Morales v. Sherman, No. 17-56304 (9th Cir. 2020)
Annotate this CaseThe Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's summary judgment dismissal of a habeas corpus petition as an unauthorized "second or successive" petition under 28 U.S.C. 2244(b)(3)(A). The panel held that petitioner's successful effort to obtain relief under Proposition 47 resulted in the issuance of the amended abstract of judgment and thus represented the issuance of a new, intervening judgment for purposes of section 2244(b). Because petitioner's 2017 federal habeas petition was the first petition challenging that new judgment, the district court erred by holding that it was an unauthorized second or successive petition.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus. The panel reversed the district court’s judgment summarily dismissing, as an unauthorized “second or successive” petition, Nicolas Z. Morales’s 2017 habeas corpus petition challenging his 2009 California attempted- robbery conviction and three-strikes sentence. The district court dismissed Morales’s 2012 habeas petition as untimely. In 2016, the state trial court granted Morales’s petition for relief in light of Proposition 47 – a ballot initiative, approved by California voters in 2014, reducing certain theft offenses from felonies to misdemeanors – and issued an amended abstract of judgment reflecting the reclassification of grand and petty theft counts. Agreeing with Morales and the State of California, the panel held that Morales’s successful effort to obtain relief under Proposition 47 resulted in the issuance of a new, intervening judgment for purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b), such that the 2017 federal habeas petition is the first petition challenging the new judgment. The panel held that the district court therefore erred by dismissing the petition on the basis that the 2017 petition is an unauthorized “second or successive” petition under § 2244(b)(3)(A), and remanded. MORALES V. SHERMAN 3
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.