Anul Malik Ram v. County of Sacramento

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
ANUL MALIK RAM,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v.
COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO,
Respondent-Appellee.
No. 17-16285
D.C. No.
2:15-cv-02074-WBS-DB
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of California
William B. Shubb, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted September 13, 2018
San Francisco, California
Before: TASHIMA, RAWLINSON, and WATFORD, Circuit Judges.
Anul Ram appeals from the district court’s order dismissing her petition for
a writ of habeas corpus as untimely. She argues that her amended petition was not
time-barred because it relates back to the date of her original petition. See Fed. R.
Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(B). We affirm.
In order for Ram’s amended petition to relate back to the date of the original,
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
FILED
SEP 26 2018
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

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there must be “a common core of operative facts uniting the original and newly
asserted claims.” Mayle v. Felix, 545 U.S. 644, 659 (2005) (internal quotation
marks omitted). We do not look to the legal theory underlying a claim, but to the
facts on which it is based. Nguyen v. Curry, 736 F.3d 1287, 1297 (9th Cir. 2013),
abrogated on other grounds by Davila v. Davis, 137 S. Ct. 2058 (2017).
In her original pro se petition, Ram raised claims that her pleas of guilty and
not guilty by reason of insanity were not knowing and voluntary because she was
incompetent to plead when she made them and because her trial counsel provided
ineffective assistance by failing to have her competency evaluated. In her
amended petition, she asserts that her not guilty by reason of insanity plea was not
knowing and voluntary because it was made without a factual basis—that it was,
unknown to her, a fiction invented by her trial counsel to have her committed for
mental health treatment. For the same reason, she argues that her trial lawyer was
ineffective.
The facts underlying Ram’s original claims have to do with her ability to
understand the trial process and the rights she was giving up when she entered her
pleas. Her new claims, on the other hand, require inquiry into whether the acts she
admitted committing constitute the crime of attempted murder. The relevant facts
for the two sets of claims are entirely distinct. While her new claims, like her old
ones, implicate what she knew and understood at the time of her pleas, her new

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claims ultimately depend on the adequacy of the evidence supporting her plea to
attempted murder. The claims therefore do not share a common core of operative
facts, and the amended petition does not relate back to the date of the original.
AFFIRMED.

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