Heleva v. Brooks

The majority opinion makes our Court the first to prohibit a district court from dismissing a petition for writ of habeas corpus immediately upon determining that the petitioner exhausted none — not a single one — of his federal claims in state court. I believe that this holding constitutes an unwarranted extension of Supreme Court precedent. In particular, I believe that the majority improperly intuits a sub silentio overruling of Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982) from dicta in Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408, 125 S.Ct. 1807, 161 L.Ed.2d 669 (2005).…