Dodd v. Beaumont

No. 229               April 10, 2024                    817

   This is a nonprecedential memorandum opinion
    pursuant to ORAP 10.30 and may not be cited
         except as provided in ORAP 10.30(1).

          IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
                  STATE OF OREGON

                 JUSTIN RAY DODD,
                  Plaintiff-Appellant,
                            v.
                 Jeremy BEAUMONT,
                    Superintendent,
           Warner Creek Correctional Facility,
                Defendant-Respondent.
              Lake County Circuit Court
                 22CV40024; A180533

  David M. Vandenberg, Judge.
  Submitted March 6, 2024.
   Jedediah Peterson and O’Connor Weber LLC filed the
brief for appellant.
   Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General, and Robert M. Wilsey, Assistant Attorney
General, filed the brief for respondent.
  Before Aoyagi, Presiding Judge, Joyce, Judge, and Jacquot,
Judge.
  JOYCE, J.
  Affirmed.
818                                        Dodd v. Beaumont

        JOYCE, J.
         Plaintiff appeals from a judgment dismissing his
petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In that petition, plaintiff claimed that his conviction and sentence were unlawful and that he could not seek post-conviction relief because
such a claim would be untimely. The trial court rejected his
claims, concluding that the claims were “not properly the
subject matter for” habeas corpus. We affirm.
         Plaintiff argues that, under Mueller v. Benning, 

, 

 (1992), the trial court should have
treated his petition for a writ of habeas corpus as “mislabeled claims for post-conviction relief” and applied the analytical framework for post-conviction claims. We disagree
that Mueller required the trial court to do so. To be sure,
Mueller stands for the proposition that a court “d[oes] not
err when it hear[s] a properly cognizable post-conviction
claim that [has been] mislabeled by the court as a petition
for habeas corpus.” Perry v. Zenon, 

, 

 (1994) (so describing the holding in Mueller). That
said, “[n]othing in Mueller compels a trial court to convert a
petition for habeas corpus into a petition for post-conviction
relief, particularly on its own initiative.” Bates v. Czerniak,

, 

, rev den, 

 (2003).
That holds particularly true when, as here, the petition for
habeas corpus relief expressly acknowledged that the claim
could not be brought as a post-conviction claim. Given that
the trial court was under no obligation to sua sponte convert
plaintiff’s habeas petition into one for post-conviction relief,
we cannot conclude that it erred in not doing so.
        Affirmed.