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Full Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns the authority of a U. S. District Court, on its own initiative, to dismiss as untimely a state prisoner’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214, sets a one-year limitation period for filing such petitions, running from “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review.” 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(1)(A). The one-year clock is stopped, however, during the time the petitioner’s “properly filed” application for state postconviction, relief “is pending.” §2244(d)(2). Under Eleventh Circuit precedent, that tolling period does not include the 90 days in which a petitioner might have sought certiorari review in this Court challenging state-court denial of postconviction relief. Coates v. Byrd, 211 F. 3d 1225, 1227 (2000).
In the case before us, the State’s answer to the federal habeas petition “agree[d] the petition [was] timely” because it was “filed after 352 days of untolled time.” App. 24. Inspecting the pleadings and attachments, a Federal Magistrate Judge determined that the State had miscalculated the tolling time. Under Circuit precedent, the untolled time
The question presented is whether a federal court lacks authority, on its own initiative, to dismiss a habeas petition as untimely, once the State has answered the petition without contesting its timeliness. Ordinarily in civil litigation, a statutory time limitation is forfeited if not raised in a defendant’s answer or in an amendment thereto. Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 8(c), 12(b), and 15(a). And we would count it an abuse of discretion to override a State’s deliberate waiver of a limitations defense. In this case, however, the federal court confronted no intelligent waiver on the State’s part, only an evident miscalculation of the elapsed time under a statute designed to impose a tight time constraint on federal habeas petitioners.
Petitioner Patrick A. Day was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 55 years in prison by a Florida trial court. Day unsuccessfully appealed the sentence, which was affirmed on December 21, 1999. Day did not seek this Court’s review of the final state-court decision; his time to do so expired on March 20, 2000.
Three hundred and fifty-three (353) days later, Day unsuccessfully sought state postconvietion relief. The Florida trial court’s judgment denying relief was affirmed on appeal, and the appellate court issued its mandate on December 3, 2002. See Nyland v. Moore, 216 F. 3d 1264, 1267 (CA11 2000) (under Florida law, appellate order “is pending” until the mandate issues). Thirty-six (36) days thereafter, on January 8, 2003, Day petitioned for federal habeas relief asserting several claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. A Magistrate Judge, finding the petition “in proper form,” App. 21, ordered the State to file an answer, id., at 21-22. In its responsive pleading, the State failed to raise AEDPA’s one-year limitation as a defense. See supra, at 201. Overlooking controlling Eleventh Circuit precedent, see Coates, 211 F. 3d, at 1227, the State calculated that the petition had been “filed after 352 days of untolled time,” and was therefore “timely.” App. 24. The State’s answer and attachments, however, revealed that, had the State followed the Eleventh Circuit’s instruction on computation of elapsed time, the timeliness concession would not have been made: Under the Circuit’s precedent, more than one year, specifically, 388 days of untolled time, had passed between the finality of Day’s state-court conviction and the filing of his federal habeas petition.
The Eleventh Circuit granted Day a certificate of appeal-ability on the question “[wjhether the district court erred in addressing the timeliness of [Day’s] habeas corpus petition . . . after the [State] had conceded that [the] petition was timely.” App. 37. In a decision rendered two years earlier, Jackson v. Secretary for Dept. of Corrections, 292 F. 3d 1347 (2002), the Eleventh Circuit had ruled that, “even though the statute of limitations is an affirmative defense, the district court may review sua sponte the timeliness of [a federal habeas] petition.” Id., at 1349. Adhering to Jackson, and satisfied that the State’s concession of timeliness “was patently erroneous,” the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of Day’s petition. 391 F. 3d, at 1192-1195.
II
A statute of limitations defense, the State acknowledges, is not “jurisdictional,” hence courts are under no obligation to raise the time bar sua sponte. See, e. g., Acosta v. Artuz, 221 F. 3d 117, 122 (CA2 2000); Hill v. Braxton, 277 F. 3d 701, 705 (CA4 2002); Davis v. Johnson, 158 F. 3d 806, 810 (CA5 1998); cf. Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U. S. 443, 458 (2004) (defendant forfeited untimeliness argument “by failing to raise the issue until after [the] complaint was adjudicated on the merits”). In this respect, the limitations defense resembles other threshold barriers — exhaustion of state remedies, procedural default, nonretroactivity — courts have typed “nonjurisdictional,” although recognizing that those defenses “implicate] values beyond the concerns of the parties.” Acosta, 221 F. 3d, at 123 (“The AEDPA statute of limitation promotes judicial efficiency and conservation of judicial resources, safeguards the accuracy of state court judgments by requiring resolution of constitutional questions while the
On the exhaustion of state remedies doctrine, requiring state prisoners, before invoking federal habeas jurisdiction, to pursue remedies available in state court, Granberry v. Greer, 481 U. S. 129 (1987), is the pathmarking case. We held in Granberry that federal appellate courts have discretion to consider the issue of exhaustion despite the State’s failure to interpose the defense at the district-court level. Id., at 133.
While the issue remains open in this Court, see Trest v. Cain, 522 U. S. 87, 90 (1997),
Petitioner Day relies heavily on Rule 4 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts (Habeas Rules), i. e., the procedural Rules governing federal habeas petitions from state prisoners, in urging that AEDPA’s limitation may be raised by a federal court sua sponte only at the preanswer, initial screening stage. Habeas Rule 4 provides that district courts “must promptly examine”, state prisoner habeas petitions and must dismiss the petition “[i]f it plainly appears . . . that the petitioner is not entitled to relief.” Once an answer has been ordered and filed, Day maintains, the court loses authority to rule the petition untimely sua sponte.
The State, on the other hand, points out that the statute of limitations is akin to other affirmative defenses to habeas petitions, notably, exhaustion of state remedies, procedural default, and nonretroactivity. Indeed, the statute of limitations is explicitly aligned with those other defenses under the current version of Habeas Rule 5(b), which provides that the State’s answer to a habeas petition “must state whether any claim in the petition is barred by a failure to exhaust state remedies, a procedural bar, non-retroactivity, or a statute of limitations.” The considerations of comity, finality, and the expeditious handling of habeas proceedings that motivated AEDPA,
In sum, we hold that district courts are permitted, but not obliged, to consider, sua sponte, the timeliness of a state prisoner’s habeas petition. We so hold, noting that it would make scant sense to distinguish in this regard AEDPA’s time bar from other threshold constraints on federal habeas petitioners. See supra, at 206-207; Habeas Rule 5(b) (placing “a statute of limitations” defense on a par with “failure to exhaust state remedies, a procedural bar, [and] nonretroactivity”); Long, 393 F. 3d, at 404 (“AEDPA’s statute of limitations advances the same concerns as those advanced by the doctrines of exhaustion and procedural default, and must be treated the same.”). We stress that a district court
Of course, before acting on its own initiative, a court must accord the parties fair notice and an opportunity to present their positions. See, e.g., Acosta, 221 F. 3d, at 124-125; McMillan v. Jarvis, 332 F. 3d 244, 250 (CA4 2003). Further, the court must assure itself that the petitioner is not significantly prejudiced by the delayed focus on the limitation issue, and “determine whether the interests of justice would be better served” by addressing the merits or by dismissing the petition as time barred. See Granberry, 481 U. S., at 136.
* H=
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Until AEDPA took effect in 1996, no statute of limitations applied to habeas petitions. See Mayle v. Felix, 545 U. S. 644, 654 (2005). Courts invoked the doctrine of “prejudicial delay” to screen out unreasonably late filings. See generally 2 R. Hertz & J. Liebman, Federal Habeas Corpus Practice and Procedure §24 (4th ed. 2001). In AEDPA, Congress prescribed a uniform rule: “A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court.” 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(1).
Day urges this Court to find his petition timely. He asserts that the Eleventh Circuit misinterpreted § 2244(d)(2) in holding that AEDPA’s time limitation was not tolled during the 90-day period he could have petitioned this Court to review the denial of his motion for state postconviction relief. See Brief for Petitioner 45-50. This question was not “set out in the
Day reads the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion in this case as rendering mandatory a district court’s sua sponte application of AEDPA’s one-year limitation, even when the respondent elects to waive the limitation and oppose the petition solely on the merits. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 6-8. He points to a sentence in the Eleventh Circuit’s brief per curiam opinion stating: “A federal court that sits in collateral review of a criminal judgment of a state court has an obligation to enforce the federal statute of limitations.” 391 F. 3d, at 1194. We read the Eleventh Circuit’s summary disposition in line with that court’s description of its controlling precedent: “We . . .
In AEDPA, enacted nearly a decade after Granberry, Congress expressly provided that “[a] State shall not be deemed to have waived the exhaustion requirement or be estopped from reliance upon the requirement unless the State, through counsel, expressly waives the requirement.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(b)(3).
Trest held that a Court of Appeals was not obliged to raise procedural default on its own initiative, but declined to decide whether courts have discretion to do so. 522 U. S., at 89.
Were we to accept Day’s position, courts would never (or, at least, hardly ever) be positioned to raise AEDPA’s time bar sua sponte. As this Court recognized in Pliler v. Ford, 542 U. S. 225, 282 (2004), information essential to the time calculation is often absent — as it was in this case — until the State has filed, along with its answer, copies of documents from the state-court proceedings.
The Habeas Rules were amended after the proceedings below. We cite the current version because both parties agree that the amendments to Rules 4 and 11, effective December 1, 2004, wrought no relevant substantive change.
See Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 276 (2005) (AEDPA’s time bar “quite plainly serves the well-recognized interest in the finality of state court judgments”; it “reduces the potential for delay on the road to finality.” (quoting Duncan v. Walker, 533 U. S. 167, 179 (2001))).
The Court is unanimous on this point. See post, at 216, n. 2 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
The procedural hindrance in Pliler was the petitioner’s failure to exhaust state remedies. The Court in that case declined to rule on the propriety of the stay-and-abeyance procedure that would enable a habeas petitioner to remain in federal court while exhausting unexhausted claims in state court. 542 U. S., at 231. In a later decision, Rhines, 544 U. S., at 278-279, this Court held that a district court has discretion to stay a mixed petition (i. e., one that includes both exhausted and unexhausted claims) to allow a habeas petitioner to present his unexhausted claims to the state court in the first instance, then return to federal court for review of his perfected petition.
A district court’s discretion is confined within these limits. As earlier noted, should a State intelligently choose to waive a statute of limitations defense, a district court would not be at liberty to disregard that choice. See supra, at 202. But see post, at 217-218 (Scalia, J., dissenting).