Michael Ramos v. James Yates

MEMORANDUM

Ramos appeals the district court’s order denying his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas corpus petition. The district court dismissed the petition as untimely because Ramos did not file it within the one-year statute of limitations provided by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). We affirm on alternative independent grounds, either of which would require the result.

Ramos failed to explain to both the Superior Court of the State of California and the California Court of Appeal why he waited almost four years before filing his first state habeas petition. In dismissing Ramos’s petitions, both courts addressed the untimeliness of his filings. The language that the California superior and appellate courts used to deny Ramos’s petitions is materially similar to the language considered in Bonner v. Carey, 425 F.3d 1145, 1147 (9th Cir.2005). We held in Bonner that a state court’s use of this language amounts to a denial for untimeliness. Id. at 1148 . Thus, under Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408, 414 , 125 S.Ct. 1807 , 161 L.Ed.2d 669 (2005), Ramos’s state habeas petitions were not “properly filed” for purposes of statutory tolling. Bonner, 425 F.3d at…