Barillas v. Hill
- Martinez-Olguin
- 3:22-cv-02957
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Barillas v. Hill, Judge Martinez-Olguin dismissed Barillas’s mixed federal petition without prejudice after he failed to choose how to proceed.
Jose Humberto Barillas’s federal petition was dismissed without prejudice after he did not choose between amending the petition to include only exhausted claims and requesting a stay to exhaust the remaining claim.
What happened
Jose Humberto Barillas, a state prisoner representing himself, filed a federal petition challenging his state conviction for multiple crimes involving sexual abuse of a child. The petition raised two exhausted claims and one claim that had not been presented to the state courts.
The court had previously allowed Barillas to either amend the petition to keep only the two exhausted claims or ask for a pause while he pursued the unexhausted claim in state court. He did not make that choice within the required 28 days.
In Barillas v. Hill, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin dismissed the petition as mixed and without prejudice. The court said Barillas could file a new federal petition containing only exhausted claims, terminated all pending motions, and closed the case.
The detailed version
- Barillas v. Hill · No. 3:22-cv-02957
- Martinez-Olguin
- Feb. 12, 2024
Background
Jose Humberto Barillas, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his state conviction for multiple crimes involving sexually abusing a child. A federal habeas petition asks a federal court to review the legality of a state prisoner’s custody.
The court’s December 7, 2023 order had found that Barillas’s petition was “mixed,” meaning it included both claims for which state-court remedies had been exhausted and a claim for which they had not. The order identified Claims 1 and 2 as exhausted and Claim 3 as unexhausted. Because federal courts generally dismiss petitions containing unexhausted claims, the court gave Barillas two choices: amend the petition to include only Claims 1 and 2, or request a stay while he exhausted Claim 3 in state court.
Failure to Make an Election
The court required Barillas to notify it of his choice within 28 days and warned that failing to do so would result in dismissal. Barillas did not make an election within that period.
Ruling
Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin dismissed the petition as mixed. The dismissal was without prejudice to Barillas filing a new federal habeas action containing only exhausted claims. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate all pending motions and close the file.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.