Day v. McDonough - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Speaker

Mr. Speaker: Justice Ginsburg has the opinion in 04-1324, Day v. McDonough.

Argument of Justice Ginsburg

Mr. Ginsburg: This case concerns a federal court’s authority, unprompted by a party, to raise a question concerning the timeliness of a Petition of a writ of habeas corpus.

The federal statute at issue allows one year for state prisoners to file petitions for habeas corpus seeking federal-court review of the legality of their imprisonment.

The time clock for such petitions starts once the prisoner’s state conviction becomes final.

In this case, Florida prisoner Patrick Day filed a petition for federal habeas relief, and the State conceded the timeliness of his petition.

The U.S. magistrate judge assigned to review Day’s petition, however, noticed the State had made a computation error.

Under the controlling circuit precedent, a correct calculation would have revealed the untimeliness of Day’s petition.

The judge called the calculation error to the parties’ attention and gave Day an opportunity to show why his petition should not be dismissed for failure to meet the statutory deadline.

Day was unable to justify the late filing.

The U.S. District Court therefore dismissed Day’s petition, and the dismissal was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, whose judgment we now affirm.

The question presented is one on which courts of appeals have divided.

May a U.S. trial-court judge, acting on his or her own initiative, raise an issue as to the timeliness of a state prisoner’s federal habeas corpus petition?

Ordinarily, a defending party, here the State of Florida, forfeits an objection to the opposing party’s pleading as untimely if the objection is not asserted in the answer to the opening pleading or in an amendment thereto.

In Day’s case, the State did not intelligently forego the objection.

Its assumption that Day’s petition was timely stemmed from an evident miscalculation.

It would have been proper, all members of this Court agree, if the federal judge instead of acting on his own initiative had informed the State of the computation error and invited amendment of the State’s answer to allege the time bar.

That move, as the Court’s majority sees it, is substantially equivalent to the path taken here.

In the opinion released today, we hold that in the circumstances Day’s case presents an apparent counting slip on the part of the State.

No rule, statute or constitutional provision commands the judge who spotted the error to suppress that knowledge.

The judge, we stress, is not obliged to check the state’s math to uncover a miscalculation and then raise the timeliness of the prisoner’s habeas petition sua sponte.

Our opinion rejects both an inflexible rule requiring dismissal whenever the court notices that the one-year clock has run and, at the opposite pole, a rule treating the State’s failure initially to plead the one-year time bar as an irretrievable forfeiture.

We hold simply and only that upon noticing a calculation error, a federal court has discretion to ask and answer this question: Is the administration of justice better served by dismissing the case as time-barred or by reaching the merits of the petition?

Two dissenting opinions have been filed, one by Justice Stevens, in which Justice Breyer joins; the other by Justice Scalia, in which Justice Thomas and Justice Breyer join.