## Facts

- Billy Joe Magwood was convicted of murder in Alabama state court and sentenced to death.
- After unsuccessful direct and state postconviction review, Magwood filed a first federal habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254.
- The federal district court conditionally granted relief as to the sentence only, requiring Alabama to release or resentence Magwood; the conviction remained intact.
- On remand, the state trial court conducted a new sentencing proceeding and again imposed a death sentence, entering an intervening new judgment.
- Magwood then filed another § 2254 application challenging the new sentence, asserting (1) a due process “fair warning” claim and (2) ineffective assistance of counsel at resentencing.

## Issues

1. Whether a § 2254 application filed after resentencing and directed at the new sentencing judgment is “second or successive” under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b) when the petitioner could have raised a similar legal theory in the first federal habeas petition challenging the prior judgment.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Eleventh Circuit and remanded.
- The Court held that Magwood’s post-resentencing § 2254 application was not “second or successive” because it was the first federal habeas application challenging the intervening new judgment.
- The Court rejected treating § 2244(b) as a claim-based “one opportunity” bar when a new judgment has been entered after a conditional writ and resentencing.

## Legal Principles

- AEDPA’s “second or successive” limitation in 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b) is evaluated with respect to the state-court judgment being challenged.
- A § 2254 application that challenges a new, intervening judgment for the first time is not “second or successive” under § 2244(b), even if certain arguments could have been raised in an earlier petition attacking the prior judgment.
- The Court did not decide whether, or how, § 2244(b) applies to challenges to components of a new judgment that were unchanged by the resentencing; the holding was limited to first-in-time challenges to the intervening judgment.

## Conclusion

Because resentencing produced a new state-court judgment, Magwood’s first federal habeas application directed at that new judgment was not barred as “second or successive” under § 2244(b), and the case was returned to the lower courts for further proceedings.


Magwood v. Patterson, 561 U.S. 320 (2010)