The California Supreme Court has set page limits to habeas corpus petitions that bring up claims that have previously been before the court.
The court said there would continue to be no page limit for initial habeas corpus petitions. However, successive petitions must be limited to 50 pages.
The court also said the petition must identify which claims have been raised previously and rejected, which claims could have been raised before, which claims are “truly new,” and which claims have been deemed exhausted by a federal court. The ruling said that information should be included in a table of contents, which may run an additional 10 pages.
The court said some successive habeas corpus petitions are loaded with so many procedural problems that they are abusive to the court process. These problems, Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote, “have created a significant threat to our capacity to timely and fairly adjudicate such matters.”
Werdegar added, “Some Death Row inmates with meritorious legal claims may languish in prison for years waiting for this court’s review while we evaluate [other prisoners’] petitions raising dozens or even hundreds of frivolous and untimely claims.”
The court established in 1994 that successive habeas corpus petitions must bring forward truly new claims, which could not have been brought before. However, petitioners still filed subsequent petitions raising barred claims. Werdegar said those cases took up a lot of the court’s time, and rarely were those petitions able to justify their untimely or procedurally barred hurdles.
“Vis-à-vis other states, we authorize more money to pay post-conviction counsel, authorize more money for post-conviction investigation, allow counsel to file habeas corpus petitions containing more pages, and permit more time following conviction to file a petition for what is, after all, a request for collateral relief,” said Werdegar.
On another matter, Werdegar said the court is still having problems finding enough qualified lawyers to take on death penalty appeals.
