The Holland v. Florida opinion is in Adobe .pdf format. The ScotusWiki file, with all briefing, is here.
Tony Mauro writes, "Justices deliver rare victory to death penalty defendants," for National Law Journal.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sympathized with a Florida death row inmate whose lawyer missed a deadline for his habeas appeal and failed to communicate with him for years despite numerous written pleas for help.
By a 7-2 vote in Holland v. Florida, the Court said that the lawyer's misconduct may entitle convicted murderer Albert Holland to "equitable tolling," or a delay in what otherwise would have been a one-year statute of limitation for filing the appeal under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.
The lawyer's failures, wrote Justice Stephen Breyer for the majority, "seriously prejudiced a client who thereby lost what was likely his single opportunity for habeas review."
The Court sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to determine if in fact the conduct of the lawyer, Bradley Collins of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was egregious enough to pause the deadline for Holland's appeal. Collins did not return phone calls for comment.
The decision represented a rare procedural victory for defendants under the AEDPA that won applause from those concerned about inadequate legal representation for death row inmates on appeal. "The Court is starting to understand there are some very bad lawyers out there that the client should not pay the penalty for," said Virginia Sloan, president of the nonpartisan Constitution Project. "The fact that they have found an exception to AEDPA is a great thing."
And:
After the U.S. Supreme Court first denied review in October 2001, the one-year clock began to run. In November of that year, Florida appointed Collins to represent Holland for his appeals. The following September, Collins filed for state post-conviction relief, which stopped the clock with only 12 days left. After that, Breyer said, relations between lawyer and client "began to break down." Without Holland even being aware it was happening, the Florida Supreme Court considered his case in February 2005 and in November denied relief. Collins did not reply to numerous letters from Holland. The federal clock resumed, and soon Holland was out of time for the federal habeas review. Collins never filed an appeal.
Holland filed on his own, blaming the missed deadline on his lawyer, but both the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit ruled that the lawyer's behavior did not amount to a circumstance warranting tolling of the statute of limitations.
Breyer said that was too narrow a view of the AEDPA, which he said, "did not seek to end every possible delay at all costs." Breyer said the Court should be cautious before interpreting the AEDPA's silence on an issue as "indicating a strong congressional intent to close courthouse doors that a strong equitable claim would ordinarily keep open."
"Justices Ease Deportation Rule in Minor Drug Cases," is the title of Adam Liptak's report for the New York Times.
The question in the case was whether Mr. Collins’s conduct was sufficient to suspend a deadline in a 1996 law limiting death penalty litigation. The court did not decide that question, but it said the appeals court had used too narrow a standard in saying that a lawyer’s negligence was never enough.
Justice Breyer’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stevens, Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Alito largely agreed but said the majority had not laid down a clear standard of its own. He suggested that the salient facts in the case, Holland v. Florida, No. 09-5327, were Mr. Collins’s apparent abandonment of his client and prosecutors’ insistence that only Mr. Collins could speak for Mr. Holland.
Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented. He said the court was powerless under the Constitution to rewrite the law.
“The court’s impulse to intervene when a litigant’s lawyer has made mistakes is understandable; the temptation to tinker with the technical rules to achieve what appears a just result is often strong, especially when the client faces a capital sentence,” Justice Scalia said. But he added that “unelected judges” must resist such impulses.
Today's Miami Herald carries, "Death Row inmate gains case review in Pompano Beach killing," by Michael Doyle of McClatchy News Service.
The high court's decision Monday creates a little more flexibility for prisoners and judges alike. Prompted by complaints about highly litigious inmates, Congress in 1996 tightened various restrictions on prisoner lawsuits. Prisoners now must file their habeas corpus petitions within one year of their conviction and the exhaustion of all state appeals.
A habeas corpus petition challenges the constitutional legality of an inmate's imprisonment.
``We know that the system is flooded with habeas petitions,'' Florida Solicitor General Scott Makar told the Supreme Court during oral arguments.
Under the 1996 law, the one-year habeas clock can start and stop depending on various legal developments. The Supreme Court's ruling Monday further modifies this, to allow what is called ``equitable tolling.'' This means that standard deadlines can be waived when prisoners have been diligent about pursuing their rights but have been impeded by their lawyers' ``extraordinary'' actions.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in reviewing Holland's case, determined that filing deadlines could not be waived even if the attorney was ``grossly negligent,'' unless the attorney also was shown to have exhibited bad faith, dishonesty, mental illness or the like.
``In our view, the court of appeals' standard is too rigid,'' Breyer said, adding that in the Holland case, ``we are not considering a garden variety claim of attorney negligence.''
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, saying strict deadlines should be respected.
The decision is a blow to Texas, Idaho, Kentucky, Washington and about 20 other states that had joined Florida in arguing against giving inmates more freedom to miss deadlines in challenging their incarceration.
The Constitution Project and the ACLU Capital Punishment Project issued news releases praising the ruling.
Earlier coverage begins with this post.
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