Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55010/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55010-0/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

TONY GOODRUM,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

TIMOTHY E. BUSBY,

Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 13-55010

D.C. No. 

3:11-cv-02262-IEG-JMA

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of California

Irma E. Gonzalez, Senior District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted January 5, 2016

Pasadena, California

Filed June 9, 2016

Before: Milan D. Smith, Jr., Paul J. Watford,

and Michelle T. Friedland, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Watford

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2 GOODRUM V. BUSBY

SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus

Reversing the district court’s dismissal of a habeas corpus

petition, the panel held that the petition was not “second or

successive,” and the petitioner was not required to meet the

standard for obtaining relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b).

The panel held that, just as a new petition filed in the

district court while a first petition remains pending is not

second or successive, a new petition filed in the court of

appeals while a first petition remains pending also is not a

second or successive petition subject to the stringent standard

set forth in § 2244(b).

COUNSEL

Tony Faryar Farmani (argued), Farmani, APLC, San Diego,

California, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Kevin Vienna (argued), Supervising Deputy Attorney

General; Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California;

Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorney General; Office

of the Attorney General, San Diego, California, for

Respondent-Appellee.

* 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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GOODRUM V. BUSBY 3

OPINION

WATFORD, Circuit Judge:

Tony Goodrum is a California state prisoner serving a 21-

year sentence for voluntary manslaughter. The district court

denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28

U.S.C. § 2254. The court held that Goodrum’s petition

constituted a “second or successive” petition under 28 U.S.C.

§ 2244(b), and that he failed to meet that statute’s stringent

standard for obtaining relief. Goodrum argues that he should

not have been required to meet § 2244(b)’s stringent standard

because his petition is not, in fact, “second or successive.” 

We agree with Goodrum.

I

Because the facts underlying Goodrum’s conviction are

not directly relevant to this appeal, a brief summary will

suffice. The State charged Goodrum with murder after he

shot and killed an acquaintance of his, Dwayne Stamps,

during a heated argument in the garage of Goodrum’s home. 

At trial, Goodrum testified that he shot Stamps in self-defense

when Stamps charged at him armed with a metal pipe. The

key contested issue at trial was whether Stamps actually had

a metal pipe in his hands at the time Goodrum shot him. 

Police officers found a metal pipe under Stamps’ body at the

crime scene, but investigators recovered only a partial print

from the pipe that could not be matched to anyone present in

the garage. The prosecution’s case rested to a significant

extent on testimony from four individuals who saw all or part

of the encounter between Goodrum and Stamps. Each of

them testified that they did not see Stamps with a metal pipe

in his hands. The jury convicted Goodrum of voluntary

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4 GOODRUM V. BUSBY

manslaughter, most likely on the theory that he acted in selfdefense but that his belief in the need for use of deadly force

was objectively unreasonable.

Following his conviction, Goodrum unsuccessfully

pursued a direct appeal in the California appellate courts

challenging mainly the jury instructions given at trial. 

Goodrum then filed a series of habeas corpus petitions in state

court that asserted, as relevant here, claims of police and

prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of

counsel. Those claims were predicated on allegations that

officers had mishandled the metal pipe found at the crime

scene (thereby destroying potentially recoverable prints); and

on an affidavit from Howard Herring, one of the four

witnesses mentioned above, who asserted that Stamps had in

fact been armed with a metal pipe but that the police and

prosecutor had coerced him into providing false testimony at

trial by threatening him with criminal charges if he refused to

cooperate with them. Goodrum claimed that he received

ineffective assistance of counsel because his trial lawyer

failed to investigate and expose this misconduct.

The state trial court and Court of Appeal denied habeas

relief on these claims. To exhaust the remedies available in

state court, Goodrum filed another habeas petition raising the

same claims in the California Supreme Court.

In April 2007, while his habeas petition remained pending

before the California Supreme Court, Goodrum filed a pro se

habeas petition in federal court raising only the claims he had

already exhausted on direct appeal. Less than two months

later, on June 13, 2007, the California Supreme Court denied

relief, rendering his claims for police and prosecutorial

misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel exhausted. 

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GOODRUM V. BUSBY 5

On June 20, 2007, Goodrum sought to add these newly

exhausted claims to his federal habeas proceeding. But

instead of filing a motion in the district court to amend his

pending federal habeas petition, Goodrum filed in our court

an “Application for Leave to File Second or Successive

Petition.” As is customary, he attached to his application the

new habeas petition he sought leave to file.

Goodrum thought he needed our court’s permission to file

the new petition because state prisoners must obtain

authorization from the court of appeals before filing a

“second or successive” petition in the district court. 

28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A). Goodrum assumed, not

unreasonably for a lay person, that he needed to obtain such

authorization because he had alreadyfiled one federal petition

two months earlier. But, as we will explain shortly,

Goodrum’s new petition was not a “second or successive”

petition as that term is used in § 2244. He did not need our

court’s permission to file it; he could have filed it in the

district court straight away. Instead of telling Goodrum that,

though, we issued an order in September 2007 that stated the

following:

This application for authorization to file a

second or successive 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas

corpus petition in the district court is denied

without prejudice to refiling should petitioner

receive an unfavorable disposition of the first

petition that is currently pending in the district

court.

Goodrum understandably interpreted this order to mean,

not that his request for leave to file the new petition was

unnecessary, but rather that it was premature, in the sense that

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6 GOODRUM V. BUSBY

he needed to finish litigating his pending April 2007 petition

before our court would consider the application. Goodrum

read the order to say that he could return to our court and

renew his request for leave to file the new petition if he failed

to win relief on the claims raised in his first petition. 

Goodrum followed that course of action. He litigated the

claims raised in his April 2007 petition, and the district court

ultimately denied relief. On appeal, our court affirmed. We

denied Goodrum’s petition for rehearing en banc on

September 3, 2010, and the Supreme Court subsequently

denied his petition for certiorari.

On October 29, 2010, as instructed, Goodrum returned to

our court and refiled his “Application for Leave to File

Second or Successive Petition.” In his application, Goodrum

noted that the September 2007 order had said he could refile

his application if he received an unfavorable disposition of

his first petition. “Now that this has happened,” he wrote,

“Petitioner now renews his Application in compliance with

that order.” On August 31, 2011, we granted him leave to file

the new petition.

On September 23, 2011, Goodrum filed his new habeas

petition in the district court. On December 1, 2011, he

amended that petition with the district court’s permission. 

(The claims alleged in the December 2011 petition are not

identical to the claims alleged in the petition Goodrum sought

leave to file back in June 2007. We address the implications

of that fact at the end of this opinion.)

The district court dismissed the new petition with

prejudice. The court began by rejectingGoodrum’s argument

that his petition should not be deemed “second or successive”

at all. That classification matters because a petitioner raising

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GOODRUM V. BUSBY 7

new claims in a second or successive petition must meet a

more demanding standard to obtain relief than the standard

applicable to claims raised in a first petition. See 28 U.S.C.

§ 2244(b)(2). Goodrum argued that our court had erred by

denying his earlier application in September 2007. Rather

than denying the application, Goodrum asserted, we should

have construed it as a request to amend his then-pending

April 2007 petition and transferred the new petition, which he

had attached to his application, to the district court. His

claims would then have been reviewed, along with his other

pending claims, under the less demanding standard 

applicable to first petitions. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)–(e). As

Goodrum pointed out, we held less than a year after issuing

the September 2007 order that when a pro se petitioner files

a new petition in the district court while an earlier-filed

petition is still pending, the district court must construe the

new petition as a motion to amend the pending petition rather

than as an unauthorized second or successive petition. Woods

v. Carey, 525 F.3d 886, 887–90 (9th Cir. 2008).

The district court held that Woods v. Carey applies only

when a pro se petitioner files a new petition in the district

court—not, as in this case, when the petitioner files his new

petition in the court of appeals. The district court concluded

that Goodrum therefore had to meet the more demanding

standard applicable to second or successive petitions, and

that he could not do so. The court nonetheless granted

Goodrum a certificate of appealability on his claims for

police and prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective

assistance of counsel.

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8 GOODRUM V. BUSBY

II

Section 2244(b) states that “[a] claim presented in a

second or successive habeas corpus application under section

2254 that was not presented in a prior application shall be

dismissed,” subject to two narrow exceptions (one requiring

reliance on a new rule of constitutional law made retroactive

to cases on collateral review, the other requiring proof of

newly discovered facts). 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2).1 Congress

added this provision as part of the Antiterrorism and Effective

Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Pub. L. No. 104–132,

§ 106(b), 110 Stat. 1214, 1220–21. Its purpose was to codify,

in modified form, the judge-made “abuse of the writ” doctrine

that federal courts had devised to combat serial filings by

 

1

 Section 2244(b)(2) provides:

A claim presented in a second or successive habeas

corpus application under section 2254 that was not

presented in a prior application shall be dismissed

unless—

(A) the applicant shows that the claim relies on a new

rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on

collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was

previously unavailable; or

(B)(i) the factual predicate for the claim could not have

been discovered previously through the exercise of due

diligence; and

(ii) the facts underlying the claim, if proven and viewed

in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient

to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but

for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would

have found the applicant guilty of the underlying

offense.

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GOODRUM V. BUSBY 9

habeas petitioners. See Felker v. Turpin, 518 U.S. 651, 664

(1996). The doctrine developed around the premise that

habeas petitioners should generally be “entitled to one, but

only one, full and fair opportunity to wage a collateral

attack.” Beyer v. Litscher, 306 F.3d 504, 508 (7th Cir. 2002)

(quoting O’Connor v. United States, 133 F.3d 548, 550 (7th

Cir. 1998)). Petitioners seeking habeas relief were thus

required to conduct a diligent investigation before filing so

that all reasonably available claims could be included in their

first petition. McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 490–91, 498

(1991); see Johnson v. United States, 196 F.3d 802, 805 (7th

Cir. 1999). Claims raised in a second or successive petition

were subject to dismissal as an abuse of the writ. Slack v.

McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 486 (2000).

The pre-AEDPA abuse-of-the-writ doctrine required

courts to answer two distinct questions: Is the petition at

issue second or successive; and if so, should it be dismissed

as an abuse of the writ? To answer the former question,

courts developed a set of rules to determine when a

numerically second (or third, or fourth, etc.) petition should

be deemed second or successive. To answer the latter

question, courts developed a standard, which evolved over

time, to determine when a petition properly classified as

second or successive should be dismissed as an abuse of the

writ. At the time of AEDPA’s enactment, that standard

required courts to dismiss claims asserted in a second or

successive petition unless the petitioner could show either

“cause and prejudice” (basically a legitimate excuse for not

raising the claims in an earlier petition) or a fundamental

miscarriage of justice (that is, a showing of probable

innocence). McCleskey, 499 U.S. at 493–94.

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10 GOODRUM V. BUSBY

When Congress enacted AEDPA, it changed the standard

used to determine when a petition properly classified as

second or successive should be dismissed as an abuse of the

writ. See 2 Randy Hertz & James S. Liebman, Federal

Habeas Corpus Practice and Procedure § 28.3[e], at 1725 (7th

ed. 2016) (Hertz & Liebman). Under AEDPA’s new

standard, if a second or successive petition presents claims

that were already raised in an earlier petition and denied on

the merits, those claims must be dismissed, period. 28 U.S.C.

§ 2244(b)(1). If a second or successive petition presents new

claims that were not previously raised, those claims must be

dismissed as well, unless the petitioner meets the stringent

standard mentioned above requiring reliance on a new rule of

constitutional law or proof of newly discovered facts. 

§ 2244(b)(2).

Congress did not, however, alter the set of rules federal

habeas courts had developed to determine whether a petition

is second or successive. Section 2244(b) incorporates the

phrase “second or successive,” and by its terms applies only

to claims raised in a “second or successive” petition, but

Congress did not attempt to define what “second or

successive” means. So courts have naturally assumed that the

term carries the same meaning it did under the pre-AEDPA

abuse-of-the-writ doctrine. Hill v. State of Alaska, 297 F.3d

895, 897–98 (9th Cir. 2002); Crouch v. Norris, 251 F.3d 720,

723–24 (8th Cir. 2001); Muniz v. United States, 236 F.3d 122,

127 (2d Cir. 2001) (per curiam). Whether a petition is second

or successive remains a threshold question under § 2244(b),

just as it was under the pre-AEDPA regime. Magwood v.

Patterson, 561 U.S. 320, 336–37 (2010); Muniz, 236 F.3d at

125. In other words, § 2244(b)’s demanding standard applies

only if a petition is properly classified as second or

successive.

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GOODRUM V. BUSBY 11

“Second or successive” is a term of art in habeas corpus

law. Slack, 529 U.S. at 486. The Supreme Court “has

declined to interpret ‘second or successive’ as referring to all

§ 2254 applications filed second or successively in time, even

when the later filings address a state-court judgment already

challenged in a prior § 2254 application.” Panetti v.

Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 944 (2007). Instead, courts have

held that in certain circumstances petitions that follow an

earlier-filed petition should not be deemed second or

successive because, as a categorical matter, they do not

constitute an abuse of the writ. For example, if a petitioner

files a first petition that the court dismisses on technical

procedural grounds without reaching the merits, a subsequent

petition will not be deemed second or successive even if it

attacks the same judgment. See, e.g., Muniz, 236 F.3d at 129

(first petition erroneously dismissed as untimely); Phillips v.

Seiter, 173 F.3d 609, 610 (7th Cir. 1999) (first petition

dismissed because it was filed in the wrong court); Hamilton

v. Vasquez, 882 F.2d 1469, 1473 (9th Cir. 1989) (first petition

dismissed without prejudice because it contained unexhausted

claims). As a general principle, the rule that emerged is that

a petition will not be deemed second or successive unless, at

a minimum, an earlier-filed petition has been finally

adjudicated. Woods, 525 F.3d at 889; 2 Hertz & Liebman

§ 28.3[b], at 1674–75. Thus, when a petitioner files a new

petition while his first petition remains pending, courts have

uniformly held that the new petition cannot be deemed

second or successive. See, e.g., United States v. Sellner,

773 F.3d 927, 931–32 (8th Cir. 2014); Ching v. United States,

298 F.3d 174, 177 (2d Cir. 2002).

We adopted the rule just mentioned as the law of our

circuit in Woods v. Carey, 525 F.3d 886 (9th Cir. 2008). 

There, a pro se petitioner filed his first habeas petition in the

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12 GOODRUM V. BUSBY

district court. Before that petition had been finally

adjudicated, he filed a second petition in the same court. The

district court dismissed the second petition on the ground that

it was “second or successive” under § 2244(b)(3) and that the

petitioner needed, but had not obtained, our court’s

authorization to file it. We held that the district court erred

by regarding the new petition as second or successive

because, at the time the new petition was filed, the first

petition remained pending and had not been finally

adjudicated. Id. at 888–90. We further held that, because the

petitioner was proceeding pro se, the district court was

required to construe the new petition as a motion to amend

the first petition. Id. at 890. We vacated the district court’s

order dismissing the new petition and remanded for the court

to exercise its discretion in deciding whether to permit

amendment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15. (The

petitioner had already amended his first petition once, so he

was not entitled to amend it again as a matter of right. Id. at

890 n.3.)

The reason for the rule reflected in Woods is simple: A

petitioner who seeks to assert new claims before his first

petition has been finally adjudicated is not, by any stretch,

abusing the writ. He is instead attempting, as the abuse-ofthe-writ doctrine requires, to litigate all available claims in a

single proceeding. See Hill, 297 F.3d at 897–99. If the

district court improperly dismisses the second-in-time

petition instead of construing it as a motion to amend, the

case must be remanded so that the petition can be adjudicated

under the standard applicable to first petitions. See Muniz,

236 F.3d at 129.

In our view, the dispositive question raised by this appeal

is whether our holding in Woods should apply not just to

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GOODRUM V. BUSBY 13

district courts, but to our court as well. For the only

difference between this case and Woodsis that Goodrum filed

his second-in-time petition in this court—he attached it to his

June 2007 application—whereas the petitioner in Woodsfiled

his second-in-time petition in the district court. We can think

of no sound reason why the same obligation we imposed on

district courts in Woods should not apply to our court (with

one caveat discussed below). If a pro se petitioner files an

application under § 2244(b)(3) requesting leave to file a new

petition while his first petition remains pending, our court,

too, should be obligated to construe the application as a

motion to amend the pending petition. That rule is necessary

because pro se petitioners are prone to make the same

mistake made by the district court in Woods: They may

erroneously assume that a new petition filed while their first

petition remains pending constitutes a “second or successive”

petition under § 2244(b)(3). And in cases involving doubt

about whether a petition will be deemed second or successive,

we want petitioners to seek authorization in our court first,

rather than filing directly in the district court. See Benton v.

Washington, 106 F.3d 162, 165 (7th Cir. 1996). When pro se

petitioners follow that prudent course, they should not receive

less protection than petitioners who barrel ahead in the

district court.

There is one caveat, as mentioned above. When a new

petition is filed in the district court, that court is presumed to

know whether the earlier-filed petition remains pending. 

That is not always true of our court. When we receive an

application for permission to file a new petition, we will not

necessarily know the status of an earlier-filed petition unless

the petitioner tells us. We do not have an obligation to

research the status of earlier-filed petitions to determine

whether a pro se petitioner is requesting leave to file a

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14 GOODRUM V. BUSBY

petition that is not in fact second or successive. See Pliler v.

Ford, 542 U.S. 225, 231 (2004). But when the petitioner

informs us that an earlier-filed petition remains pending (as

will typically be the case, since our court’s form application

specifically requests this information), we are no differently

situated from district courts with respect to the obligation

imposed by Woods. There is thus no reason in such cases

why the rule in Woods should not apply to our court as well.

Upon construing an application under § 2244(b)(3) as a

motion to amend, our court’s obligation obviously differs

from the district court’s in terms of what to do next. When a

district court construes a new petition as a motion to amend,

that court’s obligation is to rule on the motion, in accordance

with the standards for permitting amendment established by

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15. See 28 U.S.C. § 2242;

Woods, 525 F.3d at 890. Our court lacks authority to rule on

such a motion in the first instance. But at least two options

are available to satisfy our obligation under Woods. We can

issue an order advising the pro se petitioner that his

application is being denied as unnecessary on the ground that

the new petition he seeks leave to file is not second or

successive, and that he is therefore free to file it in the district

court. See, e.g., Benton, 106 F.3d at 165 (using similar

language). The petitioner presumably will do so, which will

then trigger the district court’s obligation under Woods. 

Alternatively, if the petitioner attaches the new petition to his

application, as our Circuit Rule 22-3(a)(1) requires, we can

transfer the petition to the district court under 28 U.S.C.

§ 2241(b) and Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 22(a). 

See Martinez-Villareal v. Stewart, 118 F.3d 628, 634–35 (9th

Cir. 1997) (per curiam), aff’d, 523 U.S. 637 (1998). That,

too, will trigger the district court’s obligation to construe the

new petition as a motion to amend under Woods.

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GOODRUM V. BUSBY 15

In light of the above, we conclude that our court erred by

issuing the September 2007 order in the form that we did. 

Most critically, we failed to inform Goodrum that the petition

he sought leave to file was not second or successive, and that

he was therefore free to file it in the district court. We

instead told him that his application was being denied

“without prejudice to refiling” it at a later time, in the event

that Goodrum received “an unfavorable disposition of the

first petition that is currently pending in the district court.” 

Our order was affirmatively misleading (albeit

unintentionally so) because it suggested that Goodrum’s

application had been filed too early—that it would not be ripe

for our court’s consideration until after he had tried, but

failed, to win relief on the claims already pending before the

district court. That suggestion was inaccurate and, absent our

corrective here, would undoubtedly have prejudiced

Goodrum: By following our suggested course of action, he

would have forfeited any opportunity to have his new claims

adjudicated under the standard applicable to first petitions,

and would instead have been forced to satisfy the more

demanding standard applicable to second or successive

petitions under § 2244(b)(2). Goodrum should not be the one

to pay the price for our court’s unforced error.

The State contends that our holding is inconsistent with

the Supreme Court’s decision in Pliler, which held that

federal courts are not obligated to make case-specific

assessments of the options open to a pro se litigant and then

to advise the litigant about the wisdom of choosing one

option over another. Pliler, 542 U.S. at 231–34. But that is

not the sort of obligation we are imposing here, any more

than it is the obligation we imposed on district courts in

Woods. We are simply applying a well-settled maxim—that

pleadings filed by pro se litigants are to be liberally

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16 GOODRUM V. BUSBY

construed—to the pleadings filed in our own court. Far from

requiring our court to make any case-specific advisements to

pro se petitioners about the wisdom of pursuing one option

over another, we hold only that our court has an obligation

when ruling on a pro se petitioner’s application under

§ 2244(b)(3) not to affirmativelymislead him as to the reason

the application was denied. That is unfortunately what we

did here, and remedying the error does not, as the State

contends, require us “to act as counsel or paralegal” to

Goodrum. Id. at 231.

The question that remains is what we should do to remedy

the error. We think the most sensible remedy is to place

Goodrum in the position he would have occupied had our

court not erred in the first place. Had we properly construed

his June 2007 application under § 2244(b)(3) as a motion to

amend, we would have told him that he did not need our

court’s permission to file his new petition in the district court,

and he presumably would have done that forthwith. Or,

alternatively, we would have transferred his new petition to

the district court. In either event, the district court would

have been required to decide whether to allow amendment of

Goodrum’s pending first petition in accordance with the

standards set by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15. Here,

however, unlike in Woods, the district court would not have

had the discretion to deny leave to amend. Goodrum was

entitled to amend his petition as of right in June 2007 because

at that point the State had not yet filed a response to his

original petition. See Mayle v. Felix, 545 U.S. 644, 663

(2005). For that reason, we remand this case to the district

court with instructions to adjudicate the petition Goodrum

filed with this court in June 2007 as a first petition, not as a

second or successive petition. See Muniz, 236 F.3d at 129.

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GOODRUM V. BUSBY 17

We recognize that there are some differences between the

claims alleged in Goodrum’s June 2007 petition and the

claims alleged in the amended petition he eventually filed in

the district court in December 2011. We leave it to the

district court to decide on remand whether the claims alleged

in the December 2011 petition reflect permissible

amendments to the claims alleged in the June 2007 petition. 

Goodrum is entitled to litigate the set of claims alleged in the

June 2007 petition, including permissible amendments to

those claims, see Mayle, 545 U.S. at 664; Hebner v. McGrath,

543 F.3d 1133, 1137–38 (9th Cir. 2008), under the standard

applicable to first petitions. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)–(e). 

Whether Goodrum is entitled to relief under that standard is

a matter the district court must resolve in the first instance,

after conducting an evidentiary hearing if necessary.

2

REVERSED and REMANDED.

2 To the extent Goodrum’s December 2011 petition raises claims that do

not qualify as permissible amendments to the June 2007 petition, those

claims are subject to the standard governing second or successive petitions

under § 2244(b)(2).

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