LARRY R. HICKS, District Judge.
The court directed petitioner to show cause why the court should not dismiss the action as untimely (ECF No. 7). Petitioner has filed a response (ECF No. 12). The court is not persuaded, and the court dismisses this action.
As the court has noted earlier, petitioner was convicted of second-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon, pursuant to a guilty plea agreement. At the time he committed the murder, Nev. Rev. Stat. § 193.165 required the use of a deadly weapon be punished by a sentence equal and consecutive to the sentence for the primary offense. On July 1, 2007, § 193.165 was amended. The use of a deadly weapon now is punished by a consecutive sentence with a maximum term no greater than 20 years and a minimum term no less than 1 year, but this consecutive sentence cannot exceed the sentence for the primary offense. The district court has certain factors it must consider in determining the deadly-weapon sentence.
In petitioner's case, at the time of the guilty plea agreement an open question was whether to apply the old version of § 193.165 or the new version of § 193.165. In
Petitioner does not dispute the dates the court used in its order directing him to show cause. Petitioner does argue that under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(D) the one-year period of limitation should not have started until October 2012. In that month, he learned of two other cases in which the state district court erroneously applied the new version of § 193.165 to the uses of deadly weapons that occurred before the amendments became effective. The court is not persuaded.
To support his argument, petitioner has presented minutes of the Eighth Judicial District Court for Jorge Witrago, Case No. 07C234324, and Rafael Castillo-Sanchez, Case No. 05C217791. Petition, Exhibits A and B (ECF No. 8). Petitioner argues that both defendants committed deadlyweapon crimes before the amendments of § 193.165 went into effect. Witrago was convicted of second-degree murder. The state district court sentenced Witrago to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole starting after 10 years for the primary offense, and a consecutive sentence of 8 to 20 years for the use of a deadly weapon. Castillo-Sanchez was convicted of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon and assault with a deadly weapon.
First, the court is not convinced that what petitioner learned in October 2012 is the factual predicate for a claim. The court does not know the full context of these cases, but the court will assume for the purposes of this order that in each case the state district court used the new version of § 193.165 in complete error. However, these errors favored the defendants, and they certainly would not have appealed to correct the error. At best, petitioner has demonstrated that the prosecution in each case failed to petition the Nevada Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, as happened in
Second, even if the court were to credit petitioner's argument under § 2254(d)(1)(D), this action still would be untimely. The court will assume that petitioner learned about Witrago's and Castillo-Sanchez's sentences on October 1, 2012. Petitioner filed a motion for sentence modification on October 18, 2012, and he filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence on January 11, 2013. The times spent on these motions overlapped, and the illegal-sentence motion concluded with the issuance of the remittitur on October 17, 2013. A motion for modification of a sentence or for correction of an illegal sentence under Nev. Rev. Stat. § 176.555 does not have a time constraint, and so they are eligible for tolling under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2). Petitioner filed a post-conviction habeas corpus petition on April 4, 2014. The Nevada Supreme Court determined that the petition was untimely under Nev. Rev. Stat. § 34.726. Remittitur issued on January 6, 2015. The time spent on this petition did not toll the federal one-year period because an untimely state petition is not properly filed within the meaning of § 2244(d)(2).
The court finds that equitable tolling is not warranted. "[A] `petitioner' is `entitled to equitable tolling' only if he shows `(1) that he has been pursuing his rights diligently, and (2) that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his way' and prevented timely filing."
Reasonable jurists would not find the court's conclusions to be debatable or wrong, and the court will not issue a certificate of appealability.
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that this action is
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that a certificate of appealability is