Albert Roy v. Robert O. Lampert, Phillip L. Kephart v. Stan Czerniak, Superintendent, Osp

Albert Roy and Phillip Kephart were both convicted of crimes in Oregon state court. The federal district court dismissed both of their federal habeas petitions as untimely because they were filed after the one-year statute of limitations period created by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”). We consolidated their cases to answer a single question: Are Roy and Kephart entitled to an evidentiary hearing regarding their claim that the statute of limitations should be equitably tolled because they were transferred to an Arizona prison facility that, they allege, had a woefully deficient law library?

Because we decide that Roy and Kep-hart made sufficient allegations that they pursued their claims diligently and faced extraordinary circumstances once they were transferred to the Arizona prison facility, we remand this case to the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing.

I

Albert Roy pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree sodomy in Oregon state court and was convicted of those two counts. Roy appealed this conviction to the Oregon Court of Appeals, which affirmed his conviction on August 23, 1995. Roy did not appeal either to the Oregon Supreme…