Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 562

529US2

Unit: $U50

[09-26-01 10:29:49] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 473 (2000)

487

Opinion of the Court

claims in federal court that the possibility arose that a subse-
quent petition would be considered second or successive and
subject to dismissal as an abuse of the writ.
Id., at 520–521
(plurality opinion) (“[A] prisoner who decides to proceed only
with his exhausted claims and deliberately sets aside his
unexhausted claims risks dismissal of subsequent federal
petitions”).

This understanding of the second or successive rule was
conﬁrmed two Terms ago when we wrote as follows: “[N]one
of our cases . . . have ever suggested that a prisoner whose
habeas petition was dismissed for failure to exhaust state
remedies, and who then did exhaust those remedies and
returned to federal court, was by such action ﬁling a succes-
sive petition. A court where such a petition was ﬁled could
adjudicate these claims under the same standard as would
govern those made in any other ﬁrst petition.” Stewart v.
Martinez-Villareal, supra, at 644. We adhere to this analy-
sis. A petition ﬁled after a mixed petition has been dis-
missed under Rose v. Lundy before the district court adjudi-
cated any claims is to be treated as “any other ﬁrst petition”
and is not a second or successive petition.

The State contends that the prisoner, upon his return
to federal court, should be restricted to the claims made in
his initial petition. Neither Rose v. Lundy nor Martinez-
Villareal requires this result, which would limit a prisoner
to claims made in a pleading that is often uncounseled, hand-
written, and pending in federal court only until the State
identiﬁes one unexhausted claim. The proposed rule would
bar the prisoner from raising nonfrivolous claims developed
in the subsequent state exhaustion proceedings contem-
plated by the Rose dismissal, even though a federal court
had yet to review a single constitutional claim. This result
would be contrary to our admonition that the complete ex-
haustion rule is not to “trap the unwary pro se prisoner.”
Rose supra, at 520 (internal quotation marks omitted).
It
is instead more appropriate to treat the initial mixed petition