referring to California’s standards as "applied as a matter of discretion without regularity,” "impossibly amorphous,” "nebulous as well as riddled with exceptions”; concluding that "such imprecise, circular, and tautological language does not define a 'clear' rule this court can 'consistently apply'____Nor does it even provide guidance.”
How later courts described this case
- referring to California’s standards as "applied as a matter of discretion without regularity,” "impossibly amorphous,” "nebulous as well as riddled with exceptions”; concluding that "such imprecise, circular, and tautological language does not define a 'clear' rule this court can 'consistently apply'____Nor does it even provide guidance.”
- recounting the procedural history of the case and noting that, after the federal district court denied the Attorney General's motion to dismiss petitioner's unexhausted claims, petitioner "file[d] in this court [the California Supreme Court] a petition for writ of habeas corpus to exhaust those claims"
- reviewing petitioner's thirty-five habeas claims in the first instance and rejecting all of them on the merits
- conc. & dis. opn. of Brown, J.
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by In Re Sanders, 87 Cal. Rptr. 2d 899 (1999)
) Gallego, then, is inapposite.
The opinion
MOSK, J., Concurring.
I concur in the result.
I agree that we must discharge the order to show cause. I do so because I believe that petitioner has not alleged specific facts that would entitle him to relief on habeas corpus. I would rest on the merits, and would not proceed to any of the so-called “procedural bars,” including that of untimeliness. (See In re Robbins (1998) 18 Cal.4th 770, 815-817 [ 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 153 , 959 P.2d 311 ] (cone. opn. of Mosk, J.).)