Opinion ID: 543195
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Ends of Justice Analysis

Text: 33 For this court to affirm a dismissal or denial on the ground of successiveness, the district court must either make a specific finding that the ends of justice would not be served by reaching the merits or its views on this point must be clear from the record. Chard v. United States, 578 F.2d 1317, 1318 (9th Cir.1978). In this case the magistrate, whose recommendation was adopted as the order of the court, explicitly found that the ends of justice would not be served by reaching the merits of this petition. In reaching this conclusion, the magistrate relied on the standard enunciated by a plurality of the Supreme Court in Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 477 U.S. 436, 106 S.Ct. 2616, 91 L.Ed.2d 364 (1986). In Kuhlmann, a plurality of four justices concluded that the 'ends of justice' require federal courts to entertain such petitions only where the prisoner supplements his constitutional claim with a colorable showing of factual innocence. 477 U.S. at 454, 106 S.Ct. at 2627. The magistrate found that Howard had not supplemented his claims with any showing of factual innocence. 34 It is clear that under the Kuhlmann standard, the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the ends of justice would not be served by reaching the merits because it properly determined that Howard did not supply facts that would tend to establish his innocence. It has not been decided, however, whether the Ninth Circuit should follow the Kuhlmann plurality opinion. See Molina v. Rison, 886 F.2d 1124, 1131 (9th Cir.1989). In Molina, we did not need to decide whether to adopt the Kuhlmann standard because we found that the ends of justice did not require proceeding to the merits of the successive petition even under this court's earlier formulation of the standard. Id. This earlier standard was articulated in Polizzi v. United States, 550 F.2d 1133 (9th Cir.1976), where we stated: a district court may refuse to entertain a repetitious petition absent a showing of manifest injustice or a change in law. Id. at 1135 (citations omitted). 35 As in Molina, we need not reach the issue whether the Ninth Circuit should follow the ends of justice standard in Kuhlmann. If Howard was not prevented by Arizona prison officials from filing a response, then under either the Kuhlmann or the Polizzi standard, the ends of justice would not be served by proceeding to the merits of Howard's claim. Howard has not suffered a manifest injustice if Arizona prison officials did not frustrate his attempts to respond to the motion. In addition, no claim has been made that a relevant law has changed since Howard's 1985 habeas petition was dismissed. According to the Supreme Court in Sanders, the burden is on the applicant to show that, although the ground of the new application was determined against him on the merits on a prior application, the ends of justice would be served by a redetermination of the ground. 373 U.S. at 17, 83 S.Ct. at 1078. We conclude, therefore, that under either standard, if Arizona prison authorities did not interfere with Howard's attempts to file a response to the motion to dismiss the 1985 habeas petition, then the ends of justice would not be served by reaching the merits of his subsequent habeas petition.