George Gibbs v. Robert Legrand

This case arises from a prisoner’s vigorous pursuit of post-conviction review in the face of egregious misconduct from his court-appointed lawyers. We focus here on one serious episode of attorney misconduct: The failure, despite prisoner-petitioner George Gibbs’s repeated inquiries, to inform Gibbs that the Nevada Supreme Court denied the appeal of his state post-conviction petition. By the time Gibbs learned the fate of his appeal, he had already missed the one-year deadline for filing a federal habeas corpus petition.

We hold that the attorney’s conduct amounted to client abandonment, and that the district court erred by not recognizing that such abandonment can, in certain circumstances, constitute an extraordinary circumstance warranting equitable tolling of the federal filing deadline. Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s dismissal of Gibbs’s petition and remand for consideration of the petition on the merits.

I.

Gibbs was convicted by a Nevada jury for crimes ranging from manufacture of a controlled substance to possession of child pornography and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed his conviction on…