Jeffers

ORDER

Jeffers, a prisoner awaiting execution in the State of Arizona, appealed from the district court’s denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus, motion to stay execution, and motion for appointment of counsel. A panel of this court granted Jeffers’s motion to stay his execution. We have taken this case en banc and now vacate the panel’s opinion and lift the panel’s stay of execution.

*300 I

Contrary to the panel’s holding, this court’s decision in Bonin v. Vasquez, 999 F.2d 425 (9th Cir.1993) (Bonin), controls the outcome in this ease. Bonin answered a question left open in Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 755 , 111 S.Ct. 2546, 2567-68 , 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991); namely, whether a prisoner has a constitutional right to counsel in a collateral proceeding where that proceeding is the first place such a challenge could have been presented. Bonin specifically addressed and answered this question, and we face the same question in this ease. Bonin held that a defendant has no Sixth Amendment right to counsel during his state habeas proceedings even if that was the first forum in which he could challenge constitutional effectiveness on the part of trial counsel. Bonin, 999…

dissenting from the order.

We dissent from the majority’s order. For substantially the reasons stated in the three-judge panel’s order granting a stay of execution to allow briefing and argument to the three-judge panel, we would stay Jeffers’s execution so that the en banc panel can be properly briefed and hear argument.