Opinion ID: 771619
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The June 13 petition

Text: 21 It is undisputed that the district court dismissed Anthony's April 23, 1997 petition without affording him an opportunity to amend or to resubmit the petition with only exhausted claims. The question is whether the district court acted within its authority when it treated Anthony's June 13 petition as an amendment that related back to and preserved his original filing date of April 23. We hold that it did. 22 In Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509 (1982), the Supreme Court held that mixed federal habeas petitions -that is, those containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims -must be dismissed for failure to exhaust state remedies. The Court directed district courts to provide habeas petitioners with the choice of returning to state court to exhaust [their] claims or of amending or resubmitting the habeas petition to present only exhausted claims to the district court.  Id. at 510. In applying Rose, this court has long held that a federal habeas petitioner has a right to amend a mixed petition to delete unexhausted claims as an alternative to suffering a dismissal. James v. Giles, 221 F.3d 1074, 1077 (9th Cir. 2000); see also Taylor, 134 F.3d at 986. 23 Prior to the advent of AEDPA, dismissal without prejudice to the filing of a new, exhausted petition caused no detriment to the petitioner, because there was no time limitation on the filing of a federal habeas petition. AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations, however, has rendered outright dismissal perilous to some litigants, because petitioners such as Anthony may find themselves time-barred when they attempt to resubmit their exhausted claims to the district court. The district court in the instant case recognized that its dismissal of Anthony's mixed petition without prejudice to the filing of a new petition was improper in light of AEDPA: 24 The new statute of limitation on the filing of federal habeas corpus petitions requires that district courts provide prisoners who file mixed petitions with an opportunity to strike their unexhausted claims and amend or resubmit their petitions so that their amendment or resubmission can relate back to the date of the original filing and not be time-barred. 25 Anthony, 1998 WL 164971, at . Because the court's dismissal did not afford petitioner such an opportunity, construing the June 13 filing as an amendment -as opposed to a new (and time-barred) petition -was, in the court's view, the appropriate remedy. Id. 26 As an initial matter, we agree with the district court that its outright dismissal of Anthony's April 23 petition was improper. This court has made clear that district courts must provide habeas litigants with the opportunity to amend their mixed petitions by striking unexhausted claims as an alternative to suffering dismissal. In Taylor, we explained that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a), which allows litigants to amend their pleadings once as a matter of course  before a responsive pleading has been filed, applies to habeas corpus actions and requires district courts to allow amendment of mixed federal habeas petitions. 134 F.3d at 986; see also James, 221 F.3d at 1077-78 (pro se habeas litigants are entitled to a statement of the grounds for dismissal and an opportunity to amend the complaint to overcome the deficiency unless it clearly appears from the complaint that the deficiency cannot be overcome . . . . [E]ven in the habeas context, we remain guided by the underlying purpose of Rule 15 to facilitate decision on the merits, rather than on pleadings or technicalities.) (citations omitted); Freeman v. Page, 208 F.3d 572, 577 (7th Cir. 2000) (dismissal of mixed federal petition is not proper when that step could jeopardize the timeliness of a collateral attack). Thus it was error for the district court to dismiss Anthony's April 23 petition without providing him the opportunity to amend. 27 Notwithstanding the district court's error, the state contends that Anthony's June 13 filing cannot be construed as an amendment to his April 23 petition, because that petition had been dismissed, and there was no pending petition that could be amended. However, we agree with the district court that it properly exercised its equitable powers to accept Anthony's June 13 petition nunc pro tunc to April 23, the date of the original filing. See Calderon v. United States Dist. Ct. (Kelly), 163 F.3d 530, 540 (9th Cir. 1998) (en banc) (noting that district court could exercise nunc pro tunc power to deem recently filed habeas petitions to have been filed as of the filing date of two earlier petitions that were erroneously dismissed); cf. Guizar v. Estelle, 843 F.2d 371, 371 (9th Cir. 1988) (district court may accept resubmitted petition with only exhausted claims nunc pro tunc to date of original filing). Accordingly, Anthony's June 13 petition, which contained only his exhausted claim, was timely filed. 1