Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-12651 No. 6854
02-05-2020
EDRICK C. POINTER, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: Paul E. Malin, under contract with the Public Defender Agency, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Diane L. Wendlandt, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Jahna Lindemuth, 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, although it may be cited for whatever persuasive value it may have. See McCoy v . State , 80 P.3d 757, 764 (Alaska App. 2002). Trial Court No. 3AN-14-10554 CI
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Anchorage, Michael D. Corey, Judge. Appearances: Paul E. Malin, under contract with the Public Defender Agency, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. Diane L. Wendlandt, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Jahna Lindemuth, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee. Before: Allard, Chief Judge, Harbison, Judge, and Mannheimer, Senior Judge. Judge MANNHEIMER.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to Article IV, Section 11 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 23(a).
Edrick C. Pointer appeals the superior court's dismissal of his petition for post-conviction relief. The superior court dismissed Pointer's petition after ruling that it was untimely.
Pointer was convicted of first-degree sexual assault, and this Court affirmed his conviction on appeal. Pointer then petitioned the Alaska Supreme Court to review this Court's decision, but the supreme court denied Pointer's petition on December 14, 2010.
See Pointer v. State, unpublished, 2010 WL 3273714 (Alaska App. 2010).
Under the provisions of AS 12.72.020(a)(3)(A), if Pointer wished to petition the superior court for post-conviction relief, his deadline for filing the petition was December 15, 2011. Pointer submitted a petition for post-conviction relief to the superior court in October 2011 (i.e., several weeks before the statutory deadline expired), but Pointer's petition was missing a key component.
At all relevant times, Pointer was a prisoner in the custody of the Alaska Department of Corrections. Because of this, when Pointer submitted his petition for post-conviction relief, he was required to either (1) pay the full normal filing fee for petitions to the superior court, or (2) expressly seek a reduction of the filing fee, and include the financial documentation that would allow the superior court to calculate Pointer's mandatory minimum filing fee under AS 09.19.010(d). When Pointer submitted his petition for post-conviction relief in October 2011, he failed to include the financial documentation that would allow the superior court to calculate the mandatory minimum filing fee.
Because of this, and because of other deficiencies in Pointer's petition, the superior court clerk's office refused to accept Pointer's petition for filing. Instead, on October 21, 2011, the clerk's office returned the petition to Pointer, along with an explanation of why his petition was deficient.
Approximately nine months later, in early July 2012, Pointer submitted his post-conviction relief paperwork a second time. But again, Pointer failed to provide the financial documentation that was required by AS 09.19.010. The clerk's office again rejected Pointer's petition for filing.
More than eight months later, in late March 2013, Pointer submitted his post-conviction paperwork a third time. Once more, Pointer failed to provide the financial documentation required by AS 09.19.010 and, once more, the clerk's office refused to accept the petition for filing.
Finally, at the end of November 2014 — more than three years after Pointer submitted his initial petition for post-conviction relief — Pointer sent the clerk's office a petition that contained the required financial documentation, and the clerk's office accepted Pointer's petition for filing.
The State filed a motion asking the superior court to dismiss Pointer's petition for post-conviction relief on the ground that it was untimely. The State pointed out that, under AS 12.72.020(a)(3)(A), the filing deadline for Pointer's petition had expired years before Pointer submitted a petition that satisfied the legal requirements.
During the litigation that followed, Pointer initially suggested several theories as to why the Department of Corrections had prevented him from completing his petition for post-conviction relief in a timely manner. But Pointer ultimately withdrew all of these allegations and, instead, argued that his petition for post-conviction relief had in fact been timely.
Pointer noted that his initial paperwork was submitted in October 2011, several weeks before the statutory filing deadline expired. He acknowledged that his initial paperwork did not satisfy all the legal requirements for a petition for post- conviction relief, but he argued that, even with these deficiencies, the superior court clerk's office did not have the authority to reject his paperwork for filing. Pointer took the position that, despite the petition's deficiencies, the clerk's office was required to accept his petition for filing when it was initially submitted — and that it was up to a superior court judge to raise the deficiencies in Pointer's petition and have Pointer correct these deficiencies after the petition was filed.
When the timeliness issue was litigated in the superior court, both parties recognized that this Court had previously addressed an analogous situation in Mullin v. State, 996 P.2d 737 (Alaska App. 2000).
In Mullin, a prisoner filed a petition for post-conviction relief shortly before the statutory filing deadline expired, but the superior court clerk's office rejected the petition for filing because the prisoner failed to include the financial documentation required by AS 09.19.010. The prisoner remedied this defect one month later — but, by that time, the filing deadline had expired.
Mullin, 996 P.2d at 738.
Ibid.
The question raised in Mullin was whether the petition should be deemed timely because it was initially submitted before the filing deadline expired, even though it had technical defects.
In Mullin, this Court noted that the wording of AS 09.19.010 appeared to say that a prisoner's petition should not be deemed "filed" until (1) the superior court had calculated the prisoner's mandatory minimum filing fee and (2) the prisoner had actually paid this fee.
In particular, subsection (a) of AS 09.19.010 states that a prisoner "may not commence litigation against the state" unless the prisoner has paid the normal filing fee or has sought a reduced fee from the superior court under AS 09.19.010(b), while subsection (e) of the same statute declares that, even when the superior court grants a prisoner's request for a reduced filing fee, "the court may not accept any filing in the [prisoner's] case" unless the prisoner pays the reduced fee within the time allowed.
(See also Alaska Administrative Rule 9(f)(4), which states that the clerk's office "shall" collect the prescribed filing fee "before accepting any civil action or proceeding for filing".)
But in Mullin, this Court construed AS 09.19.010 as referring to the moment when a petition is deemed "filed" for procedural purposes, not for statute of limitations purposes:
AS 09.19.010 establishes the procedural requirements that prisoners must meet before a court will allow their petitions for post-conviction relief to go forward — requirements that must be satisfied before the court will require the State to file an answer and before the court will allow the litigation to proceed to discovery and trial. ... But, for purposes of deciding whether a petition is filed within the time limits established in AS 12.72.020(a)(3)-(4), the relevant event is the filing of the petition itself — even if the prisoner fails to accompany the petition with either a filing fee or an application for reduced fee.Mullin, 996 P.2d at 740.
We then explained that, under our interpretation of AS 09.19.010, if a prisoner files their petition for post-conviction relief within the time allowed by the statute of limitations, but if the petition is deficient because it is not accompanied by either a filing fee or a proper application for a reduced fee, the petition will be deemed timely for statute of limitations purposes if the prisoner corrects the deficiency "within a reasonable period of time". Ibid.
We emphasized, however, that the superior court could properly dismiss a petition "if the prisoner fails to correct this deficiency within a reasonable period of time". Ibid. "In other words, prisoners must still pursue their claims diligently[.]" Ibid.
In Pointer's case, the superior court found that Pointer "did not make reasonable efforts to remedy the deficiencies [in his application]" — i.e., the court concluded that Pointer had failed to pursue his claim for post-conviction relief "diligently" within the meaning of Mullin.
The record supports the superior court's conclusion. As we have explained, Pointer's initial petition — the petition he submitted in October 2011 — did not comply with the requirements of AS 09.19.010: Pointer did not pay the normal filing fee, nor did he submit the financial documentation that would allow the superior court to calculate his mandatory minimum filing fee under AS 09.19.010(d). Even though the superior court clerk's office promptly notified Pointer of this deficiency, Pointer did not cure this deficiency in his second petition (the one he submitted in July 2012), nor did he cure this deficiency in his third petition (the one he submitted in March 2013). The deficiency was not cured until Pointer submitted his fourth petition in November 2014 — over three years after he was notified of the deficiency. And Pointer presented no explanation for this three-year delay.
Given this record, we conclude that the superior court did not abuse its discretion when it ruled that Pointer failed to act diligently to remedy this defect in his petition.
Accordingly, we AFFIRM the superior court's dismissal of Pointer's petition for post-conviction relief.