United States Tenth Circuit

Sufficiently egregious misconduct on the part of a habeas petitioner's counsel may justify equitable tolling of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) limitations period. In a domestic abuse, assault, and battery case, an application for a certificate of appealability (COA) from a denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus is granted where: 1) there was jurisdiction to review the petition; 2) reasonable jurists would find it debatable whether the district court abused its discretion with respect to equitable tolling and timeliness rulings; and 3) reasonable jurists could debate whether the petition stated a valid constitutional claim of the denial of a constitutional right.

Appellate Information

• Decided 04/03/2007
• Published 04/04/2007

Judges

• TACHA, Chief Circuit Judge., Before TACHA, Chief Circuit Judge, HARTZ, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Tenth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Submitted on the briefs: , Kipton Fleming, pro se.


• For Appellees:
  
• W.A. Drew Edmondson, Attorney General of Oklahoma, and Jay Schniederjan, Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK, for Appellee.