9th Cir.;
13-55584

The court of appeals reversed a district court order dismissing a petition for writ of habeas corpus as untimely. The court held that state prison officials' delay in providing the petitioner with required documents constituted an extraordinary circumstance warranting equitable tolling of the statute of limitations.

After exhausting his state court appeals from a conviction resulting in two life terms, California state prison inmate Willie Grant filed a petition for writ of certiorari, which the U.S. Supreme Court denied on October 5, 2009. On that date, the one-year statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas petition under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), codified at 28 U.S.C. §2244(d)(1) began to run. Grant filed a petition for state postconviction relief on September 25, 2010, 354 days after his petition for certiorari was denied. The statute of limitations on a federal habeas petition was thereafter tolled until November 21, 2011, when Grant received notice that the California Supreme Court had denied relief. On the same date, Grant requested a “prison account certificate” from the prison trust office, which certificate was required for Grant to file his federal habeas petition in forma pauperis. When he did not hear back from prison officials for two weeks, he filed a second request. Grant received the certificate on December 19, and filed his federal habeas petition the same day. In response to the government's motion to dismiss the petition as untimely, Grant argued he was entitled to equitable tolling from the date he requested his prison account until he received it.