Filed: Jan. 15, 2020
Latest Update: Mar. 03, 2020
Summary: FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS January 15, 2020 Christopher M. Wolpert TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court TA’SHAWN R. WILSON, Petitioner - Appellant, v. No. 19-6119 (D.C. No. 5:18-CV-00383-G) SCOTT CROW, Interim Director, (W.D. Okla.) Respondent - Appellee. ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY* Before MATHESON, McKAY, and BACHARACH, Circuit Judges. Petitioner Ta’Shawn Wilson, a state prisoner represented by counsel, seeks a certificate of appeal
Summary: FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS January 15, 2020 Christopher M. Wolpert TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court TA’SHAWN R. WILSON, Petitioner - Appellant, v. No. 19-6119 (D.C. No. 5:18-CV-00383-G) SCOTT CROW, Interim Director, (W.D. Okla.) Respondent - Appellee. ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY* Before MATHESON, McKAY, and BACHARACH, Circuit Judges. Petitioner Ta’Shawn Wilson, a state prisoner represented by counsel, seeks a certificate of appeala..
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FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS January 15, 2020
Christopher M. Wolpert
TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court
TA’SHAWN R. WILSON,
Petitioner - Appellant,
v. No. 19-6119
(D.C. No. 5:18-CV-00383-G)
SCOTT CROW, Interim Director, (W.D. Okla.)
Respondent - Appellee.
ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY*
Before MATHESON, McKAY, and BACHARACH, Circuit Judges.
Petitioner Ta’Shawn Wilson, a state prisoner represented by counsel, seeks a
certificate of appealability to appeal the district court’s dismissal of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254
habeas petition as time-barred.
In 2008, Petitioner pled guilty to several drug-related crimes in two state-court
cases, and his sentencing was deferred for five years subject to the terms and conditions
of his probation. In 2010, his sentences were accelerated based on numerous probation
violations, and the state court imposed various lengthy sentences of imprisonment on the
*
This order is not binding precedent except under the doctrines of law of the case,
res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value
consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
charges, including several life sentences. In 2011, the state court granted his application
for judicial review and modified his sentences to include several concurrent forty-five-
year sentences and no life sentence. Petitioner subsequently filed various state-court
pleadings in an attempt to withdraw his guilty plea and/or invalidate the new sentences;
all of these state-court filings were unsuccessful. In April 2018, Petitioner initiated this
federal habeas proceeding.
In a thorough report and recommendation, the magistrate judge who reviewed this
case concluded that, accounting for statutory tolling, Petitioner’s one-year limitations
period for filing his federal habeas petition expired on November 6, 2013. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 2244(d). The magistrate judge further concluded that Petitioner was not entitled to
equitable tolling because he had not shown that he “ha[d] been pursuing his rights
diligently.” Yang v. Archuleta,
525 F.3d 925, 928 (10th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation
marks omitted). Among other things, the magistrate judge noted that there were several
periods of time in which Petitioner took no action to pursue his federal habeas claims,
including a period of more than two-and-a-half years which elapsed between the state
appellate court’s denial of his third application for post-conviction relief in January 2015
and his filing of a fourth application for post-conviction relief in September 2017.
Petitioner filed an objection to the report and recommendation in which he did not
dispute the magistrate judge’s calculation of the limitations period but instead argued that
it would be unreasonable and inequitable to allow a nonjurisdictional limitations period to
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prevent him from pursuing his federal constitutional claims. The district court found this
argument to be unpersuasive and thus adopted the magistrate judge’s report and
recommendation in its entirety and dismissed the habeas petition as untimely.
We conclude that reasonable jurists would not “find it debatable whether the
district court was correct in its procedural ruling.” Slack v. McDaniel,
529 U.S. 473, 484
(2000). First, to the extent Petitioner now seeks to challenge the magistrate judge’s
calculation of the statutory limitations period, any such argument was waived by
Petitioner’s failure to raise this specific objection before the district court. See United
States v. One Parcel of Real Prop.,
73 F.3d 1057, 1060 (10th Cir. 1996). Second,
Petitioner has not shown, nor do we find, any error in the magistrate judge’s conclusion
that Petitioner is not entitled to equitable tolling because he failed to make the requisite
showing that he diligently pursued his rights. See
Yang, 525 F.3d at 930. Finally, there is
no merit to Petitioner’s argument that the habeas statute of limitations is inapplicable
whenever a habeas petitioner argues that the state court’s decision was contrary to clearly
established federal law or involved an unreasonable determination of the facts. As the
magistrate judge and district court already explained, this argument, which would
effectively eviscerate the statute of limitations, is “disingenuous at best” (Appellant’s
App. at 11 (internal quotation marks omitted)) and finds no support in the law. See
McQuiggin v. Perkins,
569 U.S. 383, 394–95 (2013) (holding that habeas statute’s “time
limitations apply” in all but “a severely confined category[ of] cases in which new
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evidence shows it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted
the petitioner” (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted); cf. Miller v. Marr,
141
F.3d 976, 977–78 (10th Cir. 1998) (holding that one-year limitations period for habeas
petitions survived Suspension Clause challenge where petitioner did not claim actual
innocence or incompetence because, among other things, equitable tolling is available for
inmates who diligently pursue federal constitutional claims).
We therefore DENY Petitioner’s request for a certificate of appealability and
DISMISS the appeal.
Entered for the Court
Monroe G. McKay
Circuit Judge
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