Calderon

We are asked to decide whether a district court may allow a habeas corpus petitioner to amend his petition to delete unexhausted claims and hold the amended petition in abeyance subject to further amendment reincorporating the deleted claims once they are litigated in state court.

I

The real party in interest in this ease, Freddie Lee Taylor, is a California prisoner sentenced to death for first degree murder. On July 10,1995, Taylor filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court for the Northern District of California raising some forty-six separate claims, many of which were unexhausted. The State moved to dismiss the petition. The district court, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel presiding, 1 initially ruled that it would stay rather than dismiss the petition pending exhaustion in California state court. The State moved for reconsideration in light of several intervening Ninth Circuit eases holding that district courts may not stay “mixed” habeas petitions (petitions containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims), see Greenawalt v. Stewart, 105 F.3d 1268 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 117 S.Ct. 794 , 136 L.Ed.2d 735 (1997), Calderon v. United States…