Winters v. Sanchez

Background

Paul L. Winters, a state parolee being held at Santa Rita Jail, filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He represented himself and claimed that his parole supervision period had been unlawfully extended. After the court ordered Jeffrey Macomber, the Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, to explain why the petition should not be granted, Macomber moved to dismiss it as unexhausted.

Motion to Dismiss

The court first rejected Winters’s argument that the motion to dismiss was improper because it did not address the petition’s underlying issues. The court explained that a respondent may raise threshold procedural problems, including failure to exhaust state remedies, through a motion to dismiss rather than waiting to file a full answer.

The court then considered exhaustion. Before seeking federal habeas relief, a person generally must give the state’s highest court an opportunity to consider the claims. Winters said that he had presented his claims to a state superior court. The court held that this was not enough because Winters had not presented his claims to the California Supreme Court, either through a petition for review or a state habeas petition. The court therefore concluded that the federal petition was fully unexhausted.

Disposition

The court granted Macomber’s motion to dismiss the petition as unexhausted. The petition was dismissed without prejudice, so Winters may return to state court to exhaust his state judicial remedies and then file a new federal habeas petition if necessary. The court made no ruling on whether a future federal petition would be timely. It denied a certificate of appealability, directed the clerk to close the file, and terminated the pending motion.