Opinion ID: 200408
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Applying the Holding.

Text: 23 We next apply this holding to the petitioner's motion. That motion presents a direct challenge to the constitutionality of his state court conviction. It asks the district court for an opportunity to offer facts that (in the petitioner's view) will prove that his conviction was constitutionally infirm. Such a claim is a paradigmatic habeas claim. It is, therefore, subject to AEDPA's restrictions on the filing of second or successive habeas petitions, rather than to the conventional jurisprudence of Rule 60(b). 24 In an effort to alter this conclusion, the petitioner argues that the evidence upon which he now relies was improperly withheld during earlier proceedings (including the original habeas proceeding), thus constituting an ongoing fraud that challenges the integrity of the habeas judgment itself. This argument is clever, but flawed. For one thing, it seeks to accomplish an end run around the strict limitations that the AEDPA imposes upon the filing of second or successive habeas petitions. For another thing, it runs afoul of the law of the case doctrine. After all, the petitioner presented essentially the same material to this court in his unsuccessful effort to secure permission to file a second habeas petition. We ruled then that the petitioner was aware of much of the evidence in question at the time of his first habeas petition yet fail[ed] to develop any argument that the remaining information was both unobtainable and probative. The law of the case doctrine ordinarily calls for us to honor our previous assessment, see Ellis v. United States, 313 F.3d 636, 646-47 (1st Cir.2002), and there is no valid reason to do otherwise here. 25 To cinch matters, the petitioner concedes that, on the record then before it, the district court committed no error in its handling of the original habeas proceeding such as would undermine the procurement of the judgment entered therein. The most that can be said for his present position is that the district court, if it had the benefit of a more elaborate presentation of the facts concerning the Faustian bargain between Nagle and the prosecutor, would have ruled differently in the habeas case and set aside the underlying conviction. So viewed, the motion before us is the practical equivalent of a second or successive habeas petition. 26 We add a coda. We acknowledge that, despite the petitioner's numerous attempts to expose the full extent of the relationship between Nagle and the state prosecutor, no court has exhaustively addressed that claim. Some of these lost opportunities may fairly be attributed to procedural errors on the petitioner's part. Others, however, are linked to the stringent filters that channel consideration of habeas corpus claims under the AEDPA. This regimen, though harsh, dovetails with Congress's intent. See H.R.Rep. No. 104-23 (1995), 1995 WL 56412, at  (explaining that the AEDPA is designed to curb the abuse of the habeas corpus process, and particularly to address the problem of delay and repetitive litigation). Section 2244(b)(3) establishes a rigorous gatekeeping arrangement through which second or successive habeas applications must pass, and it was the petitioner's inability to open that gate that kept the district court from probing more deeply into the circumstances surrounding Nagle's testimony. This may seem overly restrictive — but any complaint about the inadequacy of the mechanisms available for judicial review in habeas cases ordinarily must be addressed to the Congress, not to the courts. See Felker v. Turpin, 518 U.S. 651, 664, 116 S.Ct. 2333, 135 L.Ed.2d 827 (1996) (recognizing that judgments about the proper scope of the [habeas] writ are normally for Congress to make); see also United States v. Victoria-Peguero, 920 F.2d 77, 81 (1st Cir.1990) (stating this court's resolve to refrain from substitut[ing] judicial judgment for legislative judgment or ... plac[ing] limitations on [statutory language] which were not envisioned by Congress).