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Name: Maes v. Chavez
Case #: 13-16523
Court: US Court of Appeals
District 9 Cir
Opinion Date: 07/07/2015
Summary

After the denial of a habeas petition by a California court, the one-year AEDPA statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas petition is not further tolled if the petitioner does not file a new state habeas petition in a higher court. Maes filed a state habeas petition in a California superior court with two days left on his one-year AEDPA deadline for filing a federal habeas petition. After the superior court denied Maes’s state habeas petition, he did not file a new state habeas petition in the Court of Appeal or the California Supreme Court. Instead, he filed a federal habeas petition a week later. The district court denied his federal petition as untimely. Maes appealed, arguing that he had 60 days after the denial of his state habeas petition to file for federal habeas relief. Held: Affirmed. Federal habeas petitions are subject to a one-year statute of limitations, which begins to run when the state conviction becomes final and it is tolled during the time when a properly filed state habeas petition is pending. (28 U.S.C. § 2244(d).) In California, so long as the state prisoner “filed a petition for appellate review within a ‘reasonable time,’ he could count as ‘pending’ (and add to the 1-year time limit) the days between (1) the time the lower state court reached an adverse decision, and (2) the day he filed a petition in the higher state court.” (Evans v. Chavis (2006) 546 U.S. 189, 193.) Here, the Ninth Circuit rejected Maes’s argument that he was entitled to statutory tolling of the one-year AEDPA deadline during the time that he could have filed a new petition in a higher court, even though he did not actually file another petition. This is not how § 2244(d) works. Because Maes did not file another state habeas petition, no properly filed petition was “pending” after the superior court denied his first petition. Under these circumstances, he was not entitled to statutory tolling.