OPINION AND ORDER

SHIRLEY KRAM, Senior District Judge

On January 4, 1999, the petitioner, Miguel Mercedes ("Mercedes"), filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, seeking review of his October 1983 murder conviction. The Court dismissed the petition as time-barred on February 21, 2002, in accord with the Report and Recommendation issued by Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis. Now before the Court is Mercedes's motion for reconsideration under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6). For the reasons that follow, the Court denies that motion in its entirety.

I. BACKGROUND

On October 11, 1983, Mercedes was convicted by a jury sitting in the Supreme Court of New York on two counts of murder in the second degree, two counts of felony murder, and one count of robbery in the first degree. On February 10, 1987, Mercedes's appeal from his conviction and sentence was denied without opinion. On August 12, 1991, Mercedes filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court, which was voluntarily dismissed on September 9, 1992. Subsequently, Mercedes pursued unfruitful challenges to his conviction and sentence in state court, including a petition for a writ of error coram nobis, which was denied on September 3, 1998.

Mercedes renewed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court on January 4, 1999. In an Opinion and Order dated February 21, 2002 (the "Opinion and Order"), the Court adopted the Report and Recommendation prepared by Magistrate Judge Ellis, dismissed Mercedes's petition as time-barred, and denied his request for a certificate of appealability ("COA"). The Second Circuit also denied Mercedes's application for a COA on July 9, 2002. Thereafter, Mercedes sought relief in state court, filing a motion for the vacatur of his conviction under New York Criminal Procedure Law § 440.10 on November 22, 2002. Following a hearing during which Mercedes presented purportedly exculpatory testimony, Justice William Wetzel of the Supreme Court of New York denied Mercedes's § 440.10 motion on June 16, 2004. Mercedes was denied leave to appeal Justice Wetzel's determination on August 26, 2004. The Supreme Court of New York also denied Mercedes's second application for a writ of error coram nobis in August 2005.

Mercedes now moves for reconsideration of the Court's denial of his habeas petition in its Opinion and Order. The motion for reconsideration is dated March 5, 2007, and was received by the Court on March 12, 2007.

II. DISCUSSION

Motions under Rule 60(b), which present newly discovered evidence in support of a previously denied claim or contend that a subsequent change of law is a reason justifying relief, are "in substance . . . successive habeas petition[s] and should be treated accordingly." Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 531 (2005). Here, the bulk of Mercedes's purported Rule 60(b) motion comprises a restatement of the claim of actual innocence he asserted in his January 1999 habeas petition, further supported by additional evidence derived from his § 440.10 proceeding. (Petr.'s Mot. 18-24.) In addition, Mercedes argues that the Court's resolution of his petition was erroneous in light of subsequent Supreme Court jurisprudence. (Petr.'s Mot. 5.) To the extent that Mercedes's Rule 60(b) motion seeks to again challenge his conviction, this time with the benefit of newly-discovered evidence and subsequent Supreme Court decisional law, it is denied as "beyond the scope of Rule 60(b)." Gitten v. United States, 311 F.3d 529, 534 (2d Cir. 2002).

Nonetheless, because Mercedes is proceeding pro se, his papers must be given a "liberal construction," and read "to raise the strongest arguments that they suggest." Green v. United States, 260 F.3d 78, 83 (2d Cir. 2001) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). When given this "liberal construction," portions of Mercedes's purported Rule 60(b) motion may be understood as a challenge to the Court's determination that his habeas petition was untimely in its Opinion and Order. Insofar as Mercedes objects to the Court's resolution of his statute-of-limitations arguments, his papers are properly construed as a motion for relief under Rule 60(b). See Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 532 n. 4 (stating that petitioner may bring a Rule 60(b) motion "assert[ing] that a previous ruling which precluded a merits determination was in error — for example, a denial for such reasons as failure to exhaust, procedural default, or statute-of-limitations bar"). For the reasons that follow, however, the Court declines to disturb its holding that Mercedes's habeas petition was untimely.

At least one court in this District has held that "the running of the AEDPA statute of limitations is equitably tolled in the exceedingly rare case in which the petitioner makes out a credible claim of actual innocence." Garcia v. Portuondo, 334 F. Supp. 2d 446, 462 (S.D.N.Y. 2004). On the basis of this holding, Mercedes claims that the statute of limitations for the filing of his habeas petition should have been equitably tolled, since he presented credible evidence of his actual innocence. (Petr.'s Mot. 24-27.) The record before the Court, however, does not support Mercedes's claim. The Court specifically found that Mercedes had not made out a credible claim of actual innocence at the time it decided his habeas petition. Mercedes v. Kelly, No. 99 Civ. 2473 (SWK), 2002 WL 252489, at *3-*4 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 21, 2002). The record, even as supplemented by evidence Mercedes has mustered since the Court ruled on his habeas petition, does not show by a preponderance of the evidence "that no reasonable juror would have found petitioner guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 327 (1993). The purportedly exculpatory testimony he offered in connection with his habeas petition, much like the evidence he offers today, derives from an unreliable font — i.e., the testimony of a woman who assisted Mercedes in cleaning up the scene of his murders and was allegedly embroiled in a "love triangle" involving Mercedes and one of his victims. Mercedes v. Kelly, 2002 WL 252489, at *1. Given the lack of evidence supporting his actual innocence, there are no grounds for disturbing the Court's determination that Mercedes's habeas petition was untimely. Therefore, his Rule 60(b) motion is meritless.

Beyond this clear lack of merit, Mercedes's Rule 60(b) motion is also itself time-barred. The Court's Opinion and Order was filed on February 21, 2002, and Mercedes's request for a COA was denied by the Second Circuit on July 9, 2002. On January 20 and 21, and February 6, 2004, Mercedes presented purportedly exculpatory testimony in a § 440.10 proceeding before Justice Wetzel, who denied Mercedes's motion on June 16, 2004. Nevertheless, Mercedes did not file the instant motion for reconsideration until early March 2007, i.e., more than five years after the Court denied his habeas petition, fully three years after his presentation of supposedly exculpatory testimony before Justice Wetzel, and more than two and one-half years after Justice Wetzel denied his § 440.10 motion. Under these circumstances, Mercedes's Rule 60(b) motion is untimely because it was not filed within a "reasonable time." See Rodriguez v. Mitchell, 252 F.3d 191, 201 (2d Cir. 2001) ("We do not think that three and one-half years from the date judgment was entered is a reasonable time.").

III. CONCLUSION

Accordingly, insofar as Mercedes's motion attacks his underlying conviction with the benefit of newly discovered evidence and subsequent Supreme Court jurisprudence, it is dismissed as beyond the scope of Rule 60(b). To the extent that his motion challenges the Court's application of the statute of limitations to his habeas petition and is thereby within Rule 60(b)'s scope, it is in any event meritless and time-barred. Therefore, Mercedes's motion is denied in its entirety.

SO ORDERED.