United States First Circuit

Petition for habeas corpus raising both exhausted and unexhausted claims is remanded to the district court for reconsideration, where: 1) the best practice would have been to allow petitioner to delete his unexhausted claims, rather than summarily dismiss his petition; and 2) although the district court also had discretion to dismiss the mixed petition instead of granting a stay and abeyance, dismissal would have been an abuse of discretion unless the unexhausted claims were clearly meritless, but here the record is not clear whether the district court evaluated the unexhausted claims and deemed them meritless.

Appellate Information

• Decided 05/06/2013
• Published 05/06/2013

Judges

• PER CURIAM

Court

• United States First Circuit

Counsel