Magwood v. Culliver
Issues
Whether a person, having obtained federal habeas relief from a first habeas petition, may challenge the new sentencing judgment with a second petition, or if that petition is barred as “second or successive,” because its grounds could have been argued in the first petition.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) prohibits the filing of “second or successive” habeas petitions by state prisoners. Petitioner, Billy Joe Magwood (“Magwood”) and respondent, Warden Tony Patterson (“Patterson”), disagree as to whether Magwood, who received habeas relief from an earlier death sentence, may challenge a subsequent state issued death sentence for the same act. Magwood argues that a habeas petition challenging a new judgment for the first time cannot be “second or successive.” In response, Patterson asserts that Magwood had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the “fair warning claim” in the first habeas petition, and it would be an abuse of the writ and a violation of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b) to raise the same claim in this subsequent petition. The Eleventh Circuit sided with Patterson and held that Magwood’s claim is part of a “successive” petition under § 2244(b). The Supreme Court must now decide whether a petitioner, who already obtained federal relief from an earlier sentence, may challenge a resentence in a subsequent habeas petition if that petitioner could have challenged the first sentence on the same constitutional grounds now used to challenge the second sentence.
The facts of Magwood’s offense are not in dispute. Magwood v. Culliver, 55 f.3d 968, 970 (11th Cir.