Fells v. Silva

Background

Billy M. Fells, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, which allows a state prisoner to seek federal review of a state conviction. The court dismissed his original petition but allowed him to amend it. Fells then filed an amended petition.

The opinion states that Fells was found guilty of kidnapping, robbery, and rape, and that his state appeals were denied in 2014. He had also filed an earlier federal habeas case in the same court concerning the same conviction. In that earlier round of the case, the petition was denied on the merits on June 6, 2016. The Ninth Circuit denied Fells’s requests to file a successive petition in 2018 and 2024.

Claims and ruling

Fells’s amended petition alleged that he was denied a competency hearing before his conviction and that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate his past and present mental condition. The court determined that these claims had already been denied on the merits in Fells’s earlier federal case.

The court dismissed this second habeas petition under the rule that a claim presented in a second or successive petition under § 2254 must be dismissed if it was presented in an earlier petition. This ruling disposed of the petition as successive; the opinion did not reconsider the merits of those claims in this case.

Disposition

The court directed the clerk to close the case and declined to issue a certificate of appealability. Judge James Donato entered the order on September 10, 2025.