01-1355 Gray v. Briley

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“We recognized in Brooks that there are some situations, such as the one the U.S. Supreme Court itself faced in Saffold, or the one we faced in Rice v. Bowen, 264 F.3d 698 (7th Cir. 2001), in which it is unclear whether the state court was really making separate rulings on timeliness and the merits, or if its timeliness ruling was nothing more than a merits ruling by another name. 2002 WL 1949693 at *4. Rice itself was a case in which the state court’s decision with respect to timeliness may have been only a decision that Illinois’s ‘culpable negligence’ exception to the state statute of limitations depended entirely on the underlying merit of the petition. Gray’s case contains no such ambiguity. It is simply a dual-ground rejection of his state post-conviction application. As such, we are bound to respect the state court’s ruling that it was filed too late, and this fact dooms his current federal habeas corpus petition.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Holderman, J., Wood, J.