Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 566.0

529US2

Unit: $U50

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

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

491

Opinion of Scalia, J.

(Scalia, J., dissenting), a distortion of the natural meaning
of the term “second or successive.”

The opinion relies on Martinez-Villareal, together with
Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509 (1982), to conclude that a pris-
oner whose federal petition is dismissed to allow exhaustion
may return to federal court without having his later petition
treated as second or successive, regardless of what claims it
contains. Neither the holdings nor even the language of
those opinions suggest that proposition. As for holdings:
Martinez-Villareal did not even involve the issue of exhaus-
tion, and so has no bearing upon the present case. The nar-
row holding of Rose v. Lundy was that a habeas petition
containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims must be
dismissed, but it can be fairly said to have embraced the
proposition that the petitioner could return with the same
claims after they all had been exhausted. This latter propo-
sition could be thought to rest upon the theory that a petition
dismissed for lack of exhaustion is a petition that never ex-
isted, so that any other later petition would not be second
or successive. Or it could be thought to rest upon the the-
ory that the later reﬁling of the original claims, all of them
now exhausted, is just a renewal of the ﬁrst petition, implic-
itly authorized by the dismissal to permit exhaustion. The
former theory is counterfactual; the latter is quite plausible.
The language the Court quotes from Rose and Martinez-
Villareal also does not justify the Court’s mixed-petitions-
don’t-count theory. The quotation from Rose says only that
“ ‘prisoners who . . . submit mixed petitions . . . are entitled
to . . . exhaust the remainder of their claims.’ ” Ante, at
486 (quoting Rose, supra, at 520 (emphasis added)). This
does not suggest that they are entitled to add new claims, or
to return, once again, without accomplishing the exhaustion
that the court dismissed the petition to allow. And the quo-
tation from Martinez-Villareal indicates only that when
a prisoner whose habeas petition was dismissed for failure
to exhaust state remedies “ ‘then did exhaust those reme-