Gilberto Hernandez v. Rick Thaler, Director
Opinion of the Court
Petitioner-Appellant Gilberto Hernandez was sentenced to two consecutive terms of imprisonment. He contends that he had a legitimate expectation in the finality of his sentences which Texas, through Respondent-Appellee Nathaniel Quarterman, has frustrated by changing the method it used to calculate the way that his sentences would be served. This, Hernandez claims, entitles him to relief under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution. On the record before us, we are not able to resolve this claim, so we remand for the discovery and the eviden-tiary hearing that Hernandez requested and the district court denied.
I. FACTS AND BACKGROUND
Hernandez committed aggravated robbery on March 30, 1986 in Hale County, Texas. On July 1, 1986, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment (“sentence # 1”). While in prison serving sentence # 1, Hernandez committed attempted murder on May 2, 1988. For that offense, he was sentenced on March 20, 1989 to ten years imprisonment, to run consecutively to his sentence for aggravated robbery (“sentence # 2”).
Taking into account various time credits, Texas calculated the begin-date of sentence # 1 as February 2, 1986. Hernandez therefore had a calculated “day-for-day” sentence-completion date of February 2, 2004 for his aggravated robbery conviction. At the time that he committed the aggravated robbery, however, Texas provided for mandatory supervised release. Hernandez was therefore eligible to be released from prison and serve the remainder of his sentence on mandatory supervision once the total of his actual time served and good-conduct time equaled his sentence, calculated day for day.
On October 31 or November 1, 2003,
On March 6, 2004, while out on mandatory supervision, Hernandez committed the crime of possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to six months imprisonment. While he was serving that sentence, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles purported to revoke his supervised release for sentence # 1. Hernandez is now scheduled for release on August 23, 2014.
Before the district court, Hernandez claimed that, on February 2, 2004, he had developed a legitimate expectation in the finality of his sentences because at all relevant times Texas law specified that once a sentence commenced, it did not cease to operate. Sentence # 1 commenced on February 2, 1986, and February 2, 2004 is eighteen years, day for day, from that commencement date. As for sentence # 2, the parties agree that, at the latest, Hernandez began to serve it on October 31, 1993, because Texas used the date on which a prisoner was eligible for supervised release to calculate the commencement date of consecutive sentences. Sentence # 2 was therefore served day for day on October 31, 2003, the very day on which Texas released Hernandez to supervision.
Hernandez contends that because of Texas’s continuous operation rule, he effectively served sentence # 1 concurrently with sentence # 2, even though he was sentenced to consecutive sentences. Texas disagrees, contending that after it “constructively released” Hernandez on mandatory supervised release for sentence # 1 — at the latest on October 31, 1993— sentence # 1 was held in abeyance while Hernandez served sentence #2 day for day. According to Texas, Hernandez therefore had to complete a period of supervised release for sentence # 1 that did not end until twenty-eight years after he was sentenced to eighteen years for the underlying crime.
II. DISCUSSION
A. AEDPA’s Time Bar
1. Standard of Review
We review the district court’s legal conclusions and mixed questions of law and fact de novo, using the same standards as the district court.
2. Analysis
Texas asserted before the district court that Hernandez’s petition is time-barred under AEDPA’s one-year limitations period.
“Equitable tolling is appropriate in rare and exceptional circumstances”
B. Double Jeopardy
1. Standard of Review
Again, we review legal questions and mixed questions of law and fact de novo,
2. Analysis
a. AEDPA
Under AEDPA, before a petitioner is entitled to relief, he must show that the state court decision denying relief was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Section 2254(e)(2) provides that if the petitioner “has failed to develop the factual basis of a claim in State court proceedings, the [district] court shall not hold an evi-dentiary hearing on the claim” except in certain limited circumstances.
The Double Jeopardy Clause protects two primary interests. First, it prohibits retrial of a defendant on the same offense after acquittal or conviction.
Hernandez contends that under the rules governing the calculation of his sentences at all times preceding the 2008 decision in Ex Paiie Forward, he had served the entirety of sentence # 2 by October 31, 2003, and the entirety of sentence # 1 by February 2, 2004. If he is correct, then he has “satisfied” “one valid alternative” construction of his sentence, vesting in him an expectation that further review would not reallocate his consecutive sentences in a manner extending his term, i.e., imposing another “valid alternative” of how he should serve a combined twenty-eight year sentence.
We cannot resolve the constitutional questions Hernandez presents without (1) discovery sufficient to reveal how, pre-Fonvard, Texas calculated sentence completion dates in cases like Hernandez’s; and (2) a hearing on any facts underlying the mixed question of law and fact of the reasonableness of the belief of a prisoner in Hernandez’s position that his sentence was final on February 2, 2004. As stated above, such an inquiry will necessarily include a determination whether Hernandez’s claims are time-barred. We therefore remand to the district court with instructions to order the necessary discovery and to conduct an evidentiary hearing limited to these issues. Given the limited nature of our remand, we retain jurisdiction pending the resolution of those issues and any facts subsidiary to their determination.
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is REVERSED and this case REMANDED; and we RETAIN jurisdiction over this case pending the conclusion of the proceedings here ordered to be conducted on remand.
Pursuant to 5th Cir. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5th Cir. R. 47.5.4.
. A consecutive sentence is mandatory when, inter alia, a person commits a crime while incarcerated in the institutional division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. See Tex.Code Crim. P. 42.08(b) (Vernon 1985). This provision was in force at the time that Hernandez committed both of his crimes.
. Tex Code Crim. P. 42.18 § 8(c) (Vernon 1985).
. Although Hernandez claims that he began to serve sentence # 2 on October 31, 1993, the date we credit does not affect our conclusion. We shall use the date Hernandez ad-
. Tex.Code Crim P. art 42.18 § 8(c) (Vernon 1988).
. This is greater than ten years from December 31, 2002, but, as we explained supra note 3, Hernandez claims that sentence # 2 did not begin lo operate until October 31, 1993, the date on which sentence # 1 ceased to operate, at least according to him.
.Texas added six months and twenty days to the maximum expiration date listed on Hernandez’s Certificate of Mandatory Supervision because he was ‘‘out of custody” for that period of time.
. 258 S.W.3d 151, 152 (Tex.Crim.App. 2008).
. Valdez v. Cockrell, 274 F.3d 941, 946 (5th Cir. 2001).
. Id.
. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1) (2006).
. Scott v. Johnson, 227 F.3d 260, 263 (5th Cir. 2000) (internal quotation marks omitted).
. Coleman v. Johnson, 184 F.3d 398, 402 (5th Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks omitted).
. Id.
. Valdez, 274 F.3d at 946.
. Id.
. Clark v. Johnson, 202 F.3d 760, 765-66 (5th Cir. 2000).
. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original).
. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); Moore v. Cockrell, 313 F.3d 880, 881 (5th Cir. 2002).
. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000) (O'Connor, J., concurring) (announcing die opinion of die court).
. Id. at 407, 120 S.Ct. 1495.
. Id.
. Id. at 409-11, 120 S.Ct. 1495.
. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2).
. Clark, 202 F.3d at 765.
. Jones v. Thomas, 491 U.S. 376, 381, 109 S.Ct. 2522, 105 L.Ed.2d 322 (1989).
. Id.
. United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U.S. 117, 136, 101 S.Ct. 426, 66 L.Ed.2d 328 (1980).
. See id. at 136, 101 S.Ct. 426; In re Bradley, 318 U.S. 50, 52, 63 S.Ct. 470, 87 L.Ed. 608 (1943).
. In re Bradley, 318 U.S. at 52, 63 S.Ct. 470.
Concurring Opinion
dissenting:
I must disagree. The majority does not explain what the expectation is or how Hernandez has raised an issue that warrants remand for a hearing and judicial action. From the briefs, I assume that Hernandez has speculated about Texas law on the calculation of sentence completion of two consecutive sentences after the pri-
The Respondent’s calculation of the release date for Hernandez’s two consecutive sentences is in accord with state law as announced in Forward, 258 S.W.3d at 155. The court there instructed that when, like Hernandez, a defendant’s stacked sentences involve both pre- and post-1987 offenses, the state should calculate a mandatory supervised release date for the release-eligible sentence and then add the length of any release-ineligible sentences to arrive at a final mandatory supervised release date. Id. In effect, this is what the state did here.
Hernandez was sentenced to 18 years for burglary, an offense that was eligible for supervised release. Two years later, he was sentenced to a consecutive ten-year term for murder, which was ineligible for supervised release. Hernandez was physically released to mandatory supervision in 2003. Upon his release, Hernandez had served approximately seven years of the 18-year sentence for burglary and 10 years for murder. His supervision was revoked because of a new offense in 2004, and his final release date was calculated to be in 2014, which accounts for the remainder of his sentence on the burglary conviction. Hernandez has thus served the full sentence for the murder offense, for which he could never be released to supervision, and he partially served the burglary sentence in physical custody and was then released to supervision on that supervised-release-eligible offense. I fail to see how any contrary view of the law on the part of a prisoner would be of legal significance.
Hernandez concedes through counsel’s supplemental brief that Forward resolves how Texas treats mandatory supervision eligibility for consecutive sentences for offenses that were committed pre- and post-1987. But he argues that the Forward approach could not have been applied to him in 1993 or 2004 because of the then-existing law. Hernandez then presents his purported legitimate expectation of finality in his sentences from the pre-Forward Texas state law. But the cases he cites do not contain the same factual or procedural posture present here, i.e., consecutive sentences straddling the pre- and post-1987 supervised release laws, nor does he point to evidence of the state executing such consecutive sentences in the manner he advocates. See Ex Parte Salinas, 184 S.W.3d 240 (Tex.Crim.App. 2006); Ex Parte Gabriel, 56 S.W.3d 595 (Tex.Crim.App. 2001); Ex Parte Millard, 48 S.W.3d 190 (Tex.Crim.App. 2001); Ex Parte Kuester, 21 S.W.3d 264 (Tex.Crim.App. 2000); Ex Parte Ruthart, 980 S.W.2d 469 (Tex.Crim.App. 1998). The Forward court, which was aware of its own precedent, announced no change in either state law or the statutory construction of the supervised release statutes in light of precedent. The Forward court having said what the law is and was, Hernandez fails to meet his burden of showing a legitimate expectation in the finality of his sentences.
Because I find Forward to be dispositive of the issue here, I find no error in the district court’s judgment and would affirm.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Gilberto D. HERNANDEZ, Petitioner—Appellant v. Nathaniel QUARTERMAN, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, Respondent—Appellee
- Cited By
- 2 cases
- Status
- Unpublished