Rhoades Redux

Last week, the Court found that a successive petition for post-conviction relief in a capital case was untimely. The petition was based upon the discovery of exculpatory biological evidence relating to the capital murder case. (See 10/19/09, SCOIDBlog "Discovery of Exculpatory Evidence . . . Came Too Late . . .")

A similar petition was filed in the client's non-capital murder case. As the state consistently argued that the same person was responsible for a series of three murders, the exculpatory evidence as to one murder was exculpatory as to the other two. Today, the Court dismissed that petition too.

Before doing so, the Court reaffirmed "the standard expressed in Charboneau [v. State] in order to determine whether equitable tolling is appropriate." In Charboneau, the Court recognized that rigid application of I.C. § 19-4902 would preclude courts from considering "claims which simply are not known to the defendant within the time limit, yet raise important due process issues." Such claims, however, must be filed within a reasonable amount of time. And, the Court, in determining what a reasonable time is for filing a successive petition, "will simply consider it on a case-by-case basis, as has been done in capital cases." Charboneau, 144 Idaho at 905, 174 P.3d at 875.

The Court noted Charboneau was consistent with prior Court of Appeals cases finding equitable tolling where the petition has been denied the due process right of meaningful access to the courts. The COA cases are a bit different, in my view, because they deal with whether the petitioner was prevented from filing the post-conviction due to an impairment of his access to the courts. This analysis does not focus on the type of claim raised. Thus, combining Charboneau with the COA cases, equitable tolling would seem to exist when the petitioner is prevented from raising the claims either due to a lack of meaningful access to the courts or when there is a claim raising an important due process issue which was not and could not have been known earlier.

The Court then found that petitioner's claims (prosecutorial misconduct, actual innocence, ineffective assistance of counsel, and a request for DNA testing) either did not raise important due process issues sufficient to trigger equitable tolling or that the claim had not been adequately supported by the facts and claims in the pleadings.

The Court did not decide the question of whether there is a free-standing post-conviction claim for actual innocence. It wrote: "We need not and do not decide today whether due process requires a free-standing actual innocence exception to the application of I.C. § 19-4902."

Finally, and perhaps most importantly for day-to-day post-conviction practice, the Court made clear that attorneys fees and costs could be awarded in post-conviction cases on appeal. "Idaho Appellate Rule 40 provides that '[c]osts shall be allowed as a matter of course to the prevailing party unless otherwise provided by law or order of the Court.' " Noting that a petition for post-conviction relief is a civil matter, the Court awarded costs to the state, but declined to award attorneys fees as "the standard for equitable tolling has never been clearly spelled out and its application to many of the issues raised by Rhoades is a matter of first impression for this Court."

Rhoades v. Fisher, http://www.isc.idaho.gov/opinions/Rhoades%20v.%20State,%2035021.pdf