Brian McMonagle v. Don Meyer

Brian McMonagle seeks federal habeas review of a California misdemeanor conviction for driving while under the influence of alcohol. The district court dismissed McMonagle’s petition as untimely under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”), and he appealed. In order to determine the timeliness of McMonagle’s petition, we must decide when his misdemeanor conviction became final for the purposes of AEDPA’s one-year limitation period.

This timeliness inquiry is complicated by the overlap of California’s procedures for direct review of misdemeanors, which often ends at the Court of Appeal, and our decision in Larche v. Simons, 53 F.3d 1068 (9th Cir.1995), which requires California misdemeanants to exhaust their state remedies by filing a habeas petition with the California Supreme Court. Larche , however, was decided before AEDPA’s enactment and dealt with exhaustion of state court remedies, not finality for purposes of AEDPA. We nevertheless recognize that Larche creates needless confusion for California misdemeanants seeking federal ha-beas review, and we now overrule it.

Here, relying on Larche , McMonagle fully exhausted his state remedies before…