RHINES v. WEBER, WARDEN

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Syllabus
RHINES v. WEBER, WARDEN
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the eighth circuit
No. 03–9046. Argued January 12, 2005—Decided March 30, 2005
After petitioner Rhines’ state conviction for first-degree murder and bur-
glary became final and his state habeas petition was denied, he filed a
federal habeas petition. Because the 1-year statute of limitations im-
posed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
(AEDPA) was tolled while his state petition was pending, see 28 U. S. C.
§ 2244(d)(2), he had more than 11 months before the limitations period
expired. However, by the time the District Court ruled that eight of
his claims had not been exhausted in state court, the limitations period
had run. If the court had dismissed his “mixed” petition, Rhines would
have been unable to refile after exhausting his claims, so the court de-
cided to hold his federal petition in abeyance while he presented his
unexhausted claims in state court, provided that he commenced the
state proceedings within 60 days and returned to the District Court
within 60 days of completing the exhaustion. The Eighth Circuit,
which had previously held that a district court has no authority to hold
mixed petitions in abeyance absent truly exceptional circumstances, va-
cated the stay and remanded the case for the District Court to deter-
mine whether Rhines could proceed by deleting unexhausted claims.
Held: A district court has discretion to stay a mixed petition to allow a
petitioner to present his unexhausted claims to the state court in the
first instance and then to return to federal court for review of his per-
fected petition. Pp. 273–279.
(a) Fourteen years before Congress enacted AEDPA, this Court held
that federal district courts may not adjudicate mixed petitions but must
give state courts the first opportunity to decide a petitioner’s claims;
imposed a “total exhaustion” requirement; and directed federal courts
to effectuate that requirement by dismissing mixed petitions without
prejudice and allowing petitioners to return to state court. Rose
v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509, 518–519. At the time, there was no statute
of limitations on federal habeas petitions. But that changed with
AEDPA, which preserved Lundy’s total exhaustion requirement while
imposing a 1-year limitations period, which is tolled during the pend-
ency of a state, but not a federal, habeas petition. As a result, petition-
ers such as Rhines run the risk of forever losing their opportunity for
federal review of their unexhausted claims. Even a petitioner who files

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270 RHINES v. WEBER
Syllabus
early cannot control when a district court will resolve the exhaustion
question. The gravity and difficulty of this problem has led some
district courts to adopt the “stay-and-abeyance” procedure at issue.
Pp. 273–276.
(b) AEDPA does not deprive district courts of the authority to issue
stays that are a proper exercise of their discretion, but it does circum-
scribe that discretion. Any solution to this problem therefore must be
compatible with AEDPA’s purposes. Staying a federal habeas petition
frustrates AEDPA’s objective of encouraging finality of state court
judgments by allowing a petitioner to delay the resolution of the federal
proceedings, and it undermines AEDPA’s goal of streamlining federal
habeas proceedings by decreasing a petitioner’s incentive to exhaust all
his claims in state court before filing his federal petition. Thus, stay
and abeyance should be available only in limited circumstances. Be-
cause granting a stay effectively excuses a petitioner’s failure to present
his claims first to the state courts, stay and abeyance is only appropriate
when the district court determines there was good cause for the peti-
tioner’s failure to exhaust his claims. Even if good cause existed, the
district court would abuse its discretion if it granted a stay when the
unexhausted claims are plainly meritless. Where stay and abeyance is
appropriate, the district court’s discretion is still limited by AEDPA’s
timeliness concerns. If a district court does not place reasonable time
limits on a petitioner’s trip to state court and back, petitioners, espe-
cially capital petitioners, could frustrate AEDPA’s finality goal by drag-
ging out indefinitely their federal habeas review. And if a petitioner
engages in abusive litigation tactics or intentional delay, the district
court should not grant a stay at all. On the other hand, it likely would
be an abuse of discretion for a district court to deny a stay and dismiss
a mixed petition if the petitioner had good cause for his failure to ex-
haust, his unexhausted claims are potentially meritorious, and there is
no indication that he engaged in intentionally dilatory litigation tactics.
Such a petitioner’s interest in obtaining federal review of his claims
outweighs the competing interests in finality and speedy resolution of
federal petitions. For the same reason, if the court determines that
stay and abeyance is inappropriate, it should allow the petitioner to
delete the unexhausted claims and proceed with the exhausted ones if
dismissing the entire petition would unreasonably impair the petition-
er’s right to obtain federal relief. Pp. 276–279.
346 F. 3d 799, vacated and remanded.
O’Connor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist,
C. J., and Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer,
JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Ginsburg

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Opinion of the Court
and Breyer, JJ., joined, post, p. 279. Souter, J., filed an opinion concur-
ring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Ginsburg and
Breyer, JJ., joined, post, p. 279.
Roberto A. Lange, by appointment of the Court, 543 U. S.
806, argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner.
Lawrence E. Long, Attorney General of South Dakota, ar-
gued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was
Craig M. Eichstadt, Deputy Attorney General.*
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court.
We confront here the problem of a “mixed” petition for
habeas corpus relief in which a state prisoner presents a fed-
eral court with a single petition containing some claims that
have been exhausted in the state courts and some that have
not. More precisely, we consider whether a federal district
court has discretion to stay the mixed petition to allow the
petitioner to present his unexhausted claims to the state
*A brief of amicus curiae urging reversal was filed for the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers by Pamela Harris and David
M. Porter.
A brief of amici curiae urging affirmance was filed for the State of
California et al. by Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of California, Manuel
M. Medeiros, State Solicitor General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant
Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Senior Assistant Attorney Gen-
eral, Donald E. de Nicola and Paul M. Roadarmel, Jr., Deputy Attorneys
General, and Christopher L. Morano, Chief State’s Attorney of Connecti-
cut, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows:
Troy King of Alabama, Terry Goddard of Arizona, Mike Beebe of Arkan-
sas, M. Jane Brady of Delaware, Thurbert E. Baker of Georgia, Mark J.
Bennett of Hawaii, Lawrence G. Wasden of Idaho, Steve Carter of Indiana,
J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Thomas F. Reilly of Massachusetts,
Jim Hood of Mississippi, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Mike Mc-
Grath of Montana, Jon Bruning of Nebraska, Brian Sandoval of Nevada,
Kelly A. Ayotte of New Hampshire, Patricia A. Madrid of New Mexico,
Eliot Spitzer of New York, Wayne Stenehjem of North Dakota, Jim Petro
of Ohio, Gerald J. Pappert of Pennsylvania, Paul G. Summers of Tennes-
see, Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah, Jerry W. Kilgore of Virginia, Darrell V.
McGraw, Jr., of West Virginia, and Patrick J. Crank of Wyoming.

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court in the first instance, and then to return to federal court
for review of his perfected petition.
I
Petitioner Charles Russell Rhines was convicted in South
Dakota state court of first-degree murder and third-degree
burglary and sentenced to death. His conviction became
final on December 2, 1996, when we denied his initial petition
for certiorari. Rhines v. South Dakota, 519 U. S. 1013. On
December 5, 1996, Rhines filed a petition for state habeas
corpus. App. 32. The state court denied his petition, and
the Supreme Court of South Dakota affirmed on February 9,
2000, Rhines v. Weber, 2000 SD 19, 608 N. W. 2d 303. Rhines
filed his pro se petition for federal habeas corpus pursuant
to 28 U. S. C. § 2254 in the United States District Court for
the District of South Dakota on February 22, 2000. App.
3. Because the 1-year statute of limitations imposed by the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
(AEDPA) was tolled while Rhines’ state habeas corpus peti-
tion was pending, see 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(2), he still had
more than 11 months left before the expiration of the limita-
tions period.
With the assistance of court-appointed counsel, Rhines
filed an amended petition for writ of habeas corpus and state-
ment of exhaustion on November 20, 2000, asserting 35
claims of constitutional defects in his conviction and sen-
tence. App. 39–60. The State challenged 12 of those claims
as unexhausted. Id., at 72–79. On July 3, 2002, approxi-
mately 18 months after Rhines had filed his amended federal
habeas corpus petition, the District Court held that 8 of
the 35 claims had not been exhausted. At this time, the
AEDPA 1-year statute of limitations had run. See Duncan
v. Walker, 533 U. S. 167, 181–182 (2001) (holding that the
statute of limitations is not tolled during the pendancy of
a federal petition). As a result, if the District Court had
dismissed Rhines’ mixed petition at that point, he would

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have been unable to refile in federal court after exhausting
the unexhausted claims. Rhines therefore moved the Dis-
trict Court to hold his pending habeas petition in abeyance
while he presented his unexhausted claims to the South
Dakota courts. On July 3, 2002, the District Court granted
the motion and issued a stay “conditioned upon petitioner
commencing state court exhaustion proceedings within sixty
days of this order and returning to this court within sixty
days of completing such exhaustion.” App. 136. In compli-
ance with that order, Rhines filed his second state habeas
corpus petition on August 22, 2002.
The State appealed the District Court’s stay of Rhines’
mixed petition to the United States Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit. Relying on its decision in Akins v. Kenney,
341 F. 3d 681, 686 (2003) (holding that “a district court has
no authority to hold a habeas petition containing unex-
hausted claims in abeyance absent truly exceptional circum-
stances” (internal quotation marks omitted)), the Court of
Appeals vacated the stay and remanded the case to the Dis-
trict Court to determine whether Rhines could proceed by
deleting unexhausted claims from his petition. 346 F. 3d 799
(2003). We granted certiorari to resolve a split in the Cir-
cuits regarding the propriety of the District Court’s “stay-
and-abeyance” procedure. 542 U. S. 936 (2004). Compare,
e. g., Crews v. Horn, 360 F. 3d 146, 152 (CA3 2004); and
Zarvela v. Artuz, 254 F. 3d 374, 381 (CA2 2001), with 346
F. 3d 799 (2003) (case below).
II
Fourteen years before Congress enacted AEDPA, we held
in Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509 (1982), that federal district
courts may not adjudicate mixed petitions for habeas corpus,
that is, petitions containing both exhausted and unexhausted
claims. We reasoned that the interests of comity and feder-
alism dictate that state courts must have the first opportu-
nity to decide a petitioner’s claims. Id., at 518–519. We

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noted that “[b]ecause ‘it would be unseemly in our dual sys-
tem of government for a federal district court to upset a
state court conviction without an opportunity to the state
courts to correct a constitutional violation,’ federal courts
apply the doctrine of comity.” Id., at 518 (quoting Darr v.
Burford, 339 U. S. 200, 204 (1950)). That doctrine “ ‘teaches
that one court should defer action on causes properly within
its jurisdiction until the courts of another sovereignty with
concurrent powers, and already cognizant of the litigation,
have had an opportunity to pass upon the matter.’ ” 455
U. S., at 518.
Accordingly, we imposed a requirement of “total exhaus-
tion” and directed federal courts to effectuate that require-
ment by dismissing mixed petitions without prejudice and
allowing petitioners to return to state court to present the
unexhausted claims to that court in the first instance. Id.,
at 522. When we decided Lundy, there was no statute of
limitations on the filing of federal habeas corpus petitions.
As a result, petitioners who returned to state court to ex-
haust their previously unexhausted claims could come back
to federal court to present their perfected petitions with rel-
ative ease. See Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U. S. 473, 486 (2000)
(dismissal without prejudice under Lundy “contemplated
that the prisoner could return to federal court after the req-
uisite exhaustion”).
The enactment of AEDPA in 1996 dramatically altered
the landscape for federal habeas corpus petitions. AEDPA
preserved Lundy’s total exhaustion requirement, see 28
U. S. C. § 2254(b)(1)(A) (“An application for a writ of habeas
corpus . . . shall not be granted unless it appears that . . . the
applicant has exhausted the remedies available in the courts
of the State”), but it also imposed a 1-year statute of limita-
tions on the filing of federal petitions, § 2244(d). Although
the limitations period is tolled during the pendency of a
“properly filed application for State post-conviction or other
collateral review,” § 2244(d)(2), the filing of a petition for ha-

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beas corpus in federal court does not toll the statute of limi-
tations, Duncan, 533 U. S., at 181–182.
As a result of the interplay between AEDPA’s 1-year stat-
ute of limitations and Lundy’s dismissal requirement, peti-
tioners who come to federal court with “mixed” petitions run
the risk of forever losing their opportunity for any federal
review of their unexhausted claims. If a petitioner files a
timely but mixed petition in federal district court, and the
district court dismisses it under Lundy after the limitations
period has expired, this will likely mean the termination of
any federal review. For example, if the District Court in
this case had dismissed the petition because it contained un-
exhausted claims, AEDPA’s 1-year statute of limitations
would have barred Rhines from returning to federal court
after exhausting the previously unexhausted claims in state
court. Similarly, if a district court dismisses a mixed peti-
tion close to the end of the 1-year period, the petitioner’s
chances of exhausting his claims in state court and refiling
his petition in federal court before the limitations period
runs are slim. The problem is not limited to petitioners who
file close to the AEDPA deadline. Even a petitioner who
files early will have no way of controlling when the dis-
trict court will resolve the question of exhaustion. Thus,
whether a petitioner ever receives federal review of his
claims may turn on which district court happens to hear his
case.
We recognize the gravity of this problem and the difficulty
it has posed for petitioners and federal district courts alike.
In an attempt to solve the problem, some district courts have
adopted a version of the “stay-and-abeyance” procedure em-
ployed by the District Court below. Under this procedure,
rather than dismiss the mixed petition pursuant to Lundy, a
district court might stay the petition and hold it in abeyance
while the petitioner returns to state court to exhaust his
previously unexhausted claims. Once the petitioner ex-

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hausts his state remedies, the district court will lift the stay
and allow the petitioner to proceed in federal court.
District courts do ordinarily have authority to issue stays,
see Landis v. North American Co., 299 U. S. 248, 254 (1936),
where such a stay would be a proper exercise of discretion,
see Clinton v. Jones, 520 U. S. 681, 706 (1997). AEDPA
does not deprive district courts of that authority, cf. 28
U. S. C. § 2254(b)(1)(A) (“An application for a writ of habeas
corpus . . . shall not be granted unless it appears that . . . the
applicant has exhausted the remedies available in the courts
of the State” (emphasis added)), but it does circumscribe
their discretion. Any solution to this problem must there-
fore be compatible with AEDPA’s purposes.
One of the statute’s purposes is to “reduce delays in the
execution of state and federal criminal sentences, particu-
larly in capital cases.” Woodford v. Garceau, 538 U. S. 202,
206 (2003). See also Duncan, 533 U. S., at 179. AEDPA’s
1-year limitations period “quite plainly serves the well-
recognized interest in the finality of state court judgments.”
Ibid. It “reduces the potential for delay on the road to fi-
nality by restricting the time that a prospective federal
habeas petitioner has in which to seek federal habeas re-
view.” Ibid.
Moreover, Congress enacted AEDPA against the backdrop
of Lundy’s total exhaustion requirement. The tolling provi-
sion in § 2244(d)(2) “balances the interests served by the ex-
haustion requirement and the limitation period” “by protect-
ing a state prisoner’s ability later to apply for federal habeas
relief while state remedies are being pursued.” Duncan,
supra, at 179. AEDPA thus encourages petitioners to seek
relief from state courts in the first instance by tolling the
1-year limitations period while a “properly filed application
for State post-conviction or other collateral review” is pend-
ing. 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(2). This scheme reinforces the
importance of Lundy’s “simple and clear instruction to po-
tential litigants: before you bring any claims to federal court,

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be sure that you first have taken each one to state court.”
455 U. S., at 520.
Stay and abeyance, if employed too frequently, has the po-
tential to undermine these twin purposes. Staying a federal
habeas petition frustrates AEDPA’s objective of encouraging
finality by allowing a petitioner to delay the resolution of the
federal proceedings. It also undermines AEDPA’s goal of
streamlining federal habeas proceedings by decreasing a
petitioner’s incentive to exhaust all his claims in state court
prior to filing his federal petition. Cf. Duncan, supra, at
180 (“[D]iminution of statutory incentives to proceed first in
state court would . . . increase the risk of the very piecemeal
litigation that the exhaustion requirement is designed to
reduce”).
For these reasons, stay and abeyance should be available
only in limited circumstances. Because granting a stay ef-
fectively excuses a petitioner’s failure to present his claims
first to the state courts, stay and abeyance is only appro-
priate when the district court determines there was good
cause for the petitioner’s failure to exhaust his claims first
in state court. Moreover, even if a petitioner had good
cause for that failure, the district court would abuse its dis-
cretion if it were to grant him a stay when his unexhausted
claims are plainly meritless. Cf. 28 U. S. C. § 2254(b)(2) (“An
application for a writ of habeas corpus may be denied on the
merits, notwithstanding the failure of the applicant to ex-
haust the remedies available in the courts of the State”).
Even where stay and abeyance is appropriate, the district
court’s discretion in structuring the stay is limited by the
timeliness concerns reflected in AEDPA. A mixed petition
should not be stayed indefinitely. Though, generally, a pris-
oner’s “principal interest . . . is in obtaining speedy federal
relief on his claims,” Lundy, supra, at 520 (plurality opinion),
not all petitioners have an incentive to obtain federal relief
as quickly as possible. In particular, capital petitioners
might deliberately engage in dilatory tactics to prolong their

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incarceration and avoid execution of the sentence of death.
Without time limits, petitioners could frustrate AEDPA’s
goal of finality by dragging out indefinitely their federal ha-
beas review. Thus, district courts should place reasonable
time limits on a petitioner’s trip to state court and back.
See, e. g., Zarvela, 254 F. 3d, at 381 (“[District courts] should
explicitly condition the stay on the prisoner’s pursuing state
court remedies within a brief interval, normally 30 days,
after the stay is entered and returning to federal court
within a similarly brief interval, normally 30 days after state
court exhaustion is completed”). And if a petitioner en-
gages in abusive litigation tactics or intentional delay, the
district court should not grant him a stay at all. See id.,
at 380–381.
On the other hand, it likely would be an abuse of discretion
for a district court to deny a stay and to dismiss a mixed
petition if the petitioner had good cause for his failure to
exhaust, his unexhausted claims are potentially meritori-
ous, and there is no indication that the petitioner engaged
in intentionally dilatory litigation tactics. In such circum-
stances, the district court should stay, rather than dismiss,
the mixed petition. See Lundy, 455 U. S., at 522 (the total
exhaustion requirement was not intended to “unreasonably
impair the prisoner’s right to relief ”). In such a case, the
petitioner’s interest in obtaining federal review of his claims
outweighs the competing interests in finality and speedy res-
olution of federal petitions. For the same reason, if a peti-
tioner presents a district court with a mixed petition and the
court determines that stay and abeyance is inappropriate,
the court should allow the petitioner to delete the unex-
hausted claims and to proceed with the exhausted claims if
dismissal of the entire petition would unreasonably impair
the petitioner’s right to obtain federal relief. See id., at 520
(plurality opinion) (“[A petitioner] can always amend the
petition to delete the unexhausted claims, rather than re-
turning to state court to exhaust all of his claims”).

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Opinion of Souter, J.
The Court of Appeals erred to the extent it concluded that
stay and abeyance is always impermissible. We therefore
vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the
case for that court to determine, consistent with this opinion,
whether the District Court’s grant of a stay in this case con-
stituted an abuse of discretion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg and
Justice Breyer join, concurring.
While I join the Court’s opinion, I do so on the understand-
ing that its reference to “good cause” for failing to exhaust
state remedies more promptly, ante, at 277, is not intended
to impose the sort of strict and inflexible requirement that
would “ ‘trap the unwary pro se prisoner.’ ” Rose v. Lundy,
455 U. S. 509, 520 (1982); see also Slack v. McDaniel, 529
U. S. 473, 487 (2000).
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Ginsburg and
Justice Breyer join, concurring in part and concurring in
the judgment.
I join the Court’s opinion with one reservation, not
doctrinal but practical. Instead of conditioning stay-and-
abeyance on “good cause” for delay, ante, at 277, I would
simply hold the order unavailable on a demonstration of “in-
tentionally dilatory litigation tactics,” ante, at 278. The
trickiness of some exhaustion determinations promises to in-
fect issues of good cause when a court finds a failure to ex-
haust; pro se petitioners (as most habeas petitioners are) do
not come well trained to address such matters. I fear that
threshold enquiries into good cause will give the district
courts too much trouble to be worth the time; far better to
wait for the alarm to sound when there is some indication
that a petitioner is gaming the system.