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holding that the defendant's conclusory assertion that his mental difficulties were sufficiently severe as to preclude him from timely filing his post-conviction relief application did not establish a prima facie case
Summary of this case from McKinnon v. StateOpinion
Court of Appeals No. A-11515 No. 6293
02-24-2016
PETER L. ANDREWS, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: Olena Kalytiak Davis, Attorney at Law, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Ann B. Black, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
NOTICE Memorandum decisions of this Court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d) and Paragraph 7 of the Guidelines for Publication of Court of Appeals Decisions (Court of Appeals Order No. 3). Accordingly, this memorandum decision may not be cited as binding authority for any proposition of law. Trial Court No. 3AN-09-12034 CI
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Anchorage, Jack W. Smith, Judge. Appearances: Olena Kalytiak Davis, Attorney at Law, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Ann B. Black, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee. Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, Allard, Judge, and Hanley, District Court Judge. Judge MANNHEIMER.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to Article IV, Section 16 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 24(d).
In May 2004, Peter L. Andrews pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. In October 2009 — that is, five and a half years later — Andrews began filing a series of pleadings which, at Andrews's behest, the superior court ultimately treated as a petition for post-conviction relief. In this petition, Andrews argued that he should be allowed to withdraw his plea (on the basis that he had been mentally incompetent to enter a plea to the murder charge).
Andrews's petition for post-conviction relief was manifestly untimely under the applicable statute of limitations, AS 12.72.020(a)(3). Andrews acknowledged that his petition for post-conviction relief was filed outside the statutory time limit, but he argued that this time limit should be relaxed because he suffered from several mental difficulties: mild mental retardation, schizoaffective disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and fetal alcohol syndrome. See AS 12.72.020(b)(1)(A), which authorizes a court to relax the applicable filing deadline if the defendant "suffered ... from a mental disease or defect that precluded [a] timely assertion of the claim."
Although Andrews provided the superior court with documentation to support his claim that he suffered from these mental difficulties, he did not offer the court any explanation as to how these mental difficulties made it impossible for him to file a timely petition for post-conviction relief. Rather, Andrews simply made conclusory assertions that, from the time of his conviction until the fall of 2009 (when Andrews filed the first pleading in this post-conviction relief litigation), his mental disabilities prevented him from initiating post-conviction relief litigation.
In its decision, the superior court noted that, in September 2007, Andrews filed a pro se motion for relief under Alaska Criminal Rule 35(a), arguing that his sentence was illegal. (Later, an attorney was appointed to represent Andrews, and Andrews then pursued this Rule 35(a) motion with the assistance of counsel.) The superior court concluded that Andrews's litigation of this illegal sentence claim in 2007 undercut his assertion that he was mentally unable to file a petition for post-conviction relief during that same period.
For more details of this litigation, see this Court's unpublished decision in Andrews v. State, 2009 WL 3153634 (Alaska App. 2009).
Based on the foregoing, the superior court concluded that Andrews had failed to present a prima facie case that his mental difficulties made it impossible for him to pursue post-conviction relief any earlier. The court therefore dismissed Andrews's petition for post-conviction relief as barred by the statute of limitations.
On appeal, Andrews argues that when the superior court assessed the legal sufficiency of his pleadings, the court was required to assume the truth of Andrews's assertions that, because of his mental difficulties, Andrews was (and he remained) "unable to intelligently evaluate his situation" and unable "to understand the legal process". But as this Court explained in LaBrake v. State, 152 P.3d 474 (Alaska App. 2007), the rule about assuming the truth of the applicant's assertions of fact does not apply to conclusory or pro forma assertions of the ultimate facts to be proved, when these assertions are not supported by specific details.
LaBrake, 152 P.3d at 481, citing Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure (3rd ed. 2004), § 1368, Vol. 5C, p. 255.
Here, the ultimate factual question was whether Andrews's mental difficulties were severe enough to effectively disable him from pursuing a petition for post-conviction relief from the time the statute of limitations "clock" started running in mid-2004 until Andrews finally initiated his application for relief in late 2009. Andrews asserted, in conclusory fashion, that this was true, but he provided no details to back up this assertion. The superior court was therefore not required to assume the truth of Andrews's assertion.
Andrews also relies on the Alaska Supreme Court's decision in Cikan v. ARCO Alaska, Inc., 125 P.3d 335 (Alaska 2005). In Cikan, the supreme court held that the superior court committed error by dismissing a civil lawsuit as untimely, when the plaintiff offered evidence that she had been mentally disabled from filing the lawsuit sooner.
Cikan, 125 P.3d at 339-342.
But the plaintiff in Cikan offered a detailed explanation of the extent and the duration of her mental confusion. In contrast, Andrews offered little more than conclusory assertions that he was mentally incapable of filing a petition for post-conviction relief from 2004 until 2009. And as we have already indicated, the superior court could properly rely on the fact that, in 2007, Andrews initiated pro se litigation under Criminal Rule 35(a), alleging that his sentence was illegal — during the very time that he claimed to be mentally incapable of initiating litigation.
Id. at 337-38. --------
For these reasons, we agree with the superior court that Andrews failed to present a prima facie claim that he was mentally incapable of initiating post-conviction relief litigation until the autumn of 2009. We therefore uphold the superior court's decision to dismiss Andrews's petition as untimely.
Conclusion
The judgement of the superior court is AFFIRMED.