What Does "Properly Filed" Mean (Boring)

Pace v. DiGuglielmo

A very boring case. Like many people on death row, or serving life in prison, Pace is in the process of exhausting ALL legal options. At some point the court gets tired of hearing it, and the legislature has required that all habeus corpus petitions be filed within a year of sentencing. This time is extended or 'tolled' if there is petition pending.

The majority found that simply getting a clerk to accept the paper was not enough for a petition to be "properly filed," while the dissent argues that it is properly filed when "[the petition's] delivery and acceptance are in accordance with the applicable laws and rules governing filings." This would allow the filing to be considered for 'tolling' even when its "legal claims are procedurally barred." The dissent then questioned whether a statute of limitation is akin to A) a precondition to filing (like a fee) or B) a procedural bar, where A would make his application improperly filed, and B would not. There is then a somewhat interesting discussion about case law, and whether standard A or standard B is most congruent with our notions of justice, but it is all procedural. Like I said, a boring case (guess which one the dissent thought it was).