Clark v. Garcia
Clark v. Garcia
Opinion of the Court
MEMORANDUM
Michael S. Clark appeals the district court’s order dismissing his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition as untimely. We affirm. Because the parties are familiar with the factual and procedural history of the case, we will not recount it here.
We review the district court’s dismissal of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus as time-barred de novo. Spitsyn v. Moore, 345 F.3d 796, 799 (9th Cir. 2003). “If the facts underlying a claim for equitable tolling are undisputed, the question of whether the statute of limitations should be equitably tolled is also reviewed de novo.” Id. A district court’s finding on the issue of competence is a finding of fact. King v. Brown, 8 F.3d 1403, 1408 (9th Cir. 1993). Therefore, we will not disturb the district court’s finding regarding the disputed fact, whether Clark was mentally incompetent during the relevant time period, unless we have a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. See Lentini v. California Ctr. for the Arts, Escondido, 370 F.3d 837, 843 (9th Cir. 2004).
We have “already held that a ‘putative habeas petitioner’s mental ineompetency [is] a condition that is, obviously, an extraordinary circumstance beyond the prisoner’s control,’ so ‘mental incompetency justifies equitable tolling’ of the AEDPA statute of limitations.” Laws v. Lamarque, 351 F.3d 919, 923 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting Calderon v. United States District Court (Kelly), 163 F.3d 530, 541 (9th Cir. 1998) (en banc), overruled in unrelated part by Woodford v. Garceau, 538 U.S. 202, 123 S.Ct. 1398, 155 L.Ed.2d 363 (2003)). However, we lack a definite and firm conviction that the district court erred in finding that Clark was sufficiently mentally competent to manage his legal affairs during the period between when Clark’s judgment became final and when Clark filed his state habeas petition. Clark, himself, testified that the reason he did not timely file his habeas petition was he did not “want the other inmates to know what
AFFIRMED.
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and may not be cited to or by the courts of this circuit except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.