Summary
U.S. Supreme Court case to determine whether a convicted criminal can evade Congress's limit on repeated attacks on his conviction. Convicted child sexual abuser Danny Rivers contended he can do so simply by filing an amended petition after the federal district court had already rejected his first petition.
Rivers's daughter and stepdaughter testified that he had sexually abused them repeatedly over a period of years. Rivers admitted to his attorneys that this was true, an admission that all three of them testified to in proceedings after conviction. His attacks on the judgment were rejected on appeal, on a state collateral review, and by a federal district judge. While appeal of federal proceeding was pending, Rivers tried to file a new petition. Later, he claimed it was an amendment of his first petition. The federal district judge rejected it as a successive petition that did not meet the requirements of Congress's landmark 1996 reform of federal habeas corpus. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed.
After the U.S. Supreme Court took up the case, CJLF filed a "friend of the court" brief supporting affirmance of the Court of Appeals decision. Under the standard rules of procedure, a new petition or complaint cannot be filed after judgment unless the plaintiff has first obtained relief from the judgment. The Supreme Court has already decided in Gonzalez v. Crosby that a motion for relief filed this late in the process must meet the standards for a successive petition if it makes a new claim, as this petition does. The existing precedent therefore governs this case, and the new petition was correctly rejected.
The U. S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected Rivers claim, holding that once a district court enters its judgment with respect to a first-filed habeas petition, a second-in-time filing qualifies as a “second or successive application." The Supreme Court reaffirmed the intent of Congress to limit the number of times the federal courts must hear repeated claims from guilty criminals. The Supreme Court's unanimous decision is consistent with this analysis.
