Carr v. Lizotte

── Carr v. Lizotte ── Case No.: 24-1715 Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Date: March 18, 2026 Category: General United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 24-1715 RODOLFO CARR, Petitioner, Appellant, v. KENNETH LIZOTTE, Respondent, Appellee. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS [Hon. George A. O'Toole, Jr., U.S. District Judge] Before Barron, Chief Judge, Lipez and Rikelman, Circuit Judges. Cathryn A. Neaves for petitioner-appellant. Tara L. Johnston, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Bureau, with whom Andrea Joy Campbell, Attorney General of Massachusetts, was on brief, for respondent-appellee. March 18, 2026  LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. Three decades after a fatal shooting in a Boston park, petitioner Rodolfo Carr was convicted of first-degree murder by a Massachusetts jury and sentenced to life imprisonment. In this habeas case, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, Carr seeks dismissal of the indictment against him, claiming a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. Carr also asserts an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, arguing that his trial and appellate attorneys failed to develop and present evidence crucial to his speedy-trial claim. After careful consideration of the record and caselaw -- including our binding precedent on when the speedy-trial clock begins to run under federal law -- we agree with the district court that Carr is not entitled to habeas relief. I. The district court did no independent factfinding, and we therefore review its denial of Carr's habeas petition de novo. See, e.g., Hudson v. Kelly, 94 F.4th 195, 200 (1st Cir. 2024). Like the district court, we review with deference the facts underlying the petition as determined by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ("SJC"). See, e.g., Martinez v. Salisbury, 158 F.4th 101, 103 (1st Cir. 2025).1 Pursuant to federal statute, the 1After an "independent view of the evidence," the SJC adopted as "well founded" the findings of fact made by a Superior Court justice who held a hearing on a pretrial motion filed by Carr seeking dismissal of the indictment on speedy-trial grounds. - 2 - state courts' factfinding is presumed correct "unless the petitioner rebuts this 'presumption of correctness' with 'clear and convincing evidence.'" Yeboah-Sefah v. Ficco, 556 F.3d 53, 66 (1st Cir. 2009) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1)); see also Watson v. Edmark, 118 F.4th 456, 459 (1st Cir. 2024).2 Although Carr asserts that the SJC made an unreasonable determination of the facts, he does not dispute the historical facts found by the SJC. Rather, he argues that the court erred in assessing the legal significance of the facts before it (his speedy-trial claim) and that his attorneys failed to provide the state courts with all relevant facts (his ineffective-assistance claims). Put differently, Carr challenges the significance of the Commonwealth v. Carr, 986 N.E.2d 380, 387 (Mass. 2013) (citation modified); see also infra note 5 (describing Carr's multiple pretrial motions to dismiss based on a speedy-trial violation). We recount the facts as set forth by the SJC, "supplemented with other facts from the record that are consistent with the [state courts'] findings." Hudson, 94 F.4th at 197 n.1 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Lynch v. Ficco, 438 F.3d 35, 39 (1st Cir. 2006)). 2 In Watson, we noted our prior observation of "some tension" between the "clear and convincing" standard of § 2254(e)(1) and the statement in § 2254(d)(2) that habeas relief may be granted "if the state court decision 'was based on an unreason