Equitable Tolling under AEDPA

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Question 1 Equitable Tolling under AEDPA Prefatory Statement: The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) was passed by the 107% Congress “to deter terrorism, provide justice for victims, provide for an effective death penalty, and for other purposes.” In doing so, Congress made modifications to the law of habeas corpus. The most notable modifications enacted by AEDPA were made to the law of habeas corpus. AEDPA’s habeas reform provisions, codified in 28 U.S.C. §§ 2254 and 2255, included a statute of limitations for habeas corpus claims and restrictions on a habeas petitioner's ability to file a second habeas petition. The question here addresses specifically the statute of limitations under 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f) and the courts’ evaluation of circumstances to determine if “extraordinary circumstances” exist warranting equitable tolling. Equitable tolling is available to overcome the one-year limitation period where the court finds that the petitioner has acted diligently but, because of extraordinary circumstances, he or she was unable to satisfy the one-year limitation period for filing. QUESTION 1: Equitable Tolling: Whether the Holland Court’s direction to review with flexibility the circumstances warranting equitable tolling is consistently applied where the Circuits are split into two disparate approaches: some using a flexible totality of the circumstances approach and others a rigid 2 4) ol approach, where each circumstance is viewed in isolation. QUESTION 2: Structural Error: Whether a Petitioner is entitled to habeas review for raising an issue of Constitutional magnitude when the issue raised is one of structural error based on the petitioner being deprived of his 6th Amendment guarantee of meaningful adversarial confrontation and denial of assistance of counsel. 3