03-9046 Rhines v. Weber

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AEDPA does not deprive district courts of the authority to issue stays that are a proper exercise of their discretion, but it does circumscribe that discretion. Any solution to this problem therefore must be compatible with AEDPA’s purposes. Staying a federal habeas petition frustrates AEDPA’s objective of encouraging finality of state court judgments by allowing a petitioner to delay the resolution of the federal proceedings, and it undermines AEDPA’s goal of streamlining federal habeas proceedings by decreasing a petitioner’s incentive to exhaust all his claims in state court before filing his federal petition. Thus, stay and abeyance should be available only in limited circumstances. Because granting a stay effectively excuses a petitioner’s failure to present his claims first to the state courts, stay and abeyance is only appropriate when the district court determines there was good cause for the petitioner’s failure to exhaust his claims. Even if good cause existed, the district court would abuse its discretion if it granted a stay when the unexhausted claims are plainly meritless. Where stay and abeyance is appropriate, the district court’s discretion is still limited by AEDPA’s timeliness concerns. If a district court does not place reasonable time limits on a petitioner’s trip to state court and back, petitioners, especially capital petitioners, could frustrate AEDPA’s finality goal by dragging out indefinitely their federal habeas review. And if a petitioner engages in abusive litigation tactics or intentional delay, the district court should not grant a stay at all. On the other hand, it likely would be an abuse of discretion for a district court to deny a stay and dismiss a mixed petition if the petitioner had good cause for his failure to exhaust, his unexhausted claims are potentially meritorious, and there is no indication that he engaged in intentionally dilatory litigation tactics. Such a petitioner’s interest in obtaining federal review of his claims outweighs the competing interests in finality and speedy resolution of federal petitions. For the same reason, if the court determines that stay and abeyance is inappropriate, it should allow the petitioner to delete the unexhausted claims and proceed with the exhausted ones if dismissing the entire petition would unreasonably impair the petitioner’s right to obtain federal relief.

346 F.3d 799, vacated and remanded.

Local effect:

The decision is consistent with current Seventh Circuit precedent, Newell v. Hanks, 283 F.3d 827 (7th Cir. 2002).

O’Connor, J.; Stevens, J., concurring; Souter, J., concurring in part.