Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-16-16533/USCOURTS-ca9-16-16533-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

RONALD ROSS,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

WILLIAMS, Warden; ATTORNEY

GENERAL FOR THE STATE OF

NEVADA,

Respondents-Appellees.

No. 16-16533

D.C. No.

2:14-cv-01527-

JCM-PAL

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Nevada

James C. Mahan, Senior District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted December 5, 2017

San Francisco, California

Filed July 19, 2018

Before: Milan D. Smith, Jr. and Sandra S. Ikuta, Circuit

Judges, and John D. Bates,* District Judge.

Opinion by Judge Ikuta;

Dissent by Judge Bates

* The Honorable John D. Bates, United States Senior District Judge

for the District of Columbia, sitting by designation.

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2 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

SUMMARY**

Habeas Corpus

The panel affirmed the district court’s judgment

dismissing as untimely California state prisoner Ronald

Ross’s amended habeas corpus petition brought pursuant to

28 U.S.C. § 2254.

Ross argued that the claims in his new petition, prepared

with the assistance of counsel, arose out of facts set out in a

state court order attached to his pro se original petition, and

that the district court therefore erred in failing to apply the

relation back doctrine in Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c).

The panel held that because Ross did not comply with

Rule 2(c) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases either

directly or by incorporating (or attempting to incorporate) the

facts in the Nevada Supreme Court affirmance into his

original petition, that petition does not provide an aggregation

of facts that can support the claims in his amended petition. 

The panel concluded that the district court therefore did not

err in concluding that Ross’s amended petition cannot relate

back to the claims in his original petition.

Dissenting, District Judge Bates wrote that this court

should liberally construe Ross’s pro se original petition as

setting out facts discussed in the attached state court decision,

and should then remand for the district court to determine in

the first instance whether the claims in the amended petition

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 3

arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out in

his original petition.

COUNSEL

Jonathan M. Kirshbaum (argued), Assistant Federal Public

Defender; Rene L. Valladares, Federal Public Defender;

Office of the Federal Public Defender, Las Vegas, Nevada;

for Petitioner-Appellant.

Lawrence VanDyke (argued), Solicitor General; Matthew S.

Johnson, Deputy Attorney General; Adam Paul Laxalt,

Attorney General; Office of the Attorney General, Carson

City, Nevada; for Respondents-Appellees.

OPINION

IKUTA, Circuit Judge:

Ronald Ross filed an amended habeas petition eight

months after the statute of limitations under Antiterrorism

and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) had run. 

The district court dismissed it as untimely and rejected Ross’s

argument that it related back to his original, timely petition. 

Ross argues that the claims in his new petition arose out of

facts set out in a state court order attached to his original

petition, and therefore the district court erred in failing to

apply the relation back doctrine in Rule 15(c) of the Federal

Rules of Civil Procedure (Civil Rule 15(c)). Because the

facts set out in the state court order were not clearly

incorporated into Ross’s original petition, and Rule 2 of the

Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States

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4 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

District Courts (Habeas Rule 2) precludes the court from

construing the petition as incorporating such facts, we affirm.

I

In 2009, Ronald Ross was convicted by a Nevada jury of

several theft-related offenses. Ross, who had at least five

prior felony convictions, including one for larceny, was

sentenced under Nevada’s habitual offender statute to a

lifetime term of imprisonment with parole eligibility after

20 years. See Nev. Rev. Stat. §§ 207.010–.016. Ross timely

appealed his conviction and sentence, and on November 8,

2010, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed. Because Ross did

not petition for certiorari, the Nevada Supreme Court’s

judgment became final on February 7, 2011, and AEDPA’s

one-year limitation period for Ross to file a federal habeas

petition began to run. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(A).

On November 30, 2011, Ross timely filed a pro se

petition for post-conviction relief (PCR) in Nevada state

court, temporarily tolling the one-year period for his federal

habeas petition. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2). Ross asserted

five claims for relief, including violations of his right to a

speedy trial, and various theories of ineffective assistance of

counsel. Ross also attached a 22-page handwritten

memorandum, setting forth in great detail the factual bases

for his claims. Ross repeatedly referred to this memorandum

when the form petition asked for “supporting facts” for his

claims. After Ross was appointed counsel, he filed a

supplemental PCR petition, asserting six specific claims, as

well as a claim that the cumulative effect of the alleged errors

amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel.

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 5

The state trial court denied Ross’s amended PCR petition,

and the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed on July 30, 2014. 

The Nevada Supreme Court’s affirmance identified and

rejected eight specific arguments for ineffective assistance of

counsel, in addition to the cumulative error claim.1 The

Nevada Supreme Court’s remittitur issued on August 18,

2014, and AEDPA’s one-year limitation period began to run

again the next day. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2); Jefferson v.

Budge, 419 F.3d 1013, 1015 n.2 (9th Cir. 2005).

On September 14, 2014, Ross filed a timely pro se habeas

petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. 

Ross used the form “Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus

1 The Nevada Supreme Court addressed Ross’s claims that his

counsel was ineffective for:

(1) “failing to engage in pretrial discovery”;

(2) “violating [Ross’s] right to a speedy trial”;

(3) allowing “a communication breakdown [that] prevented [Ross]

from being able to assist counsel in the preparation of his defense”;

(4) “failing to object to expert testimony”;

(5) “failing to retain a defense expert”;

(6) “failing to properly challenge the use of a preliminary-hearing

transcript”;

(7) “failing to renew at trial his preliminary-hearing objection for

violating the best evidence rule”; and

(8) “failing to raise certain objections during the State’s closing

arguments and at sentencing and for failing to move post-verdict to

dismiss the case for lack of evidence.”

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6 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 By a Person in State Custody”

promulgated by that district court in its local rules. See

Habeas R. 2(d).2 The habeas petition form stated: “Attach to

this petition a copy of all state court written decisions

regarding this conviction.” The habeas petition form also

provided detailed instructions, which guided habeas

petitioners on how to fill in the blanks in each section of the

form in order to explain each of their separate grounds for

relief. The form begins with the instruction that the petitioner

should “[s]tate concisely every ground” for habeas relief and

“[s]ummarize briefly the facts supporting each ground.” It

also provided that Ross could “attach up to two extra pages

stating additional grounds and/or supporting facts.” The form

further cautioned that Ross “must raise in this petition all

grounds for relief that relate to this conviction. Any grounds

not raised in this petition will likely be barred from being

litigated in a subsequent action.”

At the top of the template for each ground for relief, the

form contained the following sentence “I allege that my state

court conviction and/or sentence are unconstitutional, in

violation of my ___ Amendment right to ______________,

based on these facts: _______________ . . . .” Ross alleged

three grounds for relief in the space provided by the form,

alleging violations of his Fifth Amendment right to due

process, his Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel, and

his Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal

protection. In the space provided for supporting facts,

2 As discussed in detail, infra Part III.A, the Rules Governing Section

2254 Cases in the United States District Courts (or “Habeas Rules”) apply

to Ross’s petition. Habeas Rule 2(d) provides that “[t]he petition must

substantially follow either the form appended to these rules [(the national

form)] or a form prescribed by a local district-court rule.”

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 7

however, Ross wrote substantially the same thing under each

ground:

Counsel was ineffective for failing to:

1) Secure a speedy trial

2) Failed to review evidence and adequately

prepare

3) Failed to file pretrial motions

4) Failed to argue the prejudice of evidence

lost prior to trial

5) Failed to prepare for jury selection

6) Failed to prepare for trial

7) Failed to retain defense experts

8) Failed to object to the state’s use of expert

witness.

Ross also attached a handwritten affidavit explaining the

reasons for his delay in obtaining a copy of the Nevada

Supreme Court’s ruling. Ross’s affidavit explained that he

was not listed on either the distribution list for the Nevada

Supreme Court’s order of affirmance on July 22, 2014,3nor

3 Ross’s affidavit stated: “[O]n the date of 22 July 2014, the Nevada

Supreme Court issued an Order of Affirmance denying the appeal of my

state post-conviction writ of habeas corpus (see attached order). That it

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8 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

on the distribution list for the court’s remittitur on August 18,

2014. The affidavit further alleged that Ross did not receive

a copy of the order of affirmance until September 11, 2014,

as demonstrated by his signature and time stamp on the front

of the envelope. To document both his absence from the

distribution lists and the date he received the order of

affirmance, he attached: (1) a copy of the Nevada Supreme

Court’s order of affirmance; (2) a copy of the Nevada

Supreme Court’s remittitur; (3) an envelope from his counsel;

and (4) a letter from his counsel dated September 2, 2014,

transmitting a copy of the Nevada Supreme Court’s order.

The district court appointed counsel for Ross, and on June

8, 2015, Ross filed an amended petition, raising 11 grounds

for relief.4 This petition was filed nearly eight months after

is noticed that petitioner Ronald Ross is not listed on the distribution for

the order of affirmance.”

4 These were that: (1) Ross’s Sixth Amendment confrontation right

was violated when “the prosecution was allowed to admit the preliminary

hearing testimony of a witness even though the prosecution did not make

a sufficient showing that the witness was unavailable”; (2) Ross’s Sixth

Amendment right to a speedy trial was violated “when the case was

continued at the state’s request for 541 days”; (3) the evidence against

Ross was insufficient to support his conviction; and (4) Ross’s Sixth

Amendment right to counsel was violated when trial counsel failed (a) to

“protect Ross’s right to a speedy trial”; (b) to “communicate with [Ross]

prior to trial”; (c) to “seek [an] appropriate sanction” for the state’s failure

to preserve the allegedly exculpatory surveillance video; (d) to “object

based on [the] best evidence rule” to a police detective’s testimony about

the content of that video; (e) to object to the detective’s testimony about

“distract thefts,” which Ross argued was expert testimony; (f) to call a

defense expert to rebut the detective’s testimony; (g) to object to the

admission of the preliminary hearing testimony that allegedly violated

Ross’s confrontation rights; and (h) to “raise mitigating arguments at

sentencing.”

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 9

AEDPA’s one-year limitation period had expired. After the

district court ordered a response, the state moved to dismiss

Ross’s amended petition as barred by the statute of

limitations. The district court granted Nevada’s motion to

dismiss. It rejected Ross’s argument that the facts contained

in the Nevada Supreme Court’s order of affirmance were

incorporated in the original petition, and therefore rejected his

contention that the claims in his new petition related back to

the date of the original pleading. Nevertheless, the court

granted a certificate of appealability on that issue.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2253, and we

review de novo a district court’s dismissal of an application

for a writ of habeas corpus. Jiminez v. Rice, 276 F.3d 478,

481 (9th Cir. 2001).

II

Ross does not dispute that his new petition would be

barred by the AEDPA statute of limitations unless it relates

back to the original petition pursuant to Civil Rule 15(c). We

therefore begin by considering the requirements of this rule

in the habeas context.

Civil Rule 15(c) allows an amendment to a pleading after

the statute of limitations has run to relate back to the original

pleading if it arises out of the same “conduct, transaction, or

occurrence.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c). This rule is applicable to

a habeas petition. See Mayle v. Felix, 545 U.S. 644, 655

(2005). “The ‘original pleading’ to which Rule 15 refers is

the complaint in an ordinary civil case, and the petition in a

habeas proceeding.” Id. (emphasis added).

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10 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

Mayle provides guidance on what constitutes the same

“conduct, transaction, or occurrence” in the context of a

habeas petition. Id. at 656–59. The petitioner in that case

had raised to the state court a Fifth Amendment claim based

on the admission of statements made during the petitioner’s

pretrial interrogation and a Sixth Amendment claim based on

the admission of videotaped statements made by a

prosecution witness. Id. at 650. In a timely pro se habeas

petition, the petitioner raised the Sixth Amendment claim, but

not the Fifth Amendment claim. Id. at 651. Five months

after AEDPA’s statute of limitations had run, the petitioner

sought to amend his petition to include a Fifth Amendment

claim, arguing that the claim could relate back under Civil

Rule 15(c) because “both . . . claims challenged the

constitutionality of the same criminal conviction.” Id. at 652. 

The Ninth Circuit agreed, reasoning that “the relevant

‘transaction’ for purposes of Rule 15(c)(2) was [petitioner’s]

‘trial and conviction in state court.’” Id. at 653 (quoting Felix

v. Mayle, 379 F.3d 612, 615 (9th Cir. 2004)).

The Supreme Court rejected this interpretation of

“conduct, transaction, or occurrence.” Id. at 659. Instead,

Mayle held that “relation back depends on the existence of a

common core of operative facts uniting the original and

newly asserted claims.” Id. (internal quotation marks and

citation omitted). Even though petitioner’s Sixth Amendment

confrontation claim and Fifth Amendment privilege against

self-incrimination claim made constitutional challenges to the

admission of pretrial statements, these claims had to be

“pleaded discretely” because they involved “separate

congeries of facts supporting the grounds for relief,” under

Habeas Rule 2(c). Id. at 661. Each of these “separate

congeries of facts,” Mayle explained, “would delineate an

‘occurrence.’” Id. In other words, for purposes of Civil Rule

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 11

15(c), an “occurrence” is an aggregation of facts supporting

a discrete claim for relief, and a new claim must arise from

the same aggregation of facts set forth in the earlier petition

in order to relate back. An amendment cannot relate back to

“facts that differ in both time and type from those the original

[petition] set forth.” Id. at 650.

Mayle also highlighted the flaws in the rejected Ninth

Circuit approach, under which “[a] miscellany of claims for

relief could be raised later rather than sooner and relate

back.” Id. at 661. According to the Supreme Court, such an

approach, which would define “conduct, transaction, or

occurrence” to “encompass any pretrial, trial, or post-trial

error that could provide a basis for challenging the

conviction,” would not only be too general, but would be

contrary to Congress’s intent in enacting the AEDPA statute

of limitations. Id. at 661–62. “Congress enacted AEDPA to

advance the finality of criminal convictions,” in part by

adopting a tight time line. Id. at 662. “If claims asserted

after the one-year period could be revived simply because

they relate to the same trial, conviction, or sentence as a

timely filed claim, AEDPA’s limitation period would have

slim significance.” Id. “Given AEDPA’s ‘finality’ and

‘federalism’ concerns,” Mayle held that this interpretation of

Civil Rule 15’s application to habeas proceedings was

untenable. Id. at 663 (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S.

420, 436 (2000)).

In light of Mayle’s strictures, Ross’s amended petition

may relate back to the original petition only if that petition set

forth an aggregation of facts from which his new claims arise. 

The petition form contains no facts at all. Instead, Ross

argues that the facts set forth in the Nevada state court

affirmance are incorporated into the habeas petition, and the

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12 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

claims in his amended petition arose out of those facts. We

now analyze this argument.

III

Our first step is to determine when, under the applicable

federal rules, an attachment to a habeas petition is deemed to

be incorporated into that petition. This issue requires us to

interpret the Habeas Rules.

A

The Habeas Rules “govern a petition for a writ of habeas

corpus filed in a United States district court under 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254” by a state prisoner. Habeas R. 1(a). Like the Federal

Rules of Evidence and the Civil Rules, the Habeas Rules are

promulgated by the Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules

Enabling Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2072,5see H.R. Rep. 94-1471, at

2 & n.2 (1976), as reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2478,

2479, and therefore are “in every pertinent respect, as binding

as any statute duly enacted by Congress, and federal courts

have no more discretion to disregard [a] Rule’s mandate than

they do to disregard constitutional or statutory provisions.” 

Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 255

(1988). As with other federal rules, the Advisory Committee

notes to the Habeas Rules “provide a reliable source of

5 The Supreme Court initially promulgated the Habeas Rules in 1976

pursuant to authority conferred by 18 U.S.C. §§ 3771–72 (1976) (criminal

proceedings) and 28 U.S.C. § 2072 (1976) (civil proceedings). See H.R.

Rep. 94-1471 at 2 n.2. The Rules Enabling Act was subsequently

amended by repealing 18 U.S.C. §§ 3771–72 and consolidating the

authority to promulgate rules for both civil and criminal proceedings in

28 U.S.C. § 2072. See Judicial Improvements and Access to Justice Act,

Pub. L. 100-702, §§ 401–04, 102 Stat. 4642, 4648–4651 (1988).

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 13

insight into the meaning of a rule.” United States v. Vonn,

535 U.S. 55, 64 n.6 (2002); see also Heinemann v.

Satterberg, 731 F.3d 914, 917 (9th Cir. 2013) (“We pay

attention to the Advisory Committee Notes.”).

The Habeas Rules incorporate some, but not all, of the

Civil Rules. Habeas Rule 12 provides that the Civil Rules “to

the extent that they are not inconsistent with any statutory

provisions or these [Habeas Rules] may be applied to a

proceeding under these rules.” See also Fed. R. Civ. P.

81(a)(4) (providing that the Civil Rules apply to proceedings

for habeas corpus “to the extent that the practice in those

proceedings” is not specified in “the Rules GoverningSection

2254 Cases,” among other rules). In determining whether

application of the Civil Rules would be inconsistent with

statutes or the Habeas Rules, courts must take into account

“the overall framework of habeas corpus.” Mayle, 545 U.S.

at 654 (quoting Habeas R. 12 advisory committee’s note).6

Habeas Rule 12 “permits application of the civil rules only

when it would be appropriate to do so.” Habeas R. 12

advisory committee’s note.

Habeas Rule 2 sets forth the requirements for the form

and content of a habeas petition. Habeas Rule 2(c) specifies

the content of the petition. Under this rule, the petition must

“specify all grounds for relief available to the petitioner,”

“state the facts supporting each ground,” “state the relief

requested,” and “be signed under penalty of perjury,” among

6 Habeas Rule 12 was formerly Habeas Rule 11, but was renumbered

in 2009. See Habeas R. 12 advisory committee’s note to 2009

amendment.

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14 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

other requirements.7 Habeas Rule 2(d) provides that the

petition must “substantially follow either the form appended”

to the Habeas Rules or “a form prescribed by a local district

court rule.”8

The Advisory Committee explained the reasons for this

requirement. Before the enactment of Habeas Rule 2, habeas

petitions had “frequently contained mere conclusions of law,

unsupported by any facts. Since it is the relationship of the

facts to the claim asserted that is important, these petitions

were obviously deficient.” Habeas R. 2 advisory committee’s

note. Moreover, “lengthy and often illegible petitions,

arranged in no logical order, were submitted to judges who

have had to spend hours deciphering them.” Id. According

to the Advisory Committee, “[t]he requirement of a standard

7

 Habeas Rule 2(c) provides in full:

The petition must:

(1) specify all the grounds for relief available to the

petitioner;

(2) state the facts supporting each ground;

(3) state the relief requested;

(4) be printed, typewritten, or legibly handwritten; and

(5) be signed under penalty of perjury by the petitioner

or by a person authorized to sign it for the petitioner

under 28 U.S.C. § 2242.

8 Habeas Rule 2(d) provides in full: “The petition must substantially

follow either the form appended to these rules or a form prescribed by a

local district-court rule. The clerk must make forms available to

petitioners without charge.”

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 15

form benefits the petitioner as well,” because the petitioner’s

“assertions are more readilyapparent, and a meritorious claim

is more likely to be properly raised and supported.” Id. The

AdvisoryCommittee acknowledged that the factual adequacy

of the petition would depend on the petitioner’s capabilities

and the available legal assistance, but concluded that “[o]n

balance . . . the use of forms has contributed enough to

warrant mandating their use.” Id.

In Mayle, the Supreme Court reinforced these

requirements, explaining that “a complaint need only provide

fair notice of what the plaintiff’s claim is and the grounds

upon which it rests,” under the Civil Rules, 545 U.S. at 655

(citation omitted), but “Habeas Corpus Rule 2(c) is more

demanding” because it requires the petition to “specify all the

grounds for relief available to the petitioner” and “state the

facts supporting each ground,” id. (quoting Habeas R. 2(c)). 

“[N]otice pleading is not sufficient, for the petition is

expected to state facts that point to a real possibility of

constitutional error.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted)

(quoting Habeas R. 4 advisory committee’s note). Mayle

likewise recognized that “the model form available to aid

prisoners in filing their habeas petitions” alerts prisoners to

this higher standard. Id.

Although Habeas Rule 2(c) has been applied strictly to

require habeas petitioners to set forth the factual grounds in

the form itself, the Supreme Court has recognized an

exception when the habeas petition expressly incorporates

attached material by reference. See Dye v. Hofbauer,

546 U.S. 1 (2005). In Dye, the Supreme Court considered the

Sixth Circuit’s denial of a habeas petitioner’s prosecutorial

misconduct claim. Id. at 2–3. The Sixth Circuit had denied

relief in part on the ground that the petition “presented the

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16 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

prosecutorial misconduct claim in too vague and general a

form.” Id. at 4. The Supreme Court held that this reasoning

was incorrect because “[t]he habeas corpus petition made

clear and repeated references to an appended supporting brief,

which presented [petitioner’s] federal claim with more than

sufficient particularity.” Id. In reaching this conclusion, Dye

cited Civil Rule 10(c), which provides: “A statement in a

pleading may be adopted by reference elsewhere in the same

pleading or in any other pleading or motion. A copy of a

written instrument that is an exhibit to a pleading is a part of

the pleading for all purposes.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 10(c).

B

Ross urges us to interpret Dye and Civil Rule 10(c)

broadly. According to Ross, because Civil Rule 10(c) states

that “[a] copy of a written instrument that is an exhibit to a

pleading is a part of the pleading for all purposes,” a court

must deem the facts set out in any document attached to a

habeas petition to be included in his habeas petition as a

matter of law, regardless whether the petitioner “made clear

and repeated references” to the document as supporting the

petitioner’s legal claim.

We reject this argument, because it is inconsistent with

Mayle’s direction that we may apply the Civil Rules only to

the extent that they are consistent with the Habeas Rules, see

Habeas R. 12, taking into account the overall habeas

framework, see Mayle, 545 U.S. at 654.9 Ross’s proposed

application of Civil Rule 10(c) would conflict with the

9 The parties also dispute whether a court decision is a “written

instrument” for purposes of Civil Rule 10(c), but we need not decide that

question here.

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 17

language and purpose of Habeas Rule 2(c), which requires

petitioners to specifically identify “the facts supporting each

ground” for relief, in order to alleviate the court’s burden of

deciphering lengthy or poorly organized petitions. Habeas R.

2 advisory committee’s note. If Civil Rule 10(c) applies as

broadly as Ross claims, judges would once again be required

to wade through “two thousand pages of irrational, prolix,

and redundant pleadings,” to the detriment of judges and

petitioners alike. Id. (quoting Passic v. Michigan, 98 F. Supp.

1015, 1016 (E.D. Mich. 1951)).

Further, Ross’s proposed application of Civil Rule 10(c)

would be inconsistent with AEDPA. If each attachment to a

habeas petition could serve as a wellspring of facts to support

any new claim for relief in a subsequent petition, a petitioner

would lay the groundwork for a host of claims that could later

relate back merely by following the form’s instruction to

“[a]ttach to this petition a copy of all state court written

decisions regarding this conviction.” Moreover, any

reasonable petitioner would be motivated to attach reams of

documents to each petition in order to preserve a full panoply

of possible claims that could be revived after the limitations

period has run. Such an application of Civil Rule 10(c)

“would permit ‘the “relation back” doctrine to swallow

AEDPA’s statute of limitations.’” Mayle, 545 U.S. at 662

(quoting Felix, 379 F.3d at 619 (Tallman, J., concurring in

part and dissenting in part)). But as the Supreme Court

explained, “Congress enacted AEDPA to advance the finality

of criminal convictions,” and we may not apply the Civil

Rules in a way that would give AEDPA’s limitations period

“slim significance.” Mayle, 545 U.S. at 662.

The application of Civil Rule 10(c) approved in Dye

raises none of these concerns. When a petitioner incorporates

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18 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

by making “clear and repeated references to an appended

supporting brief,” and the brief presents the petitioner’s

claims “with more than sufficient particularity,” it does not

impose a significant additional burden on the courts to

identify the petitioner’s claims or assess their merit. Dye,

546 U.S. at 4. Nor does the targeted incorporation of specific

facts in a timely petition give a petitioner an unbounded

opportunity to later raise a wide range of other claims under

the relation back doctrine. Cf. Mayle, 545 U.S. at 661. To

the extent the application of Civil Rule 10(c) is limited to this

context, where the petitioner expressly and specifically

identifies the applicable facts incorporated into the habeas

petition, it is consistent with Habeas Rule 2, and therefore not

barred by Habeas Rule 12.

C

We also reject Ross’s argument that applying Civil Rule

10(c) in his suggested manner is consistent with Habeas Rule

4, which governs a district court’s preliminary review of the

petition.10 Under Habeas Rule 4, “[i]f it plainly appears from

10 Habeas Rule 4 provides in full:

The clerk must promptly forward the petition to a 

judge under the court’s assignment procedure, and the

judge must promptly examine it. If it plainly appears

from the petition and any attached exhibits that the

petitioner is not entitled to relief in the district court, the

judge must dismiss the petition and direct the clerk to

notify the petitioner. If the petition is not dismissed,

the judge must order the respondent to file an answer,

motion, or other response within a fixed time, or to take

other action the judge may order. In every case, the

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 19

the petition and any attached exhibits that the petitioner is not

entitled to relief,” then the district court must dismiss the

petition. Otherwise, the district court must order the state to

respond. Habeas R. 4. Because this language directs the

court to examine the facts in the state court order or any other

documents attached to the petition, Ross argues, it enables a

court to consider whether any facts support the petitioner’s

legal claims. We disagree.

Habeas Rule 4 was designed to give courts “an active role

in summarily disposing of facially defective habeas

petitions.” Boyd v. Thompson, 147 F.3d 1124, 1127 (9th Cir.

1998). The rule imposes on courts the duty to screen out

frivolous applications, Habeas R. 4 advisory committee’s

note, when “the allegations in the petition are ‘vague [or]

conclusory’ or ‘palpably incredible’ or ‘patently frivolous or

false,’” Hendricks v. Vasquez, 908 F.2d 490, 491 (9th Cir.

1990) (alteration in original) (internal citations omitted), or if

there are easily identifiable procedural errors, such as a

procedural default, see Boyd, 147 F.3d at 1128, failure to

exhaust state remedies, see Habeas R. 4 advisory committee’s

note, or untimeliness, that are “obvious on the face of a

habeas petition,” Wentzell v. Neven, 674 F.3d 1124, 1126 (9th

Cir. 2012); Herbst v. Cook, 260 F.3d 1039, 1042 (9th Cir.

2001) (same). The rule does not authorize a court to sort

through attachments to determine whether facts can be

identified to support the petitioner’s legal claims. The latter

activity is appropriately reserved for the petitioner; even in an

ordinary civil proceeding, we are precluded from

clerk must serve a copy of the petition and any order on

the respondent and on the attorney general or other

appropriate officer of the state involved.

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20 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

manufacturing a party’s case. See Dennis v. BEH-1, LLC,

520 F.3d 1066, 1069 n.1 (9th Cir 2008).11

D

Finally, Ross argues that we should construe his pro se

pleadings liberally. He also claims his case is particularly

worthy of such liberal construction, because the attachment

in his case is only six pages in length rather than the

thousands of pages of material that concerned the Advisory

Committee. Therefore, he argues, deeming the attached state

court opinion to be incorporated in his original petition under

Civil Rule 10(c) would not be overly burdensome, and would

not be inconsistent with the Habeas Rules.

11 Ross cites several out-of-circuit cases to support this argument, but

they are not on point, as they address the question whether documents

filed as an exhibit to the state’s answer to a habeas petition are part of the

answer, and therefore must be served on the petitioner. In Rodriguez v.

Florida Department of Corrections, for instance, the court ordered the

state to respond to the prisoner’s habeas petition pursuant to Habeas Rule

5, and to include a comprehensive appendix of records from prior state

proceedings. 748 F.3d 1073, 1074 (11th Cir. 2014). The state served the

prisoner with its answer, but did not include a copy of the appendix even

though its answer referred to documents in the appendix. Id. The

Eleventh Circuit concluded that because Rule 10 of the Federal Rules of

Civil Procedure made the appendix “part of the pleading,” it had to be

served on the prisoner along with the answer under Habeas Rule 4. Id. at

1076–77; see also Sixta v. Thaler, 615 F.3d 569, 572 (5th Cir. 2010)

(same); Thompson v. Greene, 427 F.3d 263, 268–69 & n.7 (4th Cir. 2005)

(holding that failing to serve the exhibits was inconsistent with the federal

rules and the Due Process Clause). This conclusion is consistent with the

Habeas Rules. By contrast, these out-of-circuit opinions do not address

the question whether a court must deem the content of any attached

exhibit to be incorporated by reference into a petition, nor whether such

content would meet the requirement of Habeas Rule 2(c).

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 21

To the extent Ross’s arguments are based on his pro se

status, they are unavailing. The Habeas Rules and the

standard form are designed for use by pro se prisoners, see

Habeas R. 2 advisory committee’s note, and nevertheless

impose a “more demanding” pleading standard then had

historically been required, Mayle, 545 U.S. at 655. Every pro

se petitioner must meet the same requirement to “specify all

the grounds for relief” and the “facts supporting each ground”

in order to make the meritorious claims more readily

ascertainable. As with any complaint, a habeas petition must

allege sufficient facts to establish the existence of an

actionable claim; the absence of such facts cannot be cured by

a liberal reading. Even in the civil rights context, where our

willingness to “afford the [pro se plaintiff] the benefit of any

doubt” is at its zenith, Hebbe v. Pliler, 627 F.3d 338, 342 (9th

Cir. 2010) (quoting Bretz v. Kelman, 773 F.2d 1026, 1027 n.1

(9th Cir. 1985) (en banc)), we will not supply elements that

are not present in a pro se plaintiff’s complaint. In Byrd v.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, for instance, we held

that a pro se prisoner’s complaint failed to state an equal

protection claim, even where a document that “was part of the

record before the district court” would have provided a

“viable” basis for that claim. 629 F.3d 1135, 1139–40 (9th

Cir. 2011) (en banc); see also Pena v. Gardner, 976 F.2d 469,

471 (9th Cir. 1992) (holding that a district court could not

“augment” a pro se plaintiff’s complaint to survive a motion

to dismiss by incorporating facts from a closely related

case).12

12 The dissent attempts to distinguish Byrd, Pena, and Ivey on the

ground that they do not involve relation back under Civil Rule 15(c). 

Dissent at 36. This misses the point. These cases establish the rule that

a court cannot augment a pro se petitioner’s complaint by including facts

borrowed from documents outside the complaint. As a necessary result,

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22 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

By contrast, a “technical” mistake is one that does not

implicate the substance of a petitioner’s claim. For example,

where a pro se prisoner “had complied with all substantive

requirements for filing a federal habeas petition,” a district

court could not reject the prisoner’s petition on the ground he

used “white-out and a pen on his cover sheet to write the

correct name of the court in which he filed.” Corjasso v.

Ayers, 278 F.3d 874, 878 (9th Cir. 2002). Our holding in

Corjasso underscores the difference between our willingness

to overlook technical mistakes and our unwillingness to

supply “essential elements of the claim that were not initially

pled,” even in the pro se context. Ivey v. Bd. of Regents of

Univ. of Alaska, 673 F.2d 266, 268 (9th Cir. 1982). The

dissent’s reliance on Corjasso to show we do not hold a

“technical” mistake against pro se petitioners, Dissent at 33,

is therefore misplaced.13

the “conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out—or attempted to be set

out—in the original pleading,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(B), does not

include facts that cannot be found in the original pleading. An amended

complaint cannot relate back to an original pleading that is missing the

relevant facts.

13 The dissent cites cases where we have recharacterized the nature of

a petitioner’s filing in a manner that favors the petitioner, Dissent at 31–32

(citing Woods v. Carey, 525 F.3d 886, 888, 890 (9th Cir. 2008)

(recharacterizing a “second” habeas petition as a motion to amend rather

than a successive petition); United States v. Seesing, 234 F.3d 456, 464

(9th Cir. 2000) (noting the practice of recharacterizing pro se filings as

§ 2255 habeas petitions under certain circumstances)). Those cases are

inapplicable here. While a court may “ignore the legal label that a pro se

litigant attaches to a motion and recharacterize the motion in order to place

it within a different legal category,” Castro v. United States, 540 U.S. 375,

381 (2003) (collecting cases), a court may not manufacture the substance

of a petitioner’s claim.

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 23

E

The dissent focuses on the slightly different argument that

facts contained in the state court order attached to Ross’s

original petition constitute “occurrence[s]” that were

“attempted to be set out” in the petition itself, Fed. R. Civ. P.

15(c)(1)(B); Dissent at 32, 36, 41, and therefore provide a

basis for relation back of the new petition.

We disagree with the dissent’s reading of “attempted to

be set out” in this context. As noted above, because a court

cannot augment a pro se petitioner’s complaint by including

facts borrowed from documents outside the complaint (except

when they are expressly incorporated by reference in the

complaint), we may not deem such facts to be set out or

“attempted to be set out” in that pleading. See supra p. 21. 

The dissent’s contrary reading of Civil Rule 15 runs afoul of

Mayle’s warning not to adopt an overly “capacious”

construction of the rule, 545 U.S. at 657, and not to view its

requirements “at too high a level of generality,” id. at 661

(citation omitted), in a manner that would defeat the purposes

of Habeas Rule 2(c) and AEDPA.14 Rather, as Mayle

explains, the scope of Civil Rule 15(c) must be read in light

of Habeas Rule 2(c), which “instructs petitioners to ‘specify

all [available] grounds for relief’ and to ‘state the facts

supporting each ground.’” Id.(alteration in original) (quoting

14 The dissent cites to a pre-Mayle case, Anthony v. Cambra, 236 F.3d

568, 576 (9th Cir. 2000), Dissent at 32, for the general proposition that we

freely allow relation back in the habeas context, but that case is inapposite. 

In that case, there was no dispute that the habeas petitioner had set forth

his claims in sufficient detail in the original petition, and we applied Civil

Rule 15(c) only to revive these claims after the court mistakenly dismissed

the original petition due to a procedural error. Anthony, 236 F.3d at

575–77.

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24 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

Habeas R. 2(c)). Merely attaching a state court order to a

habeas petition, as required by the petition form, does not

qualify as an attempt to meet such requirements.15 Cf. Dye,

546 U.S. at 4.

Moreover, the dissent’s construction would raise the

concerns cited in Mayle that the relation back doctrine will

“swallow AEDPA’s statute of limitations.” Mayle, 545 U.S.

at 662 (quoting Felix, 379 F.3d at 619 (Tallman, J.,

concurring in part and dissenting in part)). As explained

above, attaching the state court opinion is precisely what the

form petition already requires petitioners to do. Because it

summarizes the relevant pretrial, trial, and post-trial conduct,

a state court opinion would allow “[a] miscellany of claims

for relief [to] be raised later rather than sooner and relate

back,” so long as they have some relation to the opinion’s

description of those events. Id. at 661. Regardless whether

this is labeled as incorporation by reference under Civil Rule

10(c), as Ross suggests, or an attempt to set out facts under

Civil Rule 15(c), per the dissent, this rule would effectively

15 The dissent argues that because the facts in the state court order

attached to Ross’s original petition “match the claims raised summarily in

the petition,” we should deem the attachment to constitute an attempt to

set out the facts supportingRoss’s claims for purposes of Civil Rule 15(c). 

Dissent at 34. But there is no such one-to-one matching between the two

documents. At least half the claims in Ross’s original petition do not line

up with the state court opinion. The state court makes no mention of a

claim based on counsel having “[f]ailed to prepare for jury selection.” 

Nor does the state court opinion clearly provide the factual bases for

Ross’s claims that counsel “[f]ailed to review evidence and adequately

prepare,” “[f]ailed to argue the prejudice of evidence lost prior to trial,”

and “[f]ailed to prepare for trial.” Given the inconsistency betweenRoss’s

petition and the state court order and the lack of any clarifying

incorporation by reference, a district court could not glean that Ross was

attempting to set forth the bases of his claims.

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 25

toll the statute of limitations for all such claims for all

petitioners using the form petition. Because we may not

construe Civil Rule 15(c) in an overly “capacious” manner

that would defeat Habeas Rule 2 and AEDPA, Mayle,

545 U.S. at 657, we reject these arguments. For the same

reasons, we reject Ross’s and the dissent’s argument that we

should make an exception to the strictures of Civil Rule 15(c)

in his case due to the fact that the state court opinion was only

six pages long.

16

F

Finally, the dissent argues that we should make an

exception to Civil Rule 15(c) in Ross’s case due to his pro se

status at the time of his original petition. The dissent pays lip

service to the concerns raised in Mayle regarding clarity and

finality but brushes them aside, concluding that they are not

“sufficient to justify withholding the benefit of liberal

construction from a pro se petitioner.” Dissent at 39. But this

is contrary to Mayle’s clear instructions that we must take

such concerns seriously when applying relation back in the

habeas context. 545 U.S. at 662. In fact, Mayle expressly

16 Even if a limited exception for state court orders, as opposed to trial

transcripts and other documents, were consistent with the Habeas Rules,

any such “limiting” rule is not tethered to anything in the Habeas Rules or

the habeas framework itself, and so it is doubtful that it would stay

limiting for long. District judges will ultimately be required to undertake

the substantial burden of making case-by-case determinations in response

to petitioners’ arguments that various attachments provide a sufficient

basis for relation back, contrary to the reasons for mandating the use of

standard forms. The dissent’s suggestion that at least short state court

opinions should be deemed to constitute an attempt to set out the relevant

“conduct, transaction, or occurrence” in the original petition, Dissent at 32

n.1, fails for the same reason.

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26 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

rejected the argument that a more liberal relation back

scheme was necessary to protect the interests of pro se

prisoners. See id. at 664 n.8; id. at 675–76 (Souter, J.,

dissenting).

The dissent attempts to distinguish Mayle on several

grounds, but none of them is persuasive. First, the dissent

concedes that Mayle declined to differentiate between pro se

petitioners and those represented by counsel in applyingCivil

Rule 15(c) to the habeas context, but makes a flimsy attempt

to distinguish Mayle on the ground that the pro se petitioner’s

counsel in Mayle was appointed before the statute of

limitations had expired. Dissent at 40 n.4. This argument is

meritless. While Mayle noted the timing of the counsel’s

appointment, that fact did not influence Mayle’s

interpretation of the relation back doctrine. See 545 U.S. at

664 n.8 (explaining that the filing of a habeas petition does

not fall within the category of cases that “require appointment

of counsel for an indigent litigant at a critical stage to ensure

his meaningful access to justice”).

Second, the dissent argues that Mayle is distinguishable

because “many of Ross’s claims were raised in his original

petition—he simplyfailed to substantiate them with sufficient

facts.” Dissent at 38–39. This ignores Mayle’s central

holding. Mayle did not focus on whether the petitioner’s

original and amended petitions raised the same claims, but

rather held that the new Fifth Amendment claim in the

amended petition did not relate back to the original petition,

because the original petition did not contain “separate

congeries of facts supporting th[at] ground[] for relief.” 545

U.S. at 661. Thus under Mayle, the relation-back question

here is whether Ross’s original petition incorporated the facts

set out in the attached state court order, not whether Ross

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 27

sought to raise new claims in his subsequent amended

petition. And contrary to the dissent, Mayle’s insistence on

avoiding an interpretation of Rule 15(c) that would allow a

petitioner to raise a “miscellany of claims for relief” in

subsequent petitions without regard to AEDPA’s statute of

limitations carries equal force here. Id. at 661–62. As the

dissent concedes, Ross’s amended petition seeks to raise

multiple new claims not presented in the original petition.17

Certainly, Ross’s case is not distinguishable from Mayle on

this basis.

The dissent’s other arguments for ignoring the concerns

set forth in Mayle are similarly meritless. The dissent notes

that Ross “indisputably filed his original petition within the

applicable one-year limitations period.” Dissent at 39. This

is immaterial, however, as the same could be said in every

relation back case where a plaintiff files an inadequate

original petition and seeks to have a subsequent amended

petition relate back. Finally, the dissent contends that

because Civil Rule 15(a)(2) allows a court to deny a

petitioner leave to file an amended petition, it provides an

adequate safeguard against abuse. Dissent at 39. But Mayle

squarely rejected this argument. 545 U.S. at 663 (“[W]e do

17 Ross raised only ineffective assistance of counsel claims in his

original petition. In his amended petition, Ross asserted direct violations

of his Confrontation Clause and Speedy Trial rights, and brought a

sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge. Ross’s amended petition also

alleged that counsel was ineffective for failing to raise mitigating

arguments at sentencing, a claim that is likewise absent from his original

petition. Moreover, the amended petition sought to revive multiple

ineffective assistance claims that were addressed in the state court order

but not raised in the original petition, such as inadequate communication,

failure to object based on the best evidence rule, and failure to object

based on witness unavailability.

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28 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

not regard Rule 15(a) as a firm check against petition

amendments that present new claims dependent upon discrete

facts after AEDPA’s limitation period has run.”).

We therefore reject Ross and the dissent’s arguments

based on Ross’s pro se status at the time of his original

petition. This is not to say that pro se habeas petitioners may

not benefit from our practice of liberal construction. 

Consistent with the pleading scheme, a court may liberally

construe the legal claims and facts set forth in the petitioner’s

habeas form, pursuant to Habeas Rule 2(c), as making out a

plausible claim for relief. But giving a generous reading to

the claims a petitioner has actually made is a far cry from

requiring a court to piece together the claims themselves. 

Whether under the guise of Civil Rule 10(c) or 15(c), even “a

liberal interpretation . . . may not supply essential elements of

the claim that were not initially pled.” Ivey, 673 F.2d at 268;

see also Hall v. Bellmon, 935 F.2d 1106, 1110 (10th Cir.

1991) (“The broad reading of the plaintiff’s complaint does

not relieve the plaintiff of the burden of alleging sufficient

facts on which a recognized legal claim could be based.”).

IV

Applying these legal principles here, we conclude that the

Nevada state court affirmance is not incorporated by

reference in Ross’s original petition. There is no dispute that

Ross did not comply with Habeas Rule 2(c) or the language

in the standard form prescribed by the Nevada district court,

which required him to “summarize briefly” the necessary

facts in the space provided for each ground and to “attach up

to two extra pages stating additional grounds and/or

supporting facts.” Unlike the petitioner in Dye, Ross did not

incorporate the facts supporting his legal allegations by

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 29

making “clear and repeated references” to the document as

supporting his legal claims. 546 U.S. at 4. Indeed, Ross

made no attempt to do so. His federal habeas petition makes

no reference to the state court order or indicates that it sets

forth the facts supporting his claimed grounds for relief.18

Rather, his reference to the state court affirmance in his

affidavit makes it clear he intended to use it for a different

purpose, namely to support his affidavit’s explanation of the

timing of when he learned of the state court’s ruling. This

was no mistake; Ross knew how to incorporate by reference,

because he had filled out a similar form for his state PCR

petition, attached a 22-page handwritten memorandum that

set forth the factual background for each claim and identified

the facts that were relevant to each claim, and explicitly

incorporated those facts with respect to each claim in his state

PCR petition by writing “please see supporting

memorandum. . .” in the space provided for supporting facts

for each claim.

Because Ross did not comply with Habeas Rule 2(c)

either directly or by incorporating (or attempting to

incorporate) the facts in the Nevada Supreme Court

affirmance into his original petition, that petition does not

provide an aggregation of facts that can support the claims in

his amended petition. Accordingly, the district court did not

18 We reject Ross’s argument that, by checking the space on the form

petition indicating that he had raised Ground 1 to the Nevada Supreme

Court, he also explicitly incorporated the Nevada Supreme Court’s order

deciding that ground. This falls far short of the “clear” reference that Dye

requires. 546 U.S. at 4.

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30 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

err in concluding that Ross’s amended petition cannot relate

back to the claims in his original petition because they

contain no facts.

AFFIRMED.

BATES, Senior District Judge, dissenting:

Proceeding pro se, Ronald Ross filed a federal habeas

petition a few months before his time to do so under the

Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

(“AEDPA”) was set to expire. His form petition asserted

ineffective assistance of trial counsel on several grounds,

including failure to secure a speedy trial, to assert prejudice

from evidence lost before trial, to retain defense experts, and

to object to the state’s experts. Ross’s petition contained no

specific factual allegations, but he attached to his petition a

six-page state-court decision that discussed the factual bases

of most of his claims in some detail. The majority holds that

Ross’s amended petition—which he prepared with the

assistance of counsel but filed several months after AEDPA’s

deadline had passed—does not relate back to the date of his

original petition because the original petition set out no facts. 

See Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(B) (providing that an amendment

relates back if it asserts claims that arise out of the “conduct,

transaction, or occurrence” set out in the original pleading).

Under the familiar rule that pro se pleadings are to be

liberally construed, however, see Erickson v. Pardus,

551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (per curiam), we should read Ross’s

original petition as setting out the facts discussed in the

attached state-court decision. Then, we should remand for

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 31

the district court to determine in the first instance whether the

claims in Ross’s amended petition arose out of the conduct,

transaction, or occurrence set out in his original petition.

I

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c)(1)(B) permits an

amendment to a pleading to relate back to the date of the

original pleading where “the amendment asserts a claim or

defense that arose out of the conduct, transaction, or

occurrence set out—or attempted to be set out—in the

original pleading.” The Supreme Court has recognized that

Rule 15(c) applies in habeas proceedings, see Mayle v. Felix,

545 U.S. 644, 655 (2005), and there is no dispute that if the

claims in Ross’s amended habeas petition arose out of the

“congeries of facts” set out in his original petition, id. at 661,

the amendment would be timely. According to the majority,

however, Ross’s original petition set out “no facts at all,”

Majority Op. at 11, and so there was nothing for the claims in

Ross’s amended petition to relate back to.

But this reading of Ross’s original petition is unduly

narrow in light of his pro se status. The Supreme Court has

repeatedly told us that pro se filings are to be liberally

construed. See Erickson, 551 U.S. at 94 (quoting Estelle v.

Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106 (1976)). This rule applies with

equal force in the habeas context, where it requires courts not

only to draw reasonable factual inferences in the petitioner’s

favor, see Porter v. Ollison, 620 F.3d 952, 958 (9th Cir.

2010), but also to construe the filing itself in a manner that

favors the petitioner, see, e.g., Woods v. Carey, 525 F.3d 886,

890 (9th Cir. 2008) (construing a pro se filing styled as a

“second” habeas petition as a motion to amend a pending

petition, thereby avoiding AEDPA’s exacting standards for

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32 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

second and successive petitions); United States v. Seesing,

234 F.3d 456, 463–64 (9th Cir. 2000) (reversing the district

court’s decision to construe a pro se prisoner’s letter as a

habeas petition because doing so “seriously diminished the

possibility of successfully filing a future, properlydrafted and

documented, motion”).

Here, the facts underlying the claims in Ross’s original

petition were set out (for the most part) in a reasoned decision

of the Nevada Supreme Court, which was attached as an

exhibit to Ross’s petition. In light of Ross’s pro se status, his

original petition should have been liberally construed as at

least “attempt[ing] to . . . set out” those facts. Fed. R. Civ. P.

15(c)(1)(B) (emphasis added); see Anthony v. Cambra,

236 F.3d 568, 576 (9th Cir. 2000) (allowing relation back in

the habeas context where “the central policy of Rule

15(c)—ensuring that the non-moving party has sufficient

notice of the facts and claims giving rise to the proposed

amendment—[was] satisfied”). To the extent that his

amended petition asserted claims arising out of those facts,

therefore, it should have been allowed to relate back.

True, the form petition that Ross filled out instructed him

to “[s]ummarize briefly the facts supporting each ground” for

relief, and Ross failed to heed this instruction. But as counsel

for the state admitted at oral argument, had Ross’s petition

simply pointed to the facts discussed in the Nevada Supreme

Court’s order, those facts would have been incorporated into

the petition by reference and hence could have supported

relation back.1See Fed. R. Civ. P. 10(c); Dye v. Hofbauer,

1 When asked what Ross would have had to do to incorporate these

facts into his petition, counsel replied that “he could have said, ‘see page 3

of that decision, here’s the facts that I want to incorporate as my

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 33

546 U.S. 1, 4 (2005). Perhaps we should not excuse a

counseled petitioner for such a mistake, and perhaps even a

pro se petitioner could not prevail if the attachment were a

trial transcript or some other, denser document. But here,

where the factual bases of Ross’s claims were plain on the

face of the attachment to his pro se petition, Ross’s failure

explicitly to incorporate those facts into his form petition was

precisely the kind of “technical” mistake that we have

repeatedly refused to hold against pro se petitioners. 

Corjasso v. Ayers, 278 F.3d 874, 878 (9th Cir. 2002).

The majority protests that this application of the rule of

liberal construction for pro se pleadings lacks a limiting

principle. Respectfully, I disagree. Where, as here, a statecourt decision denying postconviction relief is attached as an

exhibit to a pro se habeas petition and the petition lists claims

that correspond to the claims addressed in that decision,

principles of liberal construction require that the facts

discussed in the decision be construed as “set out” in the

petition for purposes of relation back under Rule 15(c).

This narrow rule makes sense. State-court decisions

denying postconviction review usually distill the factual

supporting facts.’” See U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 16-

16533 Ronald Ross v. Williams, YouTube, 12:05–12:12 (Dec. 5, 2017),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bryJdYNcodY. In other words, the

state contends that for incorporation to be effective, a petitioner must

identify the specific facts that the petitioner believes support his claims. 

But the state-court decision attached to Ross’s petition is only six pages

long, four of which set out the factual basis for (and then reject) each of

his eight claims. If a simple “see pages 2 through 5” would not have been

enough to incorporate the facts stated on those pages, what more would

Ross have had to write? The state’s attempt to frame incorporation by

reference as a demanding task is unpersuasive.

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background of a petitioner’s claims into an easily digestible

summary. See Rule 5 of the Rules Governing Section 2254

Cases in the U.S. District Courts (the “Habeas Rules”)

advisory committee’s note to 2004 amendment (recognizing

that such decisions “may assist [the federal habeas court] in

resolving the issues raised . . . in the petition”). Moreover,

because AEDPA’s exhaustion requirement bars a petitioner

from asserting claims in a federal habeas petition that were

not raised in state proceedings, see 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)–(c),

the state-court decision will in most cases neatly summarize

the facts underlying those claims—and only those

claims—that the district court can consider on habeas review. 

And where the claims addressed in an attached state-court

decision match the claims raised summarily in the petition,

the pro se petitioner can fairly be said to have “attempted” to

set out those facts in his petition. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(B).

The limitations of this approach are firmly grounded in

the framework of habeas litigation. Unlike the state-court

decision denying postconviction review, documents like trial

transcripts or other parts of the state-court record are less

likely to summarize concisely the facts underlying the

petitioner’s claims. And other decisions from earlier in the

petitioner’s state-court proceedings are less likely to

summarize the facts underlying precisely those claims that

the petitioner is entitled to assert on federal habeas review in

light of AEDPA’s exhaustion requirement.

The majority’s concern that a narrow ruling in Ross’s

favor would not “stay limiting for long” is unwarranted. 

Majority Op. at 25 n.16. District courts know that liberal

construction does not require them “to act as counsel or

paralegal to pro se litigants.” Pliler v. Ford, 542 U.S. 225,

231 (2004); see Barnett v. Duffey, 621 Fed. App’x 496,

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 35

496–97 (9th Cir. 2015) (unpublished) (affirming the district

court’s refusal to consider a claim that was “‘buried,’ by [the

petitioner’s] own description, amid hundreds of pages of

evidentiary exhibits appended to his petition”). They are well

versed in the practice of parsing pro se pleadings, and

faithfully applying the rule of liberal construction here would

by no means leave them at sea.

II

Like Ross’s briefing, the majority’s analysis focuses

primarily on a different issue: whether Federal Rule of Civil

Procedure 10(c), which provides that “[a] copy of a written

instrument that is an exhibit to a pleading is a part of the

pleading for all purposes,” should be applied here under

Habeas Rule 12, which states that “[t]he Federal Rules of

Civil Procedure . . . may be applied to a [habeas]

proceeding,” but only “to the extent that they are not

inconsistent with any statutory provisions or these rules.” 

The majority concludes that Civil Rule 10(c) does not apply

because Ross’s original petition did not “expressly

incorporate[]” the attached state-court decision. MajorityOp.

at 15. This is so, the majority explains, because applying

Rule 10(c) in such a case would conflict with Habeas Rule 2,

which states that a petition “must . . . state the facts

supporting each ground [for relief].” See id. at 12–18.

I express no opinion on the majority’s analysis of the

interplay between Habeas Rule 2, Habeas Rule 12, and Civil

Rule 10(c), because I do not think it is necessary to resolve

this case. But the majority also rejects the narrow course

here—liberally construing Ross’s pro se habeas petition as

attempting to set out, for purposes of relation back, the facts

discussed in the attached state-court decision that denied him

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36 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

postconviction relief—as inconsistent with Habeas Rule 2. 

See id. at 20–28. In my view, this is error.

To begin with, it is important to recognize what is not at

stake. The question here is not whether the district court

should have considered the facts discussed in the attached

state-court decision to evaluate the factual sufficiency of

Ross’s original petition under Habeas Rule 2. Indeed, there

is no dispute that Ross’s amended petition clearly states the

factual basis for each of the claims it asserts. The question,

rather, is whether the district court should have considered the

facts discussed in the attached state-court decision as “set

out”—or at least “attempted to be set out”—in his original

petition for purposes of relation back under Civil Rule 15(c).

In concluding that allowing relation back here would

conflict with Habeas Rule 2, the majority conflates these two

inquiries. For example, the majority relies on three cases in

which this Court refused to apply liberal-construction

principles to “supply ‘essential elements of [a] claim that

were not initially pled’” in a pro se plaintiff’s civil complaint. 

Majority Op. at 22(quoting Ivey v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of

Alaska, 673 F.2d 266, 268 (9th Cir. 1982)); see id. at 21

(quoting Byrd v. Maricopa Cty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 629 F.3d

1135, 1139–40 (9th Cir. 2011), and citing Pena v. Gardner,

976 F.2d 469, 471 (9th Cir. 1992)). In Byrd and Pena,

however, the plaintiffs sought to rely on facts outside of their

complaints to survive a motion to dismiss under Civil Rule

12(b)(6). And Ivey simply affirmed the dismissal of a

complaint having no specific factual allegations that

defendants engaged in the misconduct alleged. None of these

cases involved relation back under Civil Rule 15(c).

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 37

This distinction matters because Civil Rule 15(c) requires

less for relation back than Habeas Rule 2 requires to survive

dismissal. Civil Rule 15(c) is satisfied if the original petition

“set[s] out”—or even “attempt[s]” to set out—the factual

basis for the amendment’s claims. Habeas Rule 2, by

contrast, requires that the petition’s claims be pleaded with

“particularity,” a standard that the Supreme Court has called

“demanding.” Mayle, 545 U.S. at 655. This differential

makes sense, because the two doctrines serve different

purposes. Habeas Rule 2’s pleading standard seeks to

discourage “lengthy and often illegible petitions” that require

“hours [to] decipher[],” as well as petitions “contain[ing]

mere conclusions of law, unsupported by any facts.” See

Habeas Rule 2 advisory committee’s note. But relation back

simply ensures that the respondent has fair notice of what the

petitioner might later assert in an amendment to his petition. 

See Anthony, 236 F.3d at 576.

The majority’s real argument, then, is that permitting

relation back here would conflict with the policy

considerations that Habeas Rule 2 was intended to advance. 

See Majority Op. at 16–17, 23–25. But while those policy

concerns might control in the mine run of cases, they carry

less force here. As one might expect of a decision from a

state’s highest court, the Nevada Supreme Court’s order was

neither “lengthy” nor “illegible.” On the contrary, it stated

the facts underlying Ross’s claims clearly, concisely, and in

a manner that highlighted their legal significance. See

Habeas Rule 2 advisory committee’s note (“[I]t is the

relationship of the facts to the claim asserted that is important

. . . .”). And since this will likely be true of most reasoned

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38 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

state-court opinions denying postconviction relief,2relation

back here implicates none of the efficiency concerns that

animate Habeas Rule 2.

Indeed, the only sense in which the narrow approach that

I have proposed could conceivably conflict with the policies

underlying the Habeas Rules is that, in some cases, it would

allow Habeas Rule 2’s pleading requirement to be met by an

amended petition filed after the running of AEDPA’s oneyear statute of limitations. The majority asserts such a result

would run afoul of Mayle, where the Supreme Court rejected

a reading of the phrase “conduct, transaction, or occurrence”

in Civil Rule 15(c) that would have encompassed the

petitioner’s entire trial and conviction in state court. See

545 U.S. at 662 (“If claims asserted after the one-year period

could be revived simply because they relate to the same trial,

conviction, or sentence as a timely filed claim, AEDPA’s

limitation period would have slim significance.”).

But Ross’s case is distinguishable from Mayle in two

important respects. First, unlike the petitioner in Mayle,

whose proposed application of Civil Rule 15(c) would have

allowed his claims to be “raised later rather than sooner and

relate back,” id. at 661, many of Ross’s claims were raised in

his original petition—he simply failed to substantiate them

2 Under the approach I think we should take, federal habeas courts

might have to consider the facts set out in lengthier state-court decisions. 

But surely even these decisions will not be “illegible,” and length alone

is no reason to ignore such a decision when it is included as an attachment

to a pro se habeas petition. Time is a valuable resource in state courts as

well, and there is no reason to believe that a state court will recite more

facts than are necessary to resolve whatever claims the petitioner raised

below.

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with sufficient facts.3 Second, the set of Ross’s claims that,

in my view, should be allowed to relate back is far narrower

than the set of claims at issue in Mayle: a habeas petitioner

should be allowed to amend his petition only to clarify claims

whose factual bases were clearly addressed in an attached

state-court decision denying him postconviction relief. Such

a limited rule would hardly “swallow AEDPA’s statute of

limitation.” Mayle, 545 U.S. at 662 (citation omitted).

Nor are the finality concerns cited by the majority

sufficient to justify withholding the benefit of liberal

construction from a pro se petitioner. Ross by no means

seeks a complete reprieve from AEDPA’s filing deadline,

since he indisputably filed his original petition within the

applicable one-year limitations period. In many cases,

moreover, a district court will have the power to deny leave

to file an amendment if it finds that the petitioner delayed

unjustifiably in preparing that amendment. See Fed. R. Civ.

P. 15(a)(2). Finally, the fact remains that when Ross filed his

original petition, he was proceeding pro se. The majority is

3 The majority disputes this, asserting that Ross’s original petition

“raised only ineffective assistance of counsel claims.” Majority Op. at 27

n.17. But the majority again reads Ross’s petition too narrowly. The

petition alleged that “counsel was ineffective for failing to” do a number

ofthings—including to “[s]ecure a speedy trial.” Liberally construed, this

allegation states a freestanding speedy trial claim. Moreover, even if

Ross’s original petition were properly read as asserting only ineffective

assistance of counsel claims, such claims make up the bulk of Ross’s

amended petition. Finally, although some of the claims in the amended

petition do not seem to appear in the original (even with the state-court

order attached), the match between the two petitions was not fully

addressed in the parties’ briefs—indeed, the state did not address the issue

at all. Thus, we should have done as the state suggested and remanded

this case to the district court to perform the relation-back analysis in the

first instance.

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40 ROSS V. WILLIAMS

undoubtedly correct that AEDPA’s one-year deadline was

meant to “advance the finality of criminal convictions.” 

Majority Op. at 17 (quoting Mayle, 545 U.S. at 662). But this

finality interest should not be advanced on the basis of fairly

trivial mistakes made by prisoners who proceed without the

advice of an attorney.

4

* * *

When applying a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure in a

habeas case, courts must construe the rule in light of the basic

policies that underlie the habeas framework. See Mayle,

545 U.S. at 661–663 (interpreting the term “conduct,

transaction, or occurrence” in Civil Rule 15(c) in light of the

policy concerns underlying Habeas Rule 2); see also Habeas

Rule 12. But when the application of that rule involves a pro

se filing, courts must also heed traditional principles of liberal

construction. See Porter, 620 F.3d at 958. In the narrow

circumstances presented by this case, the efficiency and

finality concerns advanced by Habeas Rule 2 carry

diminished force, while the fairness concerns underpinning

4 According to the majority, “Mayle expressly rejected the argument

that a more liberal relation back scheme was necessary to protect the

interests of pro se prisoners.” See Majority Op. at 25–26. True, the Court

in Mayle rejected the petitioner’s broad reading ofCivil Rule 15(c) despite

the dissent’s observation that “in the overwhelming majority of cases, the

original petition is the work of a pro se petitioner.” 545 U.S. at 675

(Souter, J., dissenting). But the rule proposed by the petitioner in Mayle

was far broader than the one advocated here. Moreover, the Mayle Court

described the dissent’s concerns as “understandable” and noted that “in

[this] case, counsel was appointed, and had some two and a half months

to amend the petition before AEDPA’s limitation period expired.” Id. at

664 n. 8. Here, Ross’s counsel was appointed after his AEDPA deadline

had run. By the Mayle Court’s own estimation, then, Ross’s pro se status

should carry greater weight here.

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ROSS V. WILLIAMS 41

the rule of liberal construction are directly implicated. Thus,

Ross’s original pro se petition should have been liberally

construed as setting out—or at least attempting to set

out—the facts stated in the attached state-court decision for

purposes of Civil Rule 15(c), and the claims in his amended

petition should have been allowed to relate back to the date

of his original petition to the extent that they arose out of

those facts.

I respectfully dissent.

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