Federal Habeas Corpus Explained: How to Represent Yourself | 28 U.S.C. § 2255 & § 2241 Series

Good morning, and thank you for joining me with my first video class. My name is Elizabeth Franklin Best, and I'm an attorney in Columbia, South Carolina. I'm a criminal defense attorney, and I specialize in criminal appeals and federal criminal defense. But I also represent clients in federal habeas proceedings. In doing this work, I've come to realize that a lot of inmates don't always have lawyers to help them in federal habeas, and that's a problem. This class is to help address that problem. Most inmates go— end up going at it alone in federal habeas, and they lose. Not because they don't have good claims, but because the habeas procedure is so complicated that they don't meet the right legal standards. They don't frame their claims in the right way. They don't use the right language from the case law. So what I want to do is provide this class for inmates who are getting ready to represent themselves in federal habeas. What I want you to be able to do is this: be able to clearly state your claim so the court knows what you're asking for and what your constitutional problem is. The court needs to see clearly what the problem is and know that it's an issue that they can address. Then you need to make the right arguments to support your claim. We'll talk about this in greater detail in other classes, but what this means is that you have to show the court why it mattered that this constitutional violation happened in your case. You have to show not just that there's been a constitutional violation in your case, but that your case would have turned out differently but for that violation. This is critical, and it's a step often overlooked by inmates who represent themselves. But here's another important point. This class is not just for inmates who are starting their habeas journey. This is for all inmates who are beginning the journey of undoing their convictions. You should listen to this even if you're just beginning your direct appeal. Decisions that are made at both the direct appeal stage and during your state post-conviction proceeding can impact whether you can take those claims into federal court. You have to make sure that your federal constitutional claims are baked into your case from the beginning, because if you don't raise the federal constitutional claims to the state court,, you almost certainly will not be able to raise it in federal court. Winning in federal court means you have to start working these issues right after your conviction. You should think of reversing a conviction as a process. Don't think of your direct appeal as separate from your post-conviction or state habeas, as separate from your federal habeas. You need to think of it all together as a story of why you were wrongly convicted and how your rights were violated. What many inmates don't realize is that you have to be your own best advocate during this process. You need to know the law. You know your case better than anyone else, including your lawyers, and you will not win your case unless you understand the law. Here is what I want to accomplish in this course. I want you to be able to litigate your own federal habeas case if you either cannot afford or do not want to hire a lawyer. At the end of this class, you will know what the habeas rules are and why they are what they are. You'll know how to select claims that are going to give you your best shot of winning. You're going to know how to frame those issues so that you can get the court's attention. You're going to know what your legal standards are and how you can meet them. You'll learn how to ask for and be granted an evidentiary hearing in district court. And then if you lose your case in District Court, you're going to learn how to appeal your case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Federal habeas is a really difficult area of the law, and there can be a number of different ways that an inmate who has very good claims can still lose his case. It is critically important in this area of the law to understand the rules. So what I want to do in this first class is I want to give you a background on federal habeas so that you will understand why the rules are what they are. And secondly, I want to make sure that you understand, that you know when you need to file your petition. In this first class, I'm going to tell you what habeas corpus is because the more that you understand about the actual statute, the better you will be prepared to frame your issues in such a way that the federal courts will pay attention to them. I know that what I'm about to explain to you sounds very complicated, and it is pretty complicated, but it is something that you can learn how to do. And so what I hope to do is to give you a roadmap for how to successfully raise your claims so that you can win your case. Our current statutory— our current habeas statutory scheme is dictated by federal law. At 28 USC Section 2254, you will find the habeas statute. As an initial matter, only someone who is in custody can file a habeas petition. So if you're out of prison and you're just on probation, you cannot file a habeas petition. If, however, say that you're on the sex offender registry or there are some other very confining conditions to your probation, you may be able to file a habeas petition. It really depends on just how much like custody those provisions are. But as a good rule of thumb, someone who is in custody can file a habeas petition, and somebody who is not in custody cannot file a habeas petition. Okay, so what does the statute say? Pursuant to the statute, a district court can entertain an application for writ of habeas corpus from the judgment of a state criminal conviction only on the ground that he is in custody for a violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States. What this means in plain language is that you have to raise a federal claim. So don't raise a claim about your preliminary hearing. Don't argue about your bond conditions. Don't argue about a hearsay objection. Your claims have to be federal. And there are a number of good federal claims. Some of the claims that you're most likely to see in federal habeas are going to be ineffective assistance of counsel claims. And what that means generally is that your lawyer did something unreasonable, otherwise acted below the standard of professional attorneys, and that you were harmed by that performance. Brady claims are good federal claims, which is when the government has failed to disclose evidence that is both material and is either exculpatory or relevant to the impeachment of witnesses. There are other good federal claims that can be raised, like insufficiency of the evidence or illegal admission of certain types of evidence if that evidence was unreliable. You can also raise what's called a Napoo claim, which is when the government puts somebody on the stand to testify when they knew that that witness was lying. There's also what's called a Messiah claim, which is when the government tries to use informants to obtain incriminating statements by putting them in a jail cell next to the person they're trying to get the statement statement from. You can also raise prosecutorial misconduct claims. And you can also raise the claim that you are actually innocent of the crime for which you have been convicted. And we will talk about, in, in later classes, more about these claims that you can raise. There is, however, one federal claim that you cannot raise in federal habeas. You cannot raise search and seizure issues. Even though the violation of the Fourth Amendment is a federal claim, you still cannot raise Fourth Amendment issues in federal habeas. There is a case called Stone v. Powell from the United States Supreme Court published in 1976 that stands for that proposition, and the courts have never retreated from it. Also, you cannot raise certain state claims like hearsay objections. What you want to keep in mind when deciding what claims to raise is that you want them to be very significant. The claims that you raise in your habeas petition should be claims that have had an impact in your case. The courts are not going to get involved in a case that implicates minor issues in a trial. The federal courts are only going to get involved if they think there has been a very serious breakdown in the state court criminal process. The federal courts are highly deferential to the state court convictions. As a general rule, the federal courts will not reverse state court convictions. So, for example, you can argue your lawyer was ineffective by not calling your alibi witnesses, but you have to make sure that you're also arguing that you were harmed because then the jury didn't hear that you were on the other side of town when the crime happened. You can't just argue, "My lawyer was ineffective." You have to show the court what didn't happen in your case because your lawyer was ineffective. And we will talk more about this in later classes too. It is just so incredibly important to make sure that you're adequately conveying the prejudice in your case. So here's why Behavius process is difficult. Okay? It's by design. And you just need to sort of be aware that it is difficult. Okay? Because that's just going to be really important when you're thinking about how to litigate these issues. Okay, back in 1995, there was this domestic terrorist named Timothy McVeigh who took a whole bunch of nitrate and he blew up a federal courthouse in Oklahoma City. As you can imagine, there was a huge outcry from the public, and politicians responded by limiting some of the legal remedies that prison inmates had. There was this belief in society back then that inmates had it easy and that they were abusing the legal process by filing habeas petitions and frivolous lawsuits. It used to be that you could file a habeas petition whenever you wanted to, and you could file as many as you needed to. But no longer. So, in response to that terrible event and the public outcry, Congress limited the federal courts' ability to reverse state court convictions. So, the consequence of this, right, is that Congress also shortened the deadline in which an inmate can file a federal habeas petition. It used to be that an inmate could raise certain federal constitutional claims at any point. But after the McVeigh bombing and Congress's passing of the Anti-Death Penalty and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which is also called AEDPA, inmates only have 1 year from the date of the conviction becomes final to file a federal habeas petition. It is impossible to overstate how important this is. The deadline is jurisdictional. Which means that the courts do not even have the discretion to give you an extension. If you miss the statute of limitations by one single day, you are out of court. So, when do you file? You have one year to file your federal habeas petition from the date that your conviction becomes final. But what does that mean? Plain language. Well, after you are convicted at trial, you have a period of time in which you can file a direct appeal as a matter of right. Your case is not final while you are appealing your case on direct appeal. If you lose your appeal, you can seek certiorari in the South Carolina Supreme Court. Your conviction is not final while you're trying to do that. When you lose your petition for writ of certiorari in the South Carolina Supreme Court, court, your case becomes final after the expiration of an additional 90 days in which you could theoretically file for certiorari in the United States Supreme Court. But this is very important. If you do not seek cert to the South Carolina Supreme Court after the denial of your direct appeal, you are not entitled to that additional 90 days. Since most people don't do that, you should just go ahead and quickly file your application for post-conviction relief after you lose your direct appeal. You should always do this quickly. The time in which you have lost, from the time that you lose your direct appeal until the time that you file that application for post-conviction relief, counts against you on that federal habeas statute of limitations. So, if you lose your direct appeal and you wait 8 months to file that PCR application, that is 8 months that you have lost. So, you need to go ahead and get that filed quickly. Once you file the application for post-conviction relief, the clock stops again. So, you go through your post-conviction case and then you lose it. And you appeal it to the South Carolina Supreme Court, all of that is safe time for you. That time does not run against your statute of limitations. But once you get a denial of cert after the appeal of the denial of your PCR, the clock starts again. That's when you've got to go ahead and file your habeas petition. Now, you can amend your petition at any point for any claims. Before the expiration of the statute of limitations. If you want to amend the petition after the expiration of the statute of limitations, however, then your additional claims must relate back to that initial petition. This is tricky, so you should never rely on trying to supplement your habeas petition after the expiration of the statute. That is a very easy way to lose your case. So, it is important that you file that application for post-conviction relief as quickly as you can after you either enter your guilty plea or lose your direct appeal. In doing so, you will ensure that you have plenty of time to conduct any additional investigation that you may need during your federal habeas proceeding. So, to recap: To file a habeas petition, you must be in custody, you must raise a federal claim, and you must file it within the statute of limitations. Be aware of that statute of limitations. It is a short period of time. Do not delay in getting your habeas petition filed. Okay. So in our next segment, I want to talk about other kinds of federal habeas claims that have been raised and have won. Won in other cases. And we're gonna talk about the kinds of claims that you need to look for in your case so that you can raise those claims in your federal habeas petition. Thank you.