Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/529/473/case.html
Timestamp: 2017-10-17 17:10:51
Document Index: 445088815

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2254', '§ 2253', '§ 2253', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2253', '§ 2253', '§ 2253', '§ 2253']

Slack v. McDaniel (full text) :: 529 U.S. 473 (2000) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 529 › Slack v. McDaniel › Case
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 District 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 practice, 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 substantial issue. The Ninth Circuit likewise denied a CPC, so that Slack was not permitted to appeal the order dismissing his petition.
1. Where a habeas petitioner seeks to initiate an appeal of the dismissal 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
(a) The District Court erred in concluding to the contrary. Because the question whether Slack's pre-AEDPA, 1995 petition was second or successive implicates his right to relief in the trial court, preAEDPA law governs. See Lindh v. Murphy, supra. Whether the dismissal was appropriate is controlled by Rule 9(b) of the Rules Governing § 2254, which incorporates the Court's prior decisions on the
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the State of California et al. by Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of California, David P. Druliner, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Carol Wendelin Pollack, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Donald E. De Nicola and A. Scott Hayward, Deputy Attorneys General, joined by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Bill Pryor of Alabama, Bruce M. Botelho of Alaska, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, M. Jane Brady of Delaware, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Thomas J. Miller of Iowa, Alan G. Lance of Idaho, Carla J. Stovall of Kansas, Richard P. Ieyoub of Louisiana, Mike Moore of Mississippi, Jeremiah W (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Joseph P. Mazurek of Montana, Don Stenberg of Nebraska, Patricia A. Madrid of New Mexico, Michael F. Easley of North Carolina, W A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, D. Michael Fisher of Pennsylvania, Charles M. Condon of South Carolina, Mark Barnett of South Dakota, Paul G. Summers of Tennessee, Mark L. Earley of Virginia, and Christine O. Gregoire of Washington; and for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation by Kent S. Scheidegger.
Petitioner Antonio Slack was convicted of second-degree murder in Nevada state court in 1990. His direct appeal was unsuccessful. On November 27, 1991, Slack filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal court under 28 U. S. C. § 2254. Early in the federal proceeding, Slack decided to litigate claims he had not yet presented to the Nevada courts. He could not raise the claims in federal court because, under the exhaustion of remedies rule explained in Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509 (1982), a federal court was required to dismiss a petition presenting claims not yet liti-
While an appeal is a continuation of the litigation started in the trial court, it is a distinct step. Hohn v. United
Our conclusion follows from AEDPA's present provisions, which incorporate earlier habeas corpus principles. Under AEDPA, a COA may not issue unless "the applicant has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right." 28 U. S. C. § 2253(c) (1994 ed., Supp. III). Except for substituting the word "constitutional" for the word "federal," § 2253 is a codification of the CPC standard announced in Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U. S., at 894. Congress had before it the meaning Barefoot had given to the words it selected; and we give the language found in § 2253(c) the meaning ascribed it in Barefoot, with due note for the substitution of the word "constitutional." See Williams v. Taylor, ante, at 434. To obtain a COA under § 2253(c), a habeas prisoner
Determining whether a COA should issue where the petition was dismissed on procedural grounds has two compo-
The phrase "second or successive petition" is a term of art given substance in our prior habeas corpus cases. The Court's decision in Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S., at 510, instructs us in reaching our understanding of the term. Rose v. Lundy held that a federal district court must dismiss habeas corpus petitions containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims. The opinion, however, contemplated that the prisoner could return to federal court after the requisite exhaustion. Id., at 520 ("Those prisoners who ... submit mixed petitions nevertheless are entitled to resubmit a petition with only exhausted claims or to exhaust the remainder of their claims"). It was only if a prisoner declined to return to state court and decided to proceed with his exhausted
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 MartinezVillareal requires this result, which would limit a prisoner to claims made in a pleading that is often uncounseled, handwritten, 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 contemplated 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 exhaustion 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
Slack has demonstrated that reasonable jurists could conclude that the District Court's abuse of the writ holding was wrong, for we have determined that a habeas petition filed after an initial petition was dismissed under Rose v. Lundy without an adjudication on the merits is not a "second or successive" petition. Whether Slack is otherwise entitled to the issuance of a COA is a question to be resolved first upon
I join the opinion of the Court, except for its discussion in Parts III and IV of whether Slack's postexhaustion petition was second or successive. I believe that the Court produces here, as it produced in a different respect in Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal, 523 U. S. 637 (1998), see id., at 646
The language the Court quotes from Rose and MartinezVillareal also does not justify the Court's mixed-petitionsdon'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 quotation 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-
The State understandably fears the consequences of the Court's approach, which would allow federal petitions to be repeatedly filed and dismissed for lack of exhaustion, requiring the State repeatedly to appear and expend its resources, with no help in sight from supposed limitations on "second or successive" petitions. The Court reassuringly observes that this problem can be countered in other ways, without "upsetting the established meaning of a second or successive petition." Ante, at 489. But as discussed above, it is not "established" that a first petition ceases to be a first petition when it is dismissed to permit exhaustion. And though the problem of repetitive filings after dismissals for lack of exhaustion can of course be countered in other ways, so can the problem of repetitive filings for all other reasons. It happens to be the whole purpose of the "second or successive" provision to solve precisely that problem-directly checking the "vexatious litigant," ante, at 488, rather than hoping that the courts will use a patchwork of other provisions to achieve the same end. I do not disagree with the Court that district courts may be able to limit repeated filings through appropriate orders pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 41(a) and (b). This burden on district courts would not be