Rodriguez v. Superintendent, Bay State Correctional Center

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This proceeding involves questions of novel impression. It finds its genesis in an application by Hector Santiago Rodriguez for permission to file a third habeas corpus petition seeking relief from his conviction, nearly three decades ago, for first-degree murder. Because the putative petitioner (who, for simplicity’s sake, we shall refer to as “petitioner,” without any qualifying adjective) fails to satisfy the statutory prerequisites for filing a successive petition, we deny his application.

I. BACKGROUND

On November 30, 1971, a Massachusetts jury convicted Rodriguez 1 of…