal petition had been dismissed for failure to exhaust state remedies, and he exhausted those remedies before filing this petition. But the court found that the petition was filed after the one-year deadline for seeking federal habeas relief. The delay in Ward’s receiving a court order did not affect that deadline, which had ended in June 2018.
In Ward v. Beltz, Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright declined to reopen the action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). The court also denied Ward’s motion to appoint counsel as moot because the action would not be reopened.
The detailed version
- Ward v. Beltz · No. 0:21-cv-00930
- Wilhelmina Wright
- Aug. 31, 2022
Background
Ward was sentenced in state court to two consecutive 60-month sentences after a car accident severely injured his son and daughter. The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence, and the Minnesota Supreme Court denied further review. Ward also sought postconviction relief in state court.
Ward later filed an earlier federal petition for habeas corpus relief, alleging ineffective assistance of trial counsel. That petition was dismissed without prejudice because one claim was procedurally defaulted and a possible ineffective-assistance claim involving appellate counsel had not been exhausted in state court. Ward then pursued additional state postconviction proceedings involving alleged ineffective assistance of appellate counsel.
In April 2021, Ward filed the petition involved in this action under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. It asserted ineffective assistance of appellate counsel, judicial error, prosecutorial error, and ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The court adopted a recommendation denying the petition as second and successive because it challenged the same conviction as Ward’s earlier federal petition. After reviewing the dockets, the court later ordered responses on whether the action should be reopened under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(1) or (6). Ward responded, and he also moved for appointment of counsel.
Analysis
Second or successive petition. Federal law generally requires dismissal of a claim presented in a second or successive petition under Section 2254 if that claim was presented in an earlier petition. But a later petition is not second or successive when the earlier petition was dismissed for failure to exhaust state remedies and the petitioner exhausted those remedies before filing the later petition. The court concluded that this rule applied here. Ward’s earlier petition had been dismissed without prejudice for failure to exhaust, and Ward exhausted his state remedies before filing the current petition. Therefore, the current petition should not have been dismissed as second and successive.
Timeliness. The respondent argued that the action should not be reopened because Ward’s petition was untimely. Section 2244(d) generally gives a state prisoner one year to file a Section 2254 petition, subject to tolling while a properly filed state postconviction proceeding is pending.
The Minnesota Supreme Court denied further review of Ward’s direct appeal on March 28, 2017. Because Ward did not seek review by the Supreme Court of the United States, the federal limitations period began after the 90-day period for seeking that review expired, on June 27, 2017. The deadline for filing a timely federal habeas petition was June 27, 2018.
The court determined that Ward’s first federal habeas petition did not pause the limitations period. It also determined that Ward’s second state postconviction petition, filed on November 26, 2018, did not pause the period because the federal deadline had already expired. Ward argued that delays in receiving the court’s October 2021 order caused him to lose time. The court rejected that argument because the deadline had expired more than three years before that order was issued.
Disposition
The court held that Ward’s petition was not second and successive but was time-barred. It declined to reopen the action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). Because the action would not be reopened, the court denied as moot Ward’s motion to appoint counsel.
Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright ordered that the action not be reopened and that Ward’s motion to appoint counsel be denied as moot.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.