Opinion ID: 771619
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Anthony's Newly Exhausted Claims

Text: 30 Having determined that Anthony's June 13 submission of his previously exhausted claim was timely either as an amendment to his April 23 petition or pursuant to the prison mailbox rule, we must now decide whether Anthony's motion to amend his petition to include his newly exhausted claims -which the district court erroneously dismissed as an abuse of the writ -was timely filed. Anthony attached to his June 13 filing a motion to hold his federal petition in abeyance while he exhausted his five remaining claims in state court. Our precedent unequivocally authorizes district courts to stay fully exhausted federal petitions pending exhaustion of other claims. See Taylor, 134 F.3d at 986-88; see also Fetterly v. Paskett, 997 F.2d 1295, 1301 (9th Cir. 1993). 31 What makes this case unusual is that Anthony's June 13 motion to stay federal proceedings appears to have slipped through the judicial cracks. The district court was unaware of the motion until September 23, when Anthony renewed his request, evidently because the original motion had not been file stamped. See Anthony, 1998 WL 164971, at . Adding further confusion is that neither Anthony nor the state was aware that the California Supreme Court had already denied Anthony's state habeas petition on July 30, prior to the renewal of Anthony's abeyance motion. 32 On October 29, the district court granted Anthony's motion to stay federal proceedings. It did so even though it noted that Anthony's state petition had already been denied on July 30. The court observed that Anthony had timely filed his original federal petition on April 23, seeking to raise all of his claims, and that he had then agreed to proceed with his exhausted claim only and had promptly requested a stay. Having proceeded expeditiously and in good faith, Anthony was entitled to the opportunity to present his claims in federal court. Order Granting Petioner's Motion to Stay Federal Habeas Petition at 4, October 29, 1997. Because all of Anthony's claims were now exhausted, the court ordered Anthony to file his amended petition within 30 days of the date of its order. Id. at 4-5. 33 The state moved for reconsideration of the court's October 29 order, and the court reaffirmed its prior ruling by order of February 18, 1998. The court once again directed Anthony to file a motion to amend his petition, together with the amended petition, within 30 days. As explained above, when Anthony did file his motion to amend and his amended petition, 2 the district court denied the motion under abuse-of-the-writ principles. 34 It is beyond dispute that had the district court promptly ruled on Anthony's abeyance motion, and had Anthony returned to the district court with his newly exhausted claims within AEDPA's time limitation, he would have been entitled to proceed with all of his claims in federal court. Here, however, the state's highest court had already denied Anthony's petition at the time the abeyance motion was granted. Therefore, as of July 30, 1997, AEDPA's statute of limitations was no longer being tolled by state-court proceedings, and Anthony's amended petition -filed in March of 1998 -was untimely, unless it related back to the original petition. Anthony contends that under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c), his amended petition related back to his timely filed petition, thereby avoiding AEDPA's strict period of limitation. The state insists that Rule 15(c) cannot apply to habeas corpus cases in light of AEDPA, because allowing relation back of otherwise time-barred claims would offend Congress's intent to expedite the presentation of claims in federal court. 35 We reject the state's argument. 28 U.S.C. 2242 states that applications for habeas corpus may be amended or supplemented as provided in the rules of procedure applicable to civil actions. Similarly, Rule 11 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts states that [t]he Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, to the extent that they are not inconsistent with these rules, may be applied, when appropriate, to the petitions filed under these rules. The state has cited to no authority that supports the proposition that AEDPA renders Rule 15 inapplicable to federal habeas corpus proceedings, and there is substantial authority to the contrary. See, e.g., Calderon v. Ashmus, 523 U.S. 740, 750 (1998) (Breyer, J., concurring) (under Habeas Rule 11, and unless otherwise expressly governed by statute, habeas corpus amendments are governed by Rule 15); United States v. Thomas, 221 F.3d 430, 436 (3d Cir. 2000) (holding that Rule 15(c) applies to post-AEDPA 2255 petitions); Mederos v. United States, 218 F.3d 1252, 1254 (11th Cir. 2000) (applying Rule 15(c) to post-AEDPA habeas petition and holding that amended pleading related back to original timely pleading);Grossi v. United States, 1999 WL 439237, at - (N.D. Ill. June 28, 1999) (applying Rule 15(c) to post-AEDPA petition to allow amendment of timely 2255 petition to include otherwise untimely claims). Indeed, we see no inconsistency between AEDPA's statute of limitations and Rule 15(c)'s amendment regime where, as here, the state is on notice of the claims to be raised; as a leading treatise explains,[t]he rationale of allowing an amendment to relate back is that once a party is notified of litigation involving a specific factual occurrence, the party has received all the notice and protection that the statute of limitation requires. 3 36 Under Rule 15(c)(2), an amendment of a pleading relates back to the date of the original pleading when the claim or defense asserted in the amended pleading arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set forth or attempted to be set forth in the original 37 pleading.  We need not determine here the full scope of the rule's application to amendments of habeas petitions, because in this case, it is plain that the central policy of Rule 15(c) -ensuring that the non-moving party has sufficient notice of the facts and claims giving rise to the proposed amendment -has been satisfied. Each of the newly-exhausted claims in Anthony's amended petition was included (in unexhausted form) in his original April 23 petition, to which the district court construed his June 13 filing as an amendment. Consistent with the rule, those claims had been set forth or attempted to be set forth in the original pleading. The state clearly had prior notice of the claims and of Anthony's intention to raise them at the earliest possible time. 4 Thus, this case is easily distinguishable from the cases cited by the state in which other circuits have declined to apply Rule 15(c) to attempted amendments; in those cases, the courts specifically relied on the absence of notice to the state regarding the content of the proposed amendments as grounds for denying the motions. For example, in United States v. Craycraft, 167 F.3d 451 (8th Cir. 1999), the petitioner timely filed a petition under section 2255, then, following expiration of AEDPA's statute of limitations, sought to amend his petition by adding an entirely new claim for relief. The court explained that the touchstone of Rule 15(c) is notice; in this case, the court[could] not say that [the petitioner's] original petition would provide notice of such a different sort of theory, so Rule 15(c) could not be invoked. Id. at 457. Similarly, in United States v. Duffus, 174 F.3d 333 (3d Cir. 1999), the petitioner's proposed amendment, filed after AEDPA's deadline, raised a completely new allegation of ineffectiveness of counsel and therefore could not relate back to the earlier petition. Id. at 337 (citing Craycraft). 5 In stark contrast, Anthony presented all of his claims to the district court within AEDPA's limitation period and legitimately requested that his exhausted claim be held in abeyance; he has not employed Rule 15(c) merely as a method of extending AEDPA's deadline. 38 We note that, contrary to the state's admonitions, allowing habeas petitioners to invoke 15(c) in these circumstances will not undermine AEDPA's policy of expediting habeas review. Under Rule 15(a), once a responsive pleading has been served, the habeas petitioner must gain leave of the court before being permitted to amend. Although, under the rule, leave shall be freely given when justice so requires, the district court may consider whether there is any evidence of undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive  with respect to the filing of the amendment when determining whether leave should be granted. Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962). So, had Anthony, without explanation, waited several years, or even several months, before filing his proposed amendment, it might well have been within the district court's discretion to deny leave to amend under Rule 15(a). Here, however, there is no evidence of undue delay; on the contrary, any delay regarding the amendment was largely caused by the district court's request for briefing on Anthony's motion to stay proceedings and by the state's motion to reconsider the court's ruling. The only period of delay even arguably attributable to Anthony is the time between July 30 -when, unbeknownst to Anthony or the state, the California Supreme Court denied his state petition -and September 23, when Anthony renewed his motion to stay federal proceedings. During that time, Anthony had not been notified that his state petition was no longer pending before the state courts, and he could not have known why the district court had neglected to rule on his June 13 motion to stay proceedings. We agree with the district court's conclusion that Anthony proceeded with reasonable diligence. We add only that after September 23, 1997, Anthony's filings complied with the schedule imposed by the district court, so he cannot properly be held responsible for the timing of the proposed amendment. Rule 15(c) is ideally suited to circumstances such as these, and we hold that Anthony's amended petition, which included the five previously unexhausted claims contained in his original timely petition, related back to that petition. Accordingly, we reverse and remand to the district court for further proceedings with respect to those claims. 39 We now turn to the merits of Anthony's unamended petition, which raised a single claim for relief.