Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 548

529US2

Unit: $U50

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

OCTOBER TERM, 1999

473

Syllabus

SLACK v. McDANIEL, WARDEN, et al.

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the ninth circuit

No. 98–6322. Argued October 4, 1999—Reargued March 29, 2000—
Decided April 26, 2000

After petitioner Slack was convicted of second-degree murder in Nevada
and his direct appeal was unsuccessful, he ﬁled, in 1991, a federal habeas
corpus petition under 28 U. S. C. § 2254. Because he wished to litigate
claims he had not yet presented to the Nevada courts, but could not do
so under the rule requiring complete exhaustion of state remedies, see
Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509, Slack ﬁled a motion to hold his federal
petition in abeyance while he returned to state court. The Federal Dis-
trict Court ordered the habeas petition dismissed without prejudice,
granting Slack leave to ﬁle an application to renew upon exhausting
state remedies. After unsuccessful state postconviction proceedings,
Slack ﬁled anew in the federal court in 1995, presenting 14 claims for
relief. The State moved to dismiss, arguing that (1) Slack’s was a
mixed petition raising some claims which had been presented to the
state courts and some which had not, and (2) under the established
Ninth Circuit rule, claims not raised in Slack’s 1991 federal petition had
to be dismissed as an abuse of the writ. The District Court granted the
State’s motion, holding, ﬁrst, that Slack’s 1995 petition was “[a] second or
successive petition,” even though his 1991 petition had been dismissed
without prejudice for a failure to exhaust state remedies. The court
then invoked the abuse of the writ doctrine to dismiss with prejudice
the claims Slack had not raised in the 1991 petition. The dismissal
order was ﬁled in 1998, after which Slack ﬁled in the District Court a
pleading captioned “Notice of Appeal.” Consistent with Circuit prac-
tice, the court treated the notice as an application for a certiﬁcate of
probable cause (CPC) under the version of § 2253 that existed before
enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
(AEDPA).
It denied a CPC, concluding the appeal would raise no sub-
stantial issue. The Ninth Circuit likewise denied a CPC, so that Slack
was not permitted to appeal the order dismissing his petition.

Held:

1. Where a habeas petitioner seeks to initiate an appeal of the dis-
missal of his petition after April 24, 1996 (AEDPA’s effective date), the
right to appeal is governed by the requirements now found at § 2253(c)—
which provides, inter alia, that such an appeal may not be taken unless