MAGWOOD v. PATTERSON, WARDEN, ET AL.
No. 09-158
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 24, 2010-Decided June 24, 2010
561 U.S. 320
THOMAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part IV-B. SCALIA, J., joined in full, and STEVENS, BREYER, and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined, except as to Part IV-B. BREYER, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which STEVENS and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined, post, p. 343. KENNEDY, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and GINSBURG and ALITO, JJ., joined, post, p. 343.
Jeffrey L. Fisher, by appointment of the Court, 558 U. S. 1108, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Pamela S. Karlan, Amy Howe, Kevin K. Russell, James A. Power, Jr., Marguerite Del Valle,
Corey L. Maze, Solicitor General of Alabama, argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Troy King, Attorney General, and Beth Jackson Hughes and J. Clayton Crenshaw, Assistant Attorneys General.*
*John H. Blume, Keir M. Weyble, Timothy K. Ford, Henry A. Martin, and Jonathan D. Hacker filed a brief for the National Association of Criminal Defense
JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part IV-B.
Petitioner Billy Joe Magwood was sentenced to death for murdering a sheriff. After the Alabama courts denied relief on direct appeal and in postconviction proceedings, Magwood filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal District Court, challenging both his
A brief of amici curiae urging affirmance was filed for the State of South Carolina et al. by Henry D. McMaster, Attorney General of South Carolina, John W. McIntosh, Chief Deputy Attorney General, Donald J. Zelenka, Assistant Deputy Attorney General, Melody J. Brown, Assistant Attorney General, and Dan Schweitzer, by Kevin T. Kane, Chief State‘s Attorney of Connecticut, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: John W. Suthers of Colorado, Joseph R. Biden III of Delaware, Bill McCollum of Florida, Lawrence G. Wasden of Idaho, Steve Six of Kansas, Jack Conway of Kentucky, James D. “Buddy” Caldwell of Louisiana, Jim Hood of Mississippi, Steve Bullock of Montana, Jon Bruning of Nebraska, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Gary K. King of New Mexico, Wayne Stenehjem of North Dakota, W. A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, Thomas W. Corbett, Jr., of Pennsylvania, Marty J. Jackley of South Dakota, Greg Abbott of Texas, Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II of Virginia, Robert M. McKenna of Washington, and Bruce A. Salzburg of Wyoming.
tion1 challenges a new judgment for the first time, it is not “second or successive” under
I
After a conviction for a drug offense, Magwood served several years in the Coffee County Jail in Elba, Alabama, under the watch of Sheriff C. F. “Neil” Grantham. During his incarceration, Magwood, who had a long history of mental illness, became convinced that Grantham had imprisoned him without cause, and vowed to get even upon his release. Magwood followed through on his threat. On the morning of March 1, 1979, shortly after his release, he parked outside the jail and awaited the sheriff‘s arrival. When Grantham exited his car, Magwood shot him and fled the scene.
Magwood was indicted by a grand jury for the murder of an on-duty sheriff, a capital offense under
399 So. 2d 330 (Ala. 1981), to find that murder of a sheriff while “on duty or because of some official or job-related act,”
Eight days before his scheduled execution, Magwood filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus under
In response to the conditional writ, the state trial court held a new sentencing proceeding in September 1986. This time, the judge found that Magwood‘s mental state, as well as his age and lack of criminal history, qualified as statutory mitigating circumstances. As before, the court found that Magwood‘s capital felony under
Magwood filed a petition for relief under Alabama‘s former Temporary Rule of Criminal Procedure 20 (1987) (now
(Rule 20 petition) claiming, inter alia, that his death sentence exceeded the maximum sentence authorized by statute; that his death sentence violated the Fifth, Eighth, and
Magwood appealed the denial of his Rule 20 petition, arguing, inter alia, that his sentence was unconstitutional because he did not have fair warning that his offense could be punished by death, and that he received constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel at resentencing. See Record in Appeal No. 92-843 (Ala. Crim. App.), Tab 25, pp. 23-24, 53-61.
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, citing its decision on direct appeal as to the propriety of the death sentence. Magwood v. State, 689 So. 2d 959, 965 (1996) (citing Kyzer, supra, and Jackson v. State, 501 So. 2d 542 (Ala. Crim. App. 1986)).6 The Alabama Supreme Court denied certiorari, 689 So. 2d, at 959, as did this Court, Magwood v. Alabama, 522 U. S. 836 (1997).
In April 1997, Magwood sought leave to file a second or successive application for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his 1981 judgment of conviction. See
ond or successive application). The Court of Appeals denied his request. In re Magwood, 113 F. 3d 1544 (CA11 1997). He simultaneously filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his new death sentence, which the District Court conditionally granted. Magwood v. Culliver, 481 F. Supp. 2d 1262, 1295 (MD Ala. 2007). In that petition, Magwood again argued that his sentence was unconstitutional because he did not have fair warning at the time of his offense that his conduct would be sufficient to warrant a death sentence under Alabama law, and that his attorney rendered ineffective assistance during the resentencing proceeding.
Before addressing the merits of Magwood‘s fair-warning claim, the District Court sua sponte considered whether the application was barred as a “successive petition” under
The District Court rejected the State‘s argument that Magwood had procedurally defaulted the fair-warning claim by failing to present it adequately to the state courts, noting that Magwood had presented the claim both in his Rule 20 petition and on appeal from the denial of that
found the state court‘s grounds for rejecting Magwood‘s ineffective-assistance claim unreasonable in light of clearly established federal law, noting that Magwood‘s attorney in fact had engaged substantively in the “complete and new” resentencing, and although the attorney could not be expected to object on state-law grounds foreclosed by precedent, he was clearly ineffective for failing to raise the federal fair-warning claim. Id., at 1294 (internal quotation marks omitted).
The Court of Appeals reversed in relevant part. 555 F. 3d 968 (CA11 2009). It concluded that the first step in determining whether
We granted certiorari to determine whether Magwood‘s application challenging his 1986 death sentence, imposed as part of resentencing in response to a conditional writ from the District Court, is subject to the constraints that
II
As amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA),
“(1) A claim presented in a second or successive habeas corpus application under section 2254 that was presented in a prior application shall be dismissed.
“(2) A claim presented in a second or successive habeas corpus application under section 2254 that was not presented in a prior application shall be dismissed unless—
“(A) the applicant shows that the claim relies on a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on
collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable; or “(B)(i) the factual predicate for the claim could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence; and
“(ii) the facts underlying the claim, if proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense.”
This case turns on the meaning of the phrase “second or successive” in
cation is “second or successive,” the petitioner must obtain leave from the court of appeals before filing it with the district court. See
The State contends that although
Magwood, in contrast, reads
We begin with the text. Although Congress did not define the phrase “second or successive,” as used to mod-
ify “habeas corpus application under section 2254,”
We have described the phrase “second or successive” as a “term of art.” Id., at 486. To determine its meaning, we look first to the statutory context. The limitations imposed by
that the phrase “second or successive” must be interpreted with respect to the judgment challenged.
The State disagrees, contending that if the cross-reference to
We find this argument unpersuasive. Section 2254 articulates the kind of confinement that may be challenged on the ground that the petitioner is being held “in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.”
The State‘s “custody“-based rule is difficult to justify for another reason. Under the State‘s approach, applying the phrase “second or successive” to any subsequent application filed before a prisoner‘s release would mean that a prisoner who remains in continuous custody for a completely unrelated conviction would have to satisfy the strict rules for review under
for the first time. Nothing in the statutory text or context supports, much less requires,
III
Appearing to recognize that Magwood has the stronger textual argument, the State argues that we should rule based on the statutory purpose. According to the State, a “one opportunity” rule is consistent with the statutory text, and better reflects AEDPA‘s purpose of preventing piecemeal litigation and gamesmanship.
We are not persuaded. AEDPA uses the phrase “second or successive” to modify “application.” See
on claims, that does not entitle us to rewrite the statute to make the phrase “second or successive” modify claims as well.10
The State‘s reading leads to a second, more fundamental error. Under the State‘s “one opportunity” rule, the phrase “second or successive” would apply to any claim that the petitioner had a full and fair opportunity to raise in a prior application. And the phrase “second or successive” would not apply to a claim that the petitioner did not have a full and fair opportunity to raise previously.
This reading of
In addition to duplicating the exceptions under
IV
A
We are not persuaded by the State or the dissent that the approach we take here contradicts our precedents. The State invokes several pre-AEDPA cases denying review of claims in second or successive applications where the petitioners did not avail themselves of prior opportunities to present the claims. See Wong Doo v. United States, 265 U. S. 239 (1924); Antone v. Dugger, 465 U. S. 200 (1984) (per curiam); Woodard v. Hutchins, 464 U. S. 377 (1984) (per curiam); Delo v. Stokes, 495 U. S. 320 (1990) (per curiam); McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467 (1991). These cases, the State contends, show that Magwood‘s fair-warning claim should be dismissed as second or successive because he could have raised—but did not raise—the claim in his first application.
But none of these pre-AEDPA decisions applies the phrase “second or successive” to an application challenging a new judgment. Therefore, the decisions cast no light on the question before the Court today: whether abuse-of-the-writ rules, as modified by AEDPA under
to distinguish between
B
The dissent similarly errs by interpreting the phrase “second or successive” by reference to our longstanding doctrine governing abuse of the writ. AEDPA modifies those abuse-of-the-writ principles and creates new statutory rules under
The dissent‘s conclusion that our reading of
phrase “second or successive” into
C
Nor do our post-AEDPA cases contradict our approach. Only one, Burton v. Stewart, 549 U. S. 147 (2007) (per curiam), comes close to addressing the threshold question whether an application is “second or successive” if it challenges a new judgment. And that case confirms that the existence of a new judgment is dispositive. In Burton, the petitioner had been convicted and sentenced in state court in 1994. See id., at 149. He successfully moved for resentencing based on vacatur of an unrelated prior conviction. Id., at 150. The state appellate court affirmed the conviction but remanded for a second resentencing. Ibid. In March 1998, the trial court entered an amended judgment and new sentence. Id., at 151. In December 1998, with state review of his new sentence still pending, the petitioner filed a
In 2002, after exhausting his state sentencing appeal, the petitioner filed a
dismissed as an unauthorized
This is Magwood‘s first application challenging that intervening judgment. The errors he alleges are new. It is obvious to us—and the State does not dispute—that his claim of ineffective assistance at resentencing turns upon new errors. But, according to the State, his fair-warning claim does not, because the state court made the same mistake before. We disagree. An error made a second time is still a new error. That is especially clear here, where the state court conducted a full resentencing and reviewed the aggravating evidence afresh. See Sentencing Tr., R. Tab 1, at R-25 (“The Court in f[or]mulating the present judgment has considered the original record of the trial and sentence. . . . The present judgment and sentence has been the result of a complete and new assessment of all of the evidence, arguments of counsel, and law” (emphasis added)).13
D
The dissent‘s concern that our rule will allow “petitioners to bring abusive claims so long as they have won any victory pursuant to a prior federal habeas petition,” post, at 356, is greatly exaggerated. A petitioner may not raise in federal court an error that he failed to raise properly in state court in a challenge to the judgment reflecting the error. If a petitioner does not satisfy the procedural requirements for bringing an error to the state court‘s attention—whether in trial, appellate, or habeas proceedings, as state law may require—procedural default will bar federal review. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 729-730 (1991); O‘Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 848 (1999) (stating that the petitioner‘s “failure to present three of his federal habeas claims to the [state court] in a timely fashion has resulted in a procedural default of those claims“). In this case, the State argued that Magwood procedurally defaulted his fair-warning claim by failing to raise it properly in his collateral challenge to the 1986 judgment, and sought dismissal on that ground. Only after ruling that Magwood did not procedurally default the claim did the District Court sua sponte consider whether
which obviously occurred after he filed, and obtained relief, in his first habeas petition“).
Ironically, in an effort to effectuate what they believe is Congress’ intent not to give any unfair benefit to habeas petitioners, the State and the dissent propose an alternative rule that would “close our doors to a class of habeas petitioners seeking review without any clear indication that such was Congress’ intent.” Castro v. United States, 540 U.S. 375, 381 (2003). Many examples can be given, but one suffices to illustrate this point. Suppose that a petitioner files an application raising 10 meritorious claims challenging his conviction. The district court grants a conditional writ based on one of them, without reaching the remaining nine. Upon retrial, the state court commits the same 10 legal mistakes. (These are new errors, but no more new than the sentencing error in Magwood‘s case.) Is an application presenting those same 10 claims—now based on the errors in the new judgment—“second or successive“? Under the opportunity-based rule advanced by the State and the dissent, the answer must be yes. All 10 claims would have to be dismissed. See
V
The State objects that our reading of
* * *
For these reasons, we conclude that Magwood‘s first application challenging his new sentence under the 1986 judgment is not “second or successive” under
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join the Court‘s well-reasoned opinion with the exception of Part IV-B. The Court neither purports to alter nor does alter our holding in Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930 (2007). See ante, at 335, n. 11. In Panetti, we “declined to interpret ‘second or successive’ as referring to all
JUSTICE KENNEDY, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE GINSBURG, and JUSTICE ALITO join, dissenting.
The Court today decides that a state prisoner who succeeds in his first federal habeas petition on a discrete sen-tencing claim may later file a second petition raising numerous previously unraised claims, even if that petition is an abuse of the writ of habeas corpus. The Court, in my respectful submission, reaches this conclusion by misreading precedents on the meaning of the phrase “second or successive”
I
Absent two exceptions that are inapplicable here, the relevant statutory provision in AEDPA provides:
“A claim presented in a second or successive habeas corpus application under
section 2254 that was not presented in a prior application shall be dismissed . . . .”28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2) .
The question before the Court is whether petitioner Billy Joe Magwood filed “a second or successive” application by raising a claim in his second habeas petition that he had available and yet failed to raise in his first petition.
The term “second or successive” is a habeas “term of art.” Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 486 (2000). It incorporates the pre-AEDPA abuse-of-the-writ doctrine. Panetti, 551 U.S., at 947. Before today, that legal principle was estab-lished by the decisions of this Court. See, e. g., ibid.; Slack, supra, at 486. Under that rule, to determine whether an application is “second or successive,” a court must look to the substance of the claim the application raises and decide whether the petitioner had a full and fair opportunity to raise the claim in the prior application. Panetti, supra, at 947. Applying this analytical framework puts applications into one of three categories.
First, if the petitioner had a full and fair opportunity to raise the claim in the prior application, a second-in-time application that seeks to raise the same claim is barred as “second or successive.” This is consistent with pre-AEDPA cases applying the abuse-of-the-writ doctrine and the bar on “second or successive” applications. See, e. g., Wong Doo v. United States, 265 U.S. 239, 241 (1924) (second application barred where petitioner had a “full opportunity to offer proof” of the same claim in his first habeas application); Woodard v. Hutchins, 464 U.S. 377, 379 (1984) (Powell, J., concurring, writing for a majority of the Court) (second application barred for claims that “could and should have been raised in [the] first petition“); Delo v. Stokes, 495 U.S. 320, 321 (1990) (per curiam) (subsequent application barred for a claim that “could have been raised in his first petition for federal habeas corpus“). As McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 489 (1991), explained, “a petitioner can abuse the writ by raising a claim in a subsequent petition that he could have raised in his first, regardless of whether the failure to raise it earlier stemmed from a deliberate choice.” See also
Second, if the petitioner had no fair opportunity to raise the claim in the prior application, a subsequent application raising that claim is not “second or successive,” and
Third, a “mixed petition“—raising both abusive and nonabusive claims—would be “second or successive.” In that circumstance the petitioner would have to obtain authorization from the court of appeals to proceed with the nonabusive claims. See
The operation of the above rule is exemplified by the Court‘s decision in Panetti. Panetti‘s claim that he was mentally incompetent to be executed under Ford v. Wain-wright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), did not become ripe until after the denial of his first habeas petition. When the Ford claim became ripe, Panetti filed a second habeas petition, raising his Ford claim for the first time. In concluding that this second habeas petition was not a “second or successive” application, this Court explained that “second or successive” did not “refe[r] to all
The above principles apply to a situation, like the present one, where the petitioner
Although the above-cited authorities are adequate to show that the application in this case is “second or successive,” it must be noted that no previous case from this Court has dealt with the precise sequence of events here: A petitioner attempts to bring a previously unraised claim after a second resentencing proceeding that followed a grant of federal habeas relief. The conclusion that such an application is barred as “second or successive” unless the claim was previously unavailable is consistent with the approach of every Court of Appeals that has considered the issue, although some of those cases highlight subtleties that are not relevant under abuse-of-the-writ principles. See, e. g., Pratt v. United States, 129 F.3d 54, 62-63 (CA1 1997); Galtieri v. United States, 128 F.3d 33, 37-38 (CA2 1997); United States v. Orozco-Ramirez, 211 F.3d 862, 871 (CA5 2000); Lang v. United States, 474 F.3d 348, 351-353 (CA6 2007). While most of these cases arose in the context of federal prisoners’ challenges to their convictions or sentences under
In the present case the Court should conclude that Magwood has filed a “second or successive habeas corpus application.” In 1983, he filed a first federal habeas petition raising nine claims, including that the trial court improperly failed to consider two mitigating factors when it imposed Magwood‘s death sentence. The District Court granted Magwood‘s petition and ordered relief only on the mitigating factor claim. The state trial court then held a new sentencing proceeding, in which it considered all of the mitigating factors and reimposed the death penalty. In 1997, Magwood brought a second habeas petition, this time raising an argument that could have been, but was not, raised in his first petition. The argument was that he was not eligible for the death penalty because he did not have fair notice that his crime rendered him death eligible. There is no reason that Magwood could not have raised the identical argument in his first habeas petition. Because Magwood had a full and fair opportunity to adjudicate his death-eligibility claim in his first petition in 1983, his 1997 petition raising this claim is barred as “second or successive.”
II
The Court reaches the opposite result by creating an ill-defined exception to the “second or successive” application bar. The Court, in my respectful view, makes two critical errors. First, it errs in rejecting Panetti‘s claim-based approach to determining whether an application is “second or successive.” Second, it imposes an
A
The Court concludes that because AEDPA refers to “second or successive” applications rather than “second or successive” claims, the nature of the claims raised in the second application is irrelevant. See ante, at 334-335 (“[A]lthough we agree with the State that many of the rules under
While the Court asserts it is not calling Panetti into doubt, see ante, at 335, n. 11, it does not even attempt to explain how its analysis is consistent with that opinion, cf. 551 U.S., at 964 (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (“Before AEDPA‘s enactment, the phrase ‘second or successive’ meant the same thing it does today—any subsequent federal habeas application challenging a state-court judgment“). The best that can be said is the Court is limiting its new doctrine so it has no applicability to previously unexhausted Ford claims, confining the holding of Panetti to the facts of that case. 551 U.S., at 968 (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (“Today‘s decision thus stands only for the proposition that Ford claims somehow deserve a special (and unjustified) exemption from the statute‘s plain import“).
Failing to consider the nature of the claim when deciding whether an application is barred as “second or successive” raises other difficulties. Consider a second-in-time habeas petition challenging an alleged violation that occurred entirely after the denial of the first petition; for example, a failure to grant a prisoner parole at the time promised him by state law or the unlawful withdrawal of good-time credits. See supra, at 346. Under the Court‘s rule, it would appear that a habeas application challenging those alleged violations would be barred as “second or successive” because it would be a second-in-time application challenging custody pursuant to the same judgment. That result would be inconsistent with abuse-of-the-writ principles and might work a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
B
Having unmoored the phrase “second or successive” from its textual and historical underpinnings, the Court creates a new puzzle for itself: If the nature of the claim is not what makes an application “second or successive,” then to what should a court look? Finding no reference point in
The Court believes that it finds its peg in a different provision:
“[A] district court shall entertain an application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court only on the ground that he is in custody in violation
of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” § 2254(a) .
But this provision does not purport to create any prerequisites to
The Court‘s reading of the phrase “pursuant to the judgment of a State court” as a limitation on
The Court wholly glosses over another significant problem with its atextual analysis. The Court relies upon the notion that “[a]n error made a second time is still a new error.” Ante, at 339. But in making this statement, the Court can mean one of two very different things:
First, it could mean that any error logically encompassed in a reentered judgment is a “new” error. A criminal “judgment” generally includes both the conviction and the sentence. See, e. g.,
Under this principle, the Court‘s holding today would allow a challenger in Magwood‘s position to raise any challenge to the guilt phase of the criminal judgment against him in his second application, since a “new” judgment—consisting of both the conviction and sentence—has now been reentered and all of the errors have (apparently) occurred anew. As an illustration, the state trial court here reentered the following judgment after resentencing: “IT IS, THEREFORE, ORDERED AND ADJUDGED BY THE COURT that Billy Joe Magwood is guilty of the offense of aggravated murder . . . and that Billy Joe Magwood is sentenced to death.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 106a. This would mean that Magwood‘s attorney could dig through anything that occurred from voir dire to the cross-examination of witnesses to the jury‘s guilty verdict, and raise any alleged errors for the first time in his second habeas application, all because the trial
Second, and alternatively, the Court could retreat even further from the statutory text and conclude that only some parts of the reentered judgment are open to challenge by way of a second habeas application. Magwood, for example, argues that he can only challenge previously unraised errors made during sentencing. Brief for Petitioner 21, n. 8. Indeed, Magwood goes further and suggests that even the sentencing would not be reopened in a case where a court‘s order leads the trial court to revise only the defendant‘s term of supervised release. Id., at 28, n. 11. If the Court is adopting this some-parts-of-the-criminal-judgment exception to the “second or successive” application bar, it is unclear why the error that Magwood now raises is a “new error” at all. After all, Magwood did not challenge his death eligibility in his first habeas petition but only disputed that he should not get the death penalty, as a matter of discretion, if the trial court properly weighed all of the aggravating and mitigating factors. The state trial court conducted this reweighing and had no reason to reconsider the uncontested finding that Magwood is death eligible. It is hard to see how the trial court‘s failure to reconsider sua sponte its previous death-eligibility finding is a “new error,” any more than its failure to reconsider the various errors that may have taken place at the guilt phase would have been new errors.
The Court contends the approach dictated by Panetti “considerably undermine[s]—if not render[s] superfluous,” ante, at 335, the exceptions in
III
The Court‘s approach disregards AEDPA‘s “‘principles of comity, finality, and federalism.‘” Panetti, 551 U.S., at 945 (quoting Miller-El, 537 U.S., at 337). Under the Court‘s newly created exception to the “second or successive” application bar, a defendant who succeeds on even the most minor and discrete issue relating to his sentencing would be able to raise 25 or 50 new sentencing claims in his second habeas petition, all based on arguments he failed to raise in his first petition. “[I]f reexamination of [a] convictio[n] in the first round of habeas offends federalism and comity, the offense increases when a State must defend its conviction in a second
The Court‘s novel exception would also allow the once-successful petitioner to reraise every argument against a sentence that was rejected by the federal courts during the first round of federal habeas review. As respondents explain, under the Court‘s theory, “a post-resentencing peti-tioner could simply staple a new cover page with the words, ’
The Court‘s suggestion that “[i]t will not take a court long to dispose of such claims where the court has already analyzed the legal issues,” ante, at 341, n. 15, misses the point. This reassurance will be cold comfort to overworked state district attorneys, who will now have to waste time and resources writing briefs analyzing dozens of claims that should be barred by abuse-of-the-writ principles. It is difficult to motivate even the most dedicated professionals to do their best work, day after day, when they have to deal with the dispiriting task of responding to previously rejected or otherwise abusive claims. But that is exactly what the Court is mandating, under a statute that was designed to require just the opposite result. If the analysis in this dissent is sound it is to be hoped that the States will document the ill effects of the Court‘s opinion so that its costs and deficiencies are better understood if this issue, or a related one, can again come before the Court.
The Court‘s new exception will apply not only to death penalty cases like the present one, where the newly raised claim appears arguably meritorious. It will apply to all federal habeas petitions following a prior successful petition, most of which will not be in death cases and where the abusive claims the Court now permits will wholly lack merit. And, in this vein, it is striking that the Court‘s decision means that States subject to federal habeas review hence-forth receive less recognition of a finality interest than the Federal Government does on direct review of federal criminal convictions. See United States v. Parker, 101 F.3d 527, 528 (CA7 1996) (Posner, C. J.) (“A party cannot use the accident of a remand to raise in a second appeal an issue that he could just as well have raised in the first appeal because the remand did not affect it“).
The Court‘s approach also turns AEDPA‘s bar against “second or successive” applications into a one-way ratchet that favors habeas petitioners. Unless today‘s decision is read to unduly limit Panetti, see supra, at 350, AEDPA still incorporates recognized exceptions to the abuse-of-the-writ doctrine to allow petitioners to bring their previously unavailable and unripe claims, see ante, at 343 (BREYER, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). But after today‘s holding, AEDPA now “modifie[s],” ante, at 337, abuse-of-the-writ principles and allows petitioners to bring abusive claims so long as they have won any victory pursuant to a prior federal habeas petition. The Court thus reads AEDPA as creating a new loophole that habeas petitioners can
* * *
Had Magwood been unsuccessful in his first petition, all agree that claims then available, but not raised, would be barred. But because he prevailed in his attack on one part of his sentencing proceeding the first time around, the Court rules that he is free, postsentencing, to pursue claims on federal habeas review that might have been raised earlier. The Court is mistaken in concluding that Congress, in enacting a statute aimed at placing new restrictions on successive petitions, would have intended this irrational result. Magwood had every chance to raise his death-eligibility claim in his first habeas petition. He has abused the writ by raising this claim for the first time in his second petition. His application is therefore “second or successive.” I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.